Usually strange, random and crazy occurrences happen to absolutely every single person out there, except me. Blame it on where I live, being to sheltered, working the graveyard shift at work... who the fuck knows, man? However by some strange course of events about a year and some months ago I came into contact with the drummer of Sotajumala's wife who curiously wasn't Finnish, but in fact from Wisconsin, my humble abode. From there some sort of friendship was established, which lead me to meeting both drummer Timo and his wife (I'll keep her name secret) at Tuska back in July and once again having them over at my place when they were visiting friends and family in the USA. Of course, I made sure to pick up a Sotajumala album while over in Finland, and I'm quite glad I choose this one too, because, 'Teloitus' fucking rules!
For those that don't know Sotajumala is a death metal band that was formed in the late 90's in Jyväskylä, Finland who nowadays have three albums plus a few singles and splits behind them. Musically its probably safe to say that Sotajumala plays fairly standard modern day death metal, though all lyrics from the start have been wrote and then growled in Finnish to make their origin easily known.
The riffing style of Kosti Orbinski and Pete Lapio seems to mostly draw from the Morbid Angel pool with an onslaught of pummeling and brutalizing riffs that have character, depth and technicality plus absolutely killer solos that will peel your skin off. Vocalist Mynni Luukkainen's guttural roar leads this death metal assault, but like any good front man his voice shifts in pitch from ultra low growls, to fairly standard growls and to even some high pitched shrieks. Meanwhile, Tomi Otsala's bass work is actually audible and drummer, Timo Häkkinen does an absolutely excellent job behind the drum kit, always sounding tight with plenty creative patterns, fills and just sounding plain and simply brutal.
As I said earlier, Sotajumala is modern death metal, but that's hardly a bad thing because this music has such energy and drive behind it that its hard to resist. It reminds me of bands like Ulcerate, Behemoth and Zyklon and if you know those bands then you know they barely break any new ground, but they know how to make catchy, energetic, tight and hard driven awesome death metal. And Sotajumala does the same. Maybe even better (Will see when I get my hands on the other releases).
In the end this is definitely and obviously by this point a superb modern death metal release. Not mandatory if your a casual death metal listener, but if you fancy all things death metal or are just looking for another great Finnish band, then you surely can't go wrong with these guys.
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