The Mist and the Morning Dew - The Mist... (2005)

The Mist and the Morning Dew is/was a group of semi-star Finnish musicians that first formed together back in 1999, released a demo in 2002 and has otherwise been completely quiet since then.

The band features the talents of Jarno Salomaa (Shape of Despair) handling the acoustic & lead guitars, Henri Tuomi & Mikael Karlborn on drums & rhythm guitar (both members of The Seventh Planet), Sami Uusitalo (Shape of Despair, Finntroll, Funebre) on bass, Jaakko Lemmetty (Shaman) on violin and finally the delightful lead female vocals of Veera Muhli (Unholy, Shaman). This self titled debut EP (apparently otherwise known as the 'The Mist...') is a re-release of the 2002 demo, and is being released by Vendlus Records in just a 1000 copies as a means to prepare us for their debut album, which now just a little over six years later has still not arrived.

Through all these years that I've been listening to this EP I've constantly discovered new things that make me keep changing my mind on what exactly their music could be labeled as. All uncertainties aside though the best way to describe this band would be to call them something like atmospheric melodic folky doom metal.

The songs feature incredibly, really catchy beautiful riffs and solos from the hands of Jarno and Mikael that just completely blow me away with their excellence. They are weird however since they have this odd atmospheric repetitive quality at times that just completely possess my mind and takes me to places I’ve never experienced before. I suppose I shouldn’t be to surprised though since Shape of Despair has a similar feeling to their music, but whereas Shape of Despair is just utterly dark sounding The Mist and the Morning Dew is more lively, blissful and illusory sounding. Plus with the occasional inclusion of the acoustic guitars and the violin the band achieve more of a folky sound that I much enjoy.

The name of this band and the artwork is another interesting aspect since it will probably make most people think of autumn, but to me they have more of a springtime sound I guess you could say. Listening to this EP I can picture myself waking up early in the morning finding misty fields, dew on tree leafs and snow melting away as the sultry summer approaches us.

While this all sounds dandy there is just one single thing holding this band back from perfection, and that happens to be the production. Apparently the original master tapes were lost after this material was originally recorded and thus making re-mastering impossible. I wouldn’t complain, because generally production isn’t much of an issue with me, but there are times throughout this EP where Veera’s vocals are rather hard to hear and the same occasionally happens with the acoustic guitars and the rhythm guitar sounds like one big fuzzy mess. But, ya know, surely this recording has some short comings, but, damn it all, this thirty two minute EP is still fantastic to me!

Still this EP made a huge impression on me back in '05 and continues to do so all these years later, and as much as I'd like to think a full-length is coming, it's probably safer to bet against such happenings.

All at once The Mist and the Morning Dew is atmospheric, dreamy, harmonious, swirling gorgeousness, and if this EP is still out there I'd suggest getting your hands on it, because frankly I’ve never heard anything that sounds exactly like this.