Artist: Indica
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2010
Running time: 46:21
Rating: 4/5
All-female bands have always been a double-edged sword when it comes to musical expression. They were and they will be. They can easily lead you astray and send you down the road of analyzing how attractive the individual members are, rather than what their original music actually says. The people holding the scissors and the cloth know this manipulation tool well, whenever it comes to doling out financial injections to back particular bands.
The feeling is that a breakthrough has always come easier to all-female (read: gender-pure) lineups than to the opposite side, the all-male ones. First, there are many, many fewer of them; second, they play their part, the one that sets off the Bambi effect, far more effectively than male brutes ever manage.
Surely the folks at Nuclear Blast Records know this too. Where? You read that right. A label that strictly, above all else, looks after the legacy of heavy metal and all the genre and subgenre offshoots it has sprouted over the years of evolution. There’s less metal in Indica than there is water on Mars. Maybe a stray water molecule wanders in every now and then, but you won’t find so much as a quantum of metal on “A Way Away”. And where did the oath to metal go for a label like Nuclear Blast Records? Even the Lord of the Flies himself, His Most Enlightened Satan, is probably scratching his wrinkled forehead in surprise right about now.
The band, who miraculously haven’t yet entered the Eurovision contest as Finland’s representatives, tie together the face and the work of their past creations (albums) on “A Way Away”. All of those were released with the band singing in their mother tongue, Finnish that is. “A Way Away” is an album sung in English.
Let me finally stand up for the band. Even though I’d marry all five gals on the spot and start a harem (what a lovely bedtime story), “A Way Away” is no musical triviality, let alone shallow, despite the bittersweet quality of the album’s songwriting, which is supposed to finally throw the doors open wide to a commercial breakthrough abroad as well. Indica reached superstar status in Finland long ago, with albums that sold in multi-platinum runs. In their compactly built songs they present the classic composition structure of heads (chorus) and tails (verse). The songs are steeped in the typical Finnish sense of melody, so the melancholic mood is clearly underlined all the way through. Island Of Light, which opens the album, will grab all your attention right away with its hooky, melodic chorus. The next one, Precious Dark, even has a melodically prominent bass line in its underbelly, which makes for an extremely welcome contrast and a standout on the album. Just this one on the album, mind you.
The gals pull off a neat blend of rock and classically tinged arrangements, which gives a sense of a multifaceted sound. Now and then they also work in folk elements with traditional “unplugged” acoustic instruments. The rock feel, delivered through electric guitar riffing, is skillfully tucked more into the background of a production that this time favors symphonic and keyboard arrangements. The album reaches the peak of this sound-shaping tendency with the run of three tracks in a row: Children Of Frost, Lilja’s Lament (probably not a parody of the Apocaliptica cellist, and you could easily use the song in a movie soundtrack) and, right after them, In Passing, which was also released as a “single”.
Singer Jonsu successfully commands attention with her vocals. What saves her is a tone of voice with a touch of mysticism and, at the same time, an appealing touch of the innocence of an unpicked flower (the compact Straight & Arrow, born for a hit single and radio play). Speaking of Straight & Arrow, this is the song where the band managed to bring all the elements that shape their sound together in an especially bold, ideal coexistence. It also highlights a hooky, melodic chorus and the contrast in mood as it flips between chorus and verse.
Tuomas Holopainen, otherwise the keyboardist of Nightwish, is the man who dug all ten fingers deep into shaping the album’s sound, the orchestral arrangements, the keyboard arrangements and, if I think purely in a man-to-man, matter-of-fact way, maybe into a few other places too, which of course stayed hidden from the wider public. So much for Indica’s unpicked flowers. Tuomas already produced the band’s fourth album “Valoissa” (2008).
Anyway, the album is very good. It has variety between the songs, and they reach a high level of dynamics and flow of moods, and are dressed down to the last detail, perfectionist-style, in arrangement structures that make full use of the spectrum of the sonic picture. The dynamics are also lifted by the instrumental middle sections and/or outro instrumentals, which often pull in a mix of orchestral arrangements that even takes in a few notes of guitar soloing (?) or a bit more riff coherence. Of course, you wonder how much of the authenticity of the band’s image, as captured on their previous albums, was sacrificed. You have to keep in mind that this is the band’s first album sung in English, and really a compilation of the best of their past albums. So we can talk about a compilation and, at the same time, the band’s first studio album sung in English. Surely some of the recognizable essence got lost, but plenty of it remains. Indica are a special band. There’s no doubting that on “A Way Away”.
Given the sort of “best of” look of an album of rearranged past work, the question is whether the band will manage to hold on to such a high level of quality on their next album as they did on this “debut” (an English-language debut) and plow even deeper into international virgin soil. So let’s wait and see where “A Way Away” carries them.
Line-up
Jonsu – vocals, violin, keyboards, guitar
Sirkku – keyboards, clarinet, backing vocals
Jenny – guitar, backing vocals
Heini – bass guitar, backing vocals
Laura – drums
Production
Tuomas Holopainen
Track list
1. Island Of Light
2. Precious Dark
3. Children Of Frost
4. Lilja’s Lament
5. In Passing
6. Scissor, Paper, Rock
7. A Way Away
8. As If
9. Straight 6 Arrow
10. Eerie Eden
