2010 marked the 20th anniversary of one of Finland's most popular, enduring, unique and honestly one of my top favorite bands, ever. To celebrate the band has released, 'Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes' a 2CD/2DVD, which is utterly mandatory for everyone that calls themselves an Amorphis fan. The first DVD contains a full concert from November 20th of 2009, which was filmed at Club Teatria in Oulu, Finland. From Tomi Joutsen's lead vocal work to both Esa Holopainen & Tomi Koivusaari's guitar work, Jan Rechberger's drumming, Niclas Etelävuori bass playing and Santeri Kallio's keyboards everything is absolutely perfect during this wonderful evening and I can admit I feel quite envious of those that got to witness it. The band rips through a number of the newer songs from the past three albums as well as a few classics with much conviction and finesse. Songs like, 'Sampo, 'The Castaway,' and 'House of Sleep' leave the crowd absolutely ecstatic, but things reach a truly magical height when they play the lengthy Elegy melody and even their bludgeoning earlier death metal number, 'The Sign from the North Side' really stir things up. The video quality and amount of perspectives shown during this show are quite beguiling as well making me feel like I'm sitting amongst the Oulu crowd. Needless to say, I've watched this first DVD a lot since purchasing it a few months ago. Collectively sixteen songs are played and these are also the same sixteen songs, which appear on the CD portion of this illustrious package, which I'm quite thankful for since I just can't get enough of this show.
The second DVD kicks off with a gig from a few months earlier at Germany's Summer Breeze Open Air. The set list for this one is a bit shorter at just twelve songs and a few from the previous show are present here as well, though it was pleasing see songs like, 'Leaves Scars' and 'Against Widows' & 'Magic and Mayhem' in their full length during this performance. The sound and video quality for this gig is slightly lower, but the bands passion, energy and dedication to their music remains. It also seems the crowd is not nearly as enthusiastic, but then again Summer Breeze is a huge fest and I don't suppose everyone was present to see Amorphis. Nonetheless this is another enjoyable gig, which I've of course watched a few times since picking this package up.
The DVD continues with a documentary titled, 'Tales from the 20 Years,' which is basically the current and some of the previous members looking back at the past twenty years and telling how things got started with Amorphis and how things have progressed throughout the years. As expected tons of old photo and video footage of the band onstage, recording the albums and quite a bit of them just fucking around and getting drunk is present. The whole thing is quite engaging and keeps your attention throughout the entire duration, though I wish all past members had made an appearance. I can understand old members like Ville or Kimmi not making an appearance, but the lack of Pasi in this documentary is truly a shame. All in all though its definitely one of the better documentaries for an underground metal band I've seen with perhaps only the At The Gates documentary overshadowing it.
All of the bands music videos are also present with everything from the quite odd, 'Black Winter Day' video to newer vids like 'House of Sleep' and the quite cool, 'Silver Bride.' Perhaps the most interesting portion of the videos section is an old live acoustic version, 'My Kantele' on a Finnish music show from '96, which reminds me of the old MTV show, '120 Minutes.' Of course its quite interesting seeing the band when they were basically just 'kids' in their early twenties. There's also a short interview during this show with Pasi and Tomi where they are asked about the new album (Elegy), fans, touring as well as their plans for the future. All very interesting stuff I must say. Lastly a photo gallery is included on this DVD and its pretty much what you'd expect a band to include on their DVD.
Well, I've already said it, but in case you don't get it, proceed upwards to the last several words of the first paragraph.
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