Jäähyvästi

On Jäähyvästi, Saattue provides more than a simple continuation on the themes found on the rather enjoyable Ikiuneen... demo. There is progression, there is repetition, and the quality still stays on an excellent level. While the album can still be labelled simply "melodic death-doom" without much deviation from facts, there are new elements in the mix that turn the music closer to the instinctive assumption based on the genre tag, rather than progressing further out onto the doom field. Also, Jäähyvästi could be described as a series of unhappy marriages, and the result is good, melancholic, and surprisingly emotional, in best possible sense.

The album contains all the tracks from Ikiuneen..., and according to the MA and other sources, the full-length is the result of a rush job to turn a planned EP into a real album after getting signed on Spikefarm. They took their new tracks, blended them with re-recorded versions of Ikiuneen... songs, and created a some kind of a frankenstein of an album. The first unhappy marriage takes place when the two tracklists collide. The marked difference in the styles of the tracks might throw a casual listener off the path, and leave him wondering on the purpose of the creature. But on repeated spins, the contraption starts to work, and the twisted logic of this oddity, built of scavenged pieces from a junkyard, makes a new kind of impression. The older tracks have the familiar rude, ruthless and nihilistic character to them, while the new material is more emotional and melancholic, and has a pronounced emphasis on cold beauty. The tracks off Ikiuneen... are centered on death, pain, and regret in the face of an unavoidable end, but the new songs tread on fragile subjects, such as the thoughts of someone committing a depressed suicide by drowning in a icy river, bitter death on a battlefield somewhere far away after the glory of an oath to defend the land of his fathers has been stripped away and the comrades in arms have suffered their inglorious ends in the arms of the storyteller, and, on the title track, the regret and longing of a father who has lost a small child to a drunken driver.

The difference in the two sets of subjects is reflected in the music, and that takes us to the second unhappy marriage in the series. While the old tracks are melodic doom, focused mostly on the "doom" part, the newer songs stray closer to the recently established holotypical melodic doom-death style, with a more atmospheric songwriting instead of the rather hard-hitting and heavy-handed melody-infused barking/yelling of the old tracks. There are new, ethereal sounds, especially in the form of a nice female vocalist, and the highly effective simplicity is gone, replaced by a more complex kind of songwriting. The new tracks prowl closer to bands like Swallow the Sun, but without losing their unpolished identity as Saattue.

The third unhappy marriage can be found in the vocal work. Tuukka Koskinen still keeps his original hamfisted yelling and grunting style going, but a bunch of cleaner male vocals have been added, and it's not immediately obvious who does them. Some clean parts carry the slight but characteristic pronunciation problem of the letter "R", just like Koskinen's growl does, so it's reasonable to assume it's him. The marriage, this time between a man and a woman, results from the aforementioned introduction of clean female vocals, somewhat gothic in atmosphere, and with a degree of fragility in them. The unlikely combination works wonders! Grumpy melodic barking and such low-power female vocals have a surprising chemistery, and the new compound fits the newer tracks wonderfully. Contrasts abound, and the band uses them to its advantage with skill.

While Jäähyvästi hardly brings anything new to the table, it once again combines the basic, coarse doom metal - or, in the case of the newer tracks, basic melodic doom-death - with extremely striking and cruel lyrics. A listener without any skills in Finnish loses a lot of the impact the combination of the lyrics and music deliver to those who can enjoy both of them. The emotional charge piled on the title track alone is one of the few poetic masterpieces capable of challenging the sad emotions raised by Morfiinisiivet single by Mustan Kuun Lapset, which is in itself one of the most melancholic pieces of music of the millenium so far. It might be even more devastating to those of us with little children of our own, but while the subject is grim, the delicacy of the poetic delivery is the key to its excellence. Good work, but unfotunately lost to 97% of the metalheads on Earth.

This is an excellent album of partly melancholic, partly nihilistic music, delivered with surprising finesse despite the fundamental simplicity and bluntness of many of the ingredients. It might also be a good additional reason to start studying for those who wish to take the only chance they are given to learn Finnish before they die. Because once you die, Luutarhuri will shovel gravel onto your coffin lid and walk away, and six months later, no one will remember you, and no one cares what you did or didn't do when you lived...