Insomnium: A Wretched Old Bard, Weary and Torn

Since forming in 1997, Finland’s INSOMNIUM have risen to become one of the most revered melodic death metal bands on the planet. Harnessing a distinctly Finnish sounding blend of extreme melancholy and Nordic brutality, the quintet’s style is instantly recognisable. Never an outfit to shy from the most miserable of dark poetry to compliment the tear-jerking melodies, the band have taken their heart-wrenching lyricism to a whole new level with their incredible new album, Heart Like A Grave. 

“I think the starting point was the biggest newspaper in Finland. They had this vote where people could vote the saddest song ever in Finland. It was a very nice concept and people really liked it a lot. The top 10 was really interesting, really sad, old stuff. We were fascinated by this whole whole concept, and I thought we could do something similar and use these kind of old songs that our parents and grandparents and even older generations have been listening to, to really dig into the heart of Finnish melancholy.” Explains INSOMNIUM front man and founding member, Niilo Sevänen.

“[We wanted to explore] this kind of Finnish darkness that your wife left you, and the cold destroys the whole harvest, and your brother died, and you are old and weary and miserable, and there’s no hope left anymore. But you can still remember that golden time of youth when things were better and there was still hope the air… I don’t know if I’m getting old, or why I have this old man looking back to this to his youth theme in many of these lyrics, but that’s a big theme on this album!”

Finland’s history is a troubled one, with the country spending many of the centuries before winning independence from Russia in the winter of 1917 being passed between the Swedish and Russian empires, it’s people horribly mistreated. This oppressed history, coupled with the destructive force of nature that is the half-year long Finnish winter, led to an artistic avalanche of morbid, heart breaking art in the decades following Finnish independence.

“But the number one saddest song actually [from the vote], it’s a traditional song, it’s even older – about 150 years old or something like that. We took that story, and then I wrote a new version of it – And Bells They Toll. That’s maybe the only one where I had taken a story from from an old song and wrote a new version of it. But there are a couple of poems there, Pale Morning Star and The Offering.” Offers Sevänen, delving further into the hyper-melancholic basis for Heart Like A Grave‘s lyrics. “There’s this poet from the 1930s, [Saima Harmaja], she died very young and was very much the kind of archetypal suffering artist. She wrote very dark poems about dreams and death that really suits INSOMNIUM well.”

Such melancholy certainly isn’t new territory for INSOMNIUM, but they have delved deeper into the emotional darkness of the Finnish psyche than ever before with Heart Like A Grave. Further, after the huge departure of Winter’s Gate, the misery here hits all the harder. Winter’s Gate featured just one track, a 40 minute epic based entirely on a piece of fiction written by Sevänen himself. Heart Like A Grave brings a welcome return back to a “normal” album format.

“After we have played Winter’s Gate for two years, almost every show in the whole cycle, we all thought ‘Okay, it’s time to have a break from this for this thing and let’s start making a normal kind of album again.’ It felt easy and natural to go back to that. Of course, Winter’s Gate was a special thing we wanted to do, and we might do something like that in the future, who knows, but it felt felt good to come back to this normal album form.” Explains Sevänen on the direction of the new record.

But given how strong a narrative Winter’s Gate held, and an open acknowledgement that INSOMNIUM may return to that album’s format again in the future, the question begs itself: does Sevänen have more fiction burning inside him, and will we be seeing his name on bookshelves outside of the band?

“I was writing before I got into music, that was my first passion. But for the last couple of years I’ve been really busy with music, and I haven’t really had time to write at all, which is a shame and I would like to do that. But let’s see if there is a proper moment for that. I’m currently just writing new music all the time and really living this musician’s life. But I’ve been playing around with the idea, could I write something for Winter’s Gate part two? How could I continue the story? I have some ideas in my mind, but of course, I would have to talk with the other guys to see how they would feel about it. Have they had enough of Vikings with that one album, or would they want me to continue? Let’s see what the future brings, and what I have time to write!”

But this is all speculation for the future. In the here and now, the fact remains that INSOMNIUM are crafted yet another incredible opus to add to their discography. Already at the top off the melodic death metal scene, Heart Like A Grave is set to push the band to even greater heights. The album charted at number one in Finland’s charts – all talk of Finland’s high proportion of metal bands aside, a death metal band hitting the number one spot in mainstream charts is unheard of, and is a wonderful omen for what’s to come from this album cycle and beyond. In his lyrics, Sevänen may be a wretched old bard, weary and torn, but the reality is the future of INSOMNIUM is bright and full of hope.

Heart Like A Grave is out now via Century Media Records. 

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