Morphin' Glory

Finnish progressive metal veterans Amorphis are 15 albums into a career like few others. As the band release Borderland, bassist Olli-Pekka Laine tells Prog, the nexus of death metal and neo-prog is a truly strange place to be.

- Joel McIver

As anyone who has been to Finland will tell you, there's no other country quite like it.

Its native language has little in common with that of its neighbours Sweden and Russia; its topography is bizarre, with more than 180,000 lakes to fall into after too much liquorice vodka; and it's the most heavy metal country per capita in the world. "Why are we so metal? Actually, I've thought about this a lot," says Olli-Pekka Laine, bassist with the Helsinki-based prog-metal sextet Amorphis. "Finland is such a metal country, I think, because most pop and rock bands never came here in the 70s and 80s. We're a ferry trip away from Stockholm and it was time-consuming to come over to play here. But this didn't bother the metal bands. They always came here, whether it was Iron Maiden or Kiss or Metallica, so there were lots of metal shows in Finland back then."

He adds: “The other thing is that people always connect metal with darkness and depression, and it’s true that there’s probably a little bit more depression in Finland than in more sunny countries, but it’s strange that people always connect metal with depression, because I don't see it that way. I think metal is joyful music... and so is prog.”

Ah, the P-word. By any definition, Amorphis are a prog band these days, loading unusual time signatures, virtuoso melodic passages and cosmic themes into their latest album, Borderland. Like their last few records, the new one takes the bloodthirsty death metal riffs and gargles with which Amorphis debuted on The Karelian Isthmus (1992) and adds a ton of progressive elements: the result is just as heavy but also just as texturally rich as any equivalent act such as, say, Opeth. There's a lot to enjoy in the new songs, with Tempest a pastoral acoustic ballad, The Lantern a cinematic epic with Vangelis-style synth warbles, and