COLOSSEUM „“Chapter I: Delirium””

Music: Funeral Doom
Country: Finland
Web site: www.colosseumdoom.com
Cool Songs: Corridors of Desolation, Saturnine Vastness, Weathered

There is nothing like a good dose of funeral doom to get you into Christmas cheer. A heavy dose of this misery-laden brand of metal is akin to taking a immense dose of sleeping pills. There is no better place to find funeral doom at its finest than Finland. The Finnish label, Firebox is the proverbial Santa Claus, carrying a bag full of poisonous presents, spreading holiday gloom across the land! With COLOSSEUM’s latest down trodden offering, “Chapter I: Delirium,” Firebox delivers a present guaranteed to increase your level of holiday-induced, emotional pain.

If you didn’t have information in front of you stating COLOSSEUM hails from Finland, one listen to their music will reveal their origin. The group has much in common with the keyboard atmospherics of Finnish representatives of this said style, i.e. SHAPE OF DESPAIR and SWALLOW THE SUN. Their keyboards are both beautiful and foreboding. The keys provide motion, setting a rhythm or filling a gap during a colossal break. “Aesthetics of the Grotesque” and “Delirium” begin on a light note, with a key/clean guitar tandem, instilling the music with a leery, ominous mood. These soft sections magnify the heaviness of the when the distorted guitar, bass and drums forcefully enter the mix.

It is easy to shine a spotlight on the keyboards because they are so up front and bring so much to the music, but every aspect of the music, including the vocals, mesh together in an elegant funeral march. March is apt description because the pace doesn’t move at a stand-still tempo like SKEPTICISM or WINTER. Their pace is slightly, and I use slightly in the truest sense, faster than those bands. Still, COLOSSEUM travels with the slow-footed swagger of a wounded beast. Every instrument rings out in concerted, deliberate measures, shrouding the listener in a thick fog of despair. The bass, drums, and guitar provide a huge backdrop for the rhythm, while the second guitar plays eerie melodies over the top of the thick sludge to construct layers, painting more details into their grotesque portrait. Juhani Palomäki’s vocals follow the tenets of doom, slowly drawing out every syllable, even using a single word to comprise a full line.

Lyrically, COLOSSEUM takes a first person point of view. Quite often, the lyrics touch upon eternal strife, but this strife comes in a supernatural or fantasy-based setting. For instance, COLOSSEUM looks to H.P. Lovecraft for inspiration for the Necronomicon visions in “The Gate of Adar.” “Aesthetics of the Grotesque” depicts a character tormented by demons (real or imaginary) that force his hand to murder. They expose more internal demons on the album’s swan song, “Delirium.” This track is perhaps the scariest of the album because, even though it's steeped in metaphor, the subject matter seems grounded in reality. It looks at the nightmare reality of being trapped in the corridors of your own mind, and falling prey to the throes of insanity.

COLOSSEUM is a band that looks to be in its infancy on paper, but is actually the result of years of doom metal toiling. The group rose from the ashes of YEARNING, a band that released five full-length albums before transforming into COLOSSEUM. The experience shows for COLOSSEUM has excelled in creating an album that should find appeal amongst fans of this under appreciated and under rated form of extreme metal.

note: 7.5/10

Tracklist

1. The Gate of Adar
2. Corridors of Desolation
3. Weathered
4. Saturnine Vastness
5. Aesthetics of the Grotesque
6. Delirium
Total Playing Time: 64:52

Line-up

Juhani Palomäki – Vocals / Guitar
Olli Haaranen – Guitar
Janne Rämö – Bass
Sameli Köykkä – Drums