CoC : Valse Triste - Turha Ruokkia Ruumiita : Review

Valse Triste - _Turha Ruokkia Ruumiita_
(Solardisk, 1999)
by: Pedro Azevedo (5 out of 10)

Looking at the album cover and seeing a band name such as Valse Triste, I expected to find some sort of doom metal here. However, _Turha Ruokkia Ruumiita_ turned out to be Scandinavian (more specifically Finnish) punk/crust containing 21 tracks that last for a total of 28 minutes, so I was just -slightly- misled by the album's appearance. Not being familiar with this specific genre (nor with any kind of punk in general, for that matter), I still enjoyed some of the material here, which is a good sign, but quality varied very significantly from track to track -- and that spans from the musical quality itself to production. The Finnish language doesn't seem to work too well here, at least compared to the Norwegian I'm used to from black metal, though most of the vocal delivery doesn't help much. Despite some good passages, the music didn't do much for me, even though I was willing to give the album a fair chance, regardless of the fact that it belonged to a different genre than those I choose for my everyday listening pleasure -- as long as it contained some well crafted sonic violence. However, being used to more captivating and also more extreme music as far as aggression is concerned (in which that aggression is also far more focused and much better applied to the music itself), the rest of the elements here are all far from able to stand out by themselves. Fans of the genre may be interested, considering some of the material here, but this doesn't have much to offer to anyone seriously into extreme metal except a different attitude towards music, which _Turha Ruokkia Ruumiita_ didn't help me personally feel more attracted towards than I was before.

Contact: Solardisk, Box 50, 90251 Oulu, Finland

(article published 12/8/1999)