Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: May 28, 2021
Production: Esa Holopainen & Nino Laurenne
Album length: 37.24 min
Genre: Progressive Metal/Progressive Rock
Rating: 9.5/10
Esa Holopainen is the guitarist, one of the founders and main songwriters of Finnish death metal legends Amorphis. After many years of loyalty to his home band, he’s finally decided to put out a solo studio debut of his own. The album by his project Silver Lake, which shares its name with the record, collects nine tracks that wouldn’t belong on an Amorphis album under any circumstances. So no, Holopainen isn’t playing death metal this time. Instead, he’s pulled off an interesting and wildly successful marriage of progressive metal with pop elements, old-school seventies prog rock and film music, forging a brilliant art metal conglomerate with seven distinct musical stories and faces.
Holopainen delivers superb production that offers about as many faces as the album has tracks, and he’s filed these nine songs down to perfection with real cunning. He was careful in picking his vocalists too, deciding which of them gets the lead on each track based on the content and nature of the compositions. And those vocalists turn out to be a hugely powerful factor, because they carry the energy and vibe of their home bands right over into Esa Holopainen’s own material. Esa picked the best of the best. Very carefully. And as a big fan of the singers he chose, no less. Because he’s a perfectionist. The same goes for the instrumentalists, who are his Finnish countrymen — proven, highly skilled studio hands.
The album bursts with melancholy and longing. The songs are seasoned with plenty of finesse. There are loads of details that weave into the sound with remarkable compatibility and ease, enriching and expanding it in the cleverest way. The winners when it comes to melancholy, the tracks full of anguish and yearning that give you goosebumps without breaking a sweat, are the two for which Esa called up Jonas Renkse, vocalist of Swedish progressive rock and former doom metal legends Katatonia. No wonder Jonas, the only guest vocalist, takes on two tracks, and does so right in the opening stretch with Sentiment, for which the acoustic instrumental, neoclassically tinged title track sets an incredibly atmospheric stage (it could easily be slotted in as the backdrop to some film), and again on the closer Apprentice. That track is built on the same main motif as the opening title instrumental, only reworked for Renkse’s voice, and it radiates a completely different image. With Renkse on vocals, both songs pull the vibe toward present-day, progressive-era Katatonia, and fans of newer Riverside and Porcupine Tree will also find something to love in them. At heart, both are progressive rock tracks.
The musicianship is flawless. It grabs you and won’t let go, thanks to the soulful interpretation, the incredibly clear arrangement focus and the sheer dedication to delivering the material. On this album Holopainen shows what a brilliant, multi-layered, finely honed musician he is. His story is nowhere near finished with death metal. This is a record where the guitarist shows off several faces, and with his insight and endlessly appealing compositional ideas he never stops impressing.
Alkusiontu is basically another instrumental piece with folk elements that would fit straight into a film soundtrack. Holopainen spiced it up by inviting the legendary Finnish film actor Vesa-Matti Loiri to take part, and with his thunderous vocal timbre he breathes narration into the track, adding a gripping emotional reach and boosting the hypnotic drama theater. There’s one more surprising twist, surprising given Holopainen’s past work: a perfectly fitting saxophone solo. And that’s not the end of the story. The Finnish traditional instrument, the kantele, is thrown in too
Still, Holopainen slipped one moment onto the album that could conditionally belong on an Amorphis record. That’s part of In Her Solitude, which opens up fully death metal in its intro motif and verse, thanks to Amorphis singer Tomi Joutsen. Stylistically and atmospherically, though, the song completely flips in the chorus, which is musically catchy and carries pop elements. A brilliant leap follows, through a folk passage into a neoclassical progressive metal continuation, where Holopainen shines with a fascinating guitar solo, proving his finesse and softness through his refined choice and coloring of notes. This track is special because it has just two verses and two choruses, followed only by an extended instrumental section. Promising Sun, with Björn “Speed” Strid (Soilwork, The Night Flight Orchestra), and Storm, with Håkan Hemlin of Nordman, offer a pairing of shimmering metal phrasing with pop aesthetics that takes the dominant position in the choruses. Choruses that are catchy all the way. In both of these tracks Holopainen also very deftly slipped in electronic and synthesizer programming loops, which sharpens the contrasts of the mood swings captured within the two tracks even more.
There are two more hugely distinctive vocalists here. The first is Anneke Van Giersbergen, who plenty of bands would love to have and who has racked up a whole constellation of collaborations in her career, including Ayreon and Devin Townsend. With her soulful tenderness and flexibility she deepens the folk-flavored opening sentiment of Fading Moon, and the song then grows in the chorus into a synthesis of symphonic power metal theater with pop catchiness, with a chorus that gives off an energetic vibe akin to some of the choruses on Delain’s album “April Rain”. The real special story of the album, though, is Ray Of Light, joined on vocals by Leprous singer Einar Solberg. He’s an incredibly dominant vocal figure. With Einar you never know where he’ll soar next with his voice or what melody he’ll unfold. He’s a singer of a thousand faces, totally unique and one of a kind in his approach. And that’s exactly what his performance on the track embodies. He’s brought in his confessional maximum, typical of his singing in Leprous, so the track automatically picks up a bit of the vibe of those splendid Norwegian progressives. In progressive terms it’s by far the most dynamic song on “Silver Lake”, with a strong art rock stamp, since it’s hard to find any parallel for it. It’s actually a kind of hybrid of old seventies prog rock (there’s Hammond sound added too) and eighties pop, but it develops in a way that, as said, has no parallels. Eclectic.
“Silver Lake” is brilliant in every respect. A good 37 minutes of music, but with a huge amount of solid, tangible musical substance that keeps wowing and speaking to you with its hypnotic allure and eclecticism. The album is extremely musical, extremely bombastic. That’s down to the lavish arrangements, which reach a level as if an entire orchestra had played on the record.
The nine tracks on this album developed over a long stretch of time and reach an exceptional level of polish. The album is incredibly dynamic, varied and flowing. It can turn on a dime. There isn’t a wasted second on it; if anything, a few extra ones are missing. “Silver Lake” is one of the more interesting releases to come out this year, precisely because it serves up real substance from a musician best known for playing and creating within the death metallers Amorphis. That’s why it delivers such a very pleasant surprise.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Silver Lake (instrumental)
2. Sentiment (feat. Jonas Renkse of Katatonia)
3. Storm (feat. Håkan Hemlin of Nordman)
4. Ray Of Light (feat. Einar Solberg of Leprous)
5. Alkusointu (feat. Vesa-Matti Loiri)
6. In Her Solitude (feat Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis)
7. Promising Sun (feat. Björn ‘Speed’ Strid of Soilwork / The Night Flight Orchestra)
8. Fading Moon (feat. Anneke Van Giersbergen)
9. Apprentice (feat. Jonas Renkse of Katatonia)
Musicians:
Esa Holopainen – guitar
Vili Itäpelto – keyboards
Pasi Heikkilä – bass guitar
Sampo Haapaniemi – drums, percussion
Gas Lipstick – drums
Janne Huttunen – flute on track 2
Ronny Hemlin – backing vocals on track 3
Netta Laurenne – backing vocals on track 6
Nino Laurenne – backing vocals on track 6
Anu Itäpelto – kantele on track 5
Janne Huttunen – soprano saxophone on track 5
