Canon in Miniature #185

Moonsorrow Tulimyrsky

2008; Spikefarm

There are two ways to look at Tulimyrsky as an EP. The first is as little more than a vehicle for the half hour title track, which it has to be said is one of the better things I’ve heard from Moonsorrow at this point, that just happens to have a bunch of unrelated bonus material rounding it out to over an hour’s length. The other way is as a full 60+ minute odds and sods collection that just happens to feature a fully developed half hour epic in the midst of reworked demo tracks and extraneous covers. If there’s an issue with that duality it’s that in both cases it probably would have been to the release’s benefit to simply stop at “Tulimyrsky” itself and keep the remaining four songs in reserve for a more dedicated fans only release later down the road. That’s not to say that there isn’t some good to be found within the remaining songs here, just that when you’re sitting on as great, and fully fleshed out, a piece as “Tulimyrsky” it makes sense to not distract from it with a helping of your b-grade material. Of course, given that in my opinion Moonsorrow are one of the better metal bands out there at the moment – I love their particular blend of folk an metal more than most other folk-metal bands that I’ve heard, mostly because they don’t seem to take their sound too seriously – I can’t exactly say that their B-grade material lis necessarily bad, it’s just that running up against “Tulimyrsky” it feels decidedly lesser in both scope and quality.

Maybe it’s just the stigma I attach to the kind of material they chose to fill the release out with that’s causing my trepidation with praising the release as it is now. I mean, plenty of bands have done covers of their influences or reworked their older material once they’d gotten a better handle on their sound, but there’s still an air of ‘not really trying’ that hangs over any release hinged on that kind of material, even when it’s well done. That said, other than their cover of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which finds the ideal middle ground between the original’s straightforward thrash and their particular brand of Viking drinking metal and works to the song’s advantage, the b-list material here isn’t exceptional enough to transcend its inherent b-list classification. The re-worked demo tracks are improved, but they aren’t quite as involved compositionally as the band’s later material and as such feel oddly half-assed despite considerable efforts made to update them. Likewise, the cover of Merciless’ “Back to the North” feels more like the band forcing a round peg into their square hole than doing anything to make the song fit with their sound. It’s not awkward or anything, but it feels a bit off nonetheless.

The real question though is does any of that matter when the meat of the EP is as good as “Tulimyrsky” is? It’s incredibly easy for me to simply pretend that the EP begins and ends with its title track not just because it’s obviously supposed to be its focal point no matter how you feel about the remainder of its contents but because out of the five tracks presented here it’s the only one that feels necessary. It’s a mammoth endeavor, a full half-hour composition, one that actually flows like a half-hour long piece should rather than just cramming different half-songs together in the guise of a suite, that apparently tells a full-fledged story to boot (though my lack of Finnish language skills prevents me from fully appreciating it on this level.) In other words, it’s a true epic in terms of scope and structure even before you get to any dissemination of its quality, and on that front it comes out positively far more than I would have guessed it would. Even though I like what Moonsorrow I’ve heard prior to this they’ve always been a bit much to take all at once as it were, and a thirty minute uninterrupted slice of their particular brand of metal could easily be way too over-the-top to truly enjoy. “Tulimyrsky” may not exactly avoid that kind of excess, it is a half-hour long after all, but it tempers it with a greater degree of subtlety than I’d expected given my previous experiences with the band. It certainly helps that it strings together a series of truly memorable riffs and other passages into a cohesive whole where many bands of this ilk would simply dump as many ideas as possible into the song without caring as to whether those ideas work well together. That’s the thing that turns “Tulimyrsky” from a good piece of music to a borderline great one as far as I’m concerned; there seems to be thought in its construction and I can’t help but appreciate that.

So what interpretation wins out? I can’t overlook the sharp drop in quality that occurs after “Tulimysrsky” but I also can’t look at the tracks thereafter as much more than bonus tracks to round out a release that was seemingly lacking in content. The real meat of the EP is that first half hour, and it’s a glorious half hour that puts all the things I like about Moonsorrow’s vision of metal into sharp focus and never lets them go too far into the lands of self-parody. The rest of the material can’t claim anything close to that, but it’s a moot point to some extent given how much it comes off as an afterthought from the minute you see the tracklist. Even though I can’t ignore it outright I choose to downplay it enough to push this closer to the respectable rating its true meat merits. [6.9]