Tenhi - Maaäet

*=Staff's pick	Varpuspäivä* Kuoppa Kuulut Kesiin* Salain Vilmeiseen Vähäinen Violetissa Sarastuskäivijä* Maa Syttyy Tuulenkato Aatos Uuvu Oraven Luu Rannalta Haettu*

Genre	Folk/Prog. Metal	Ilmari Issakainen	Vocals
Tracks	12	Ilkka Salminen	Guitar
Runningtime	60 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Prophecy Productions	Ilmari Issakainen	Bass
Release	10 Feb. 2006	Ilmari Issakainen	Drums
Country	Finland	Tyko Saarikko	Keyboards
		E. Lundell/V. Partanen	Violin/Flute
Similar artists	---

Feeling cheerful? Well, here is the cure for that, Maaäet from Finnish band Tenhi is oozing with gloom and melancholia and is filled with music that comes with a rather depressive touch. Maaäet is the third album from Tenhi that plays folk-influenced progressive music, according to themselves.

Their music is very calm and also has a very dark ambient feeling with the acoustic instruments, although there lays a heavy sense of darkness over the music, yet there is beauty with the melody-lines. The first track Varpuspäivä is a really beautiful track with its calm ongoing tempo and the melancholy that is brought forward with piano and violin, until the vocals start. The male dark vocals kind of remind me of Nick Cave and unfortunately it tears down the beauty that they built up with the music.

There is a power in their music, and even though it is rather calm and slow there is a force held in their highly folk inspired music. And when the piano and violin are put as much in the front of the sound as they are it brings out a might in the melancholia. The biggest problem for me with Maaäet from Tenhi is not that the music is far from what I usually listen to, since there is lots of dark beauty here that actually fell to my likening, but it is the vocals that is dragging this far down, and mostly due to the language. Finnish is a hard and kill me if you like - an ugly - language. The contrast between the softness in the music and the harsh language does not interact very well.

Nevertheless this turns to be an interesting album rather than a good one according to me, and if this album had been done with English lyrics and a female vocalist, say someone like Liv Kristine from Leave's Eyes, I believe that this would have been much better.