Amorphis - Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years (2010)

Here's your fieldwork assignment for the week. Go find yourself ten old school Amorphis fans and ask them which of the bands albums they prefer the most. Now, I can't say for sure, but I've got this hunch, and honestly I do believe these ten old school fans are going to say my favorite fucking Amorphis albums are '92's, 'The Karelian Isthmus,' '94's, 'Tales from the Thousand Lakes' and '96's, 'Elegy.' So, what does Amorphis do to further celebrate their twenty year anniversary? Yes, yes they decide to re-record songs from these first three groundbreaking and utterly stunning albums and package it all together and call it, 'Magic & Mayhem - Tales from the Early Years!'

Blasphemy, I say!

Something I'll simply never understand is why bands feel the need to revisit their early years and try and improve their old creations with modern recording technologies and the current members serving in the band. An example would be that Dimmu Borgir re-recording of the entire, 'Stormblast' album a few years ago that some of you might have heard, and, well, it was about as much fun as fucking Nicolas Cage's dried up old hag of an ex-wife, but then I wouldn't expect Shagrath to have good taste in anything, would you?

But, no, seriously these re-recordings are not nearly as bad but they are just as completely unnecessary when you stop and consider the simple fact that The Karelian Isthmus is an absolute death metal classic, Tales From the Thousand Lakes is one of the most highly influential albums ever as it pretty much launched the entire folk metal genre and Elegy is quite simply one of the greatest melodic death prog metal albums ever conceived.

In the recent Amorphis DVD band leader Esa Holopainen explains that the true period of confusion for Amorphis was everything after Elegy and it wasn't until 2005 when Tomi Joutsen joined that the confusion disappeared and shit made since again. So, here's my idea. Instead of trying to touch up, alter and experiment with Tomi's voice why not re-visit the period of confusion and try and clear it up. Take some of these songs that were originally more hard rock sounding with clear vocals and speed 'em up a bit and then throw in Tomi's diverse range of low abysmal growls and cleanly sung abilities and re-create them entirely. That's the point of re-recording songs, I guess, that's what some bands do when they do covers of their heroes songs too. They do them in their style.

Y'see, I've got this problem. These old songs are so vaguely changed it really, truly is a wonder as to what they were trying to do. Oh, I know, it's called cash grab. Cash grab for thee band and thee label, and, god fucking damn it that hurts me to say that, because, you know, Amorphis is like my top band, man.

Even though Esa further explains that Niclas and Santeri contributed new ideas to these old songs I really don't see what he was talking about because the only true difference between these re-recordings and the originals is Tomi's voice and the the inclusion of some extra synth parts in the songs that didn't originally have them. That's really about it. It doesn't sound like anything has been re-arranged or extended, shortened or whatever.

Despite my bitchin' some of these songs do sound good, and in an odd sort of way it made me go back to the originals and really examine them and look for differences. The three songs from The Karelian Isthmus, for example, sound slightly different as a result of the modern top notch production job, but a bad example is that Santeri's keyboard work on the five songs from Tales and four from Elegy sound quite different and ultimately not as cool either. But the ultimate folly comes at the end with, yes you guessed it, the re-recording of their hopelessly stupid cover version of The Door's, 'Light my Fire.' Another idea. Rather than doing the shortened death metal version of this classic as it appeared back in the day, why not do the normal seven some minute version of this song with entirely clean vocals? Make it true to the original, but add the Amorphis touch, but no, no, no, they did not, they went with the shortened retarded death metal version, again. Just imagine Tomi cleanly singing with his awesome voice, 'Try to set the night on fire, try to set the night on firrrrreeeeeeee!' But, no, just growls instead. Ugh.

I also have to point out that although Tomi's growled vocals sound fine on these re-recordings, it's his clean vocals that suffer. Not that they are actually bad, but what I really miss when I hear these re-recordings is Ville's and Pasi's clean voices. Sure they weren't the best, but they worked damn well at the time and trying to cover them up just doesn't work in my book.

So, in the end it's like this. If you never heard those old albums you might just love this album. However if you're like me and you've been listening to Amorphis for over a decade you'll more than likely be sitting about asking yourself, 'Why?' I guess I knew what to expect going into it, but no matter what Amorphis is an all-time fave for me and I just couldn't resist hearing these new versions. Approach with extreme caution.