Noumena - Absence (2005)

I'm not going to lie to you. Absence sounds like someone rounded up all the good, chunky, heavy riffs from Amorphis' masterpiece Elegy and just ran with it. Not something I could take issue with! This album also simultaneously destroys the previous Noumena album Pride-Fall and manages to deliver one of the greatest melodic Finnish death metal experienced I've had in the 21st century.

A lot of this praise can be heaped squarely on the shoulders of the opening track "The End of the Century", which features some of the most glorious riffs I have ever heard for this genre. Combined with the crushing production and perfectly delivered growls, it's a monster. Numerous A+++ melodies flow in succession while the band belts out a simple four-chord style rocker. When I first heard this tune my jaw dropped because it was everything I loved about an Elegy or Amok captured beautifully by this young band. Even the bridge riff breakdown and simple lead are perfection.

Does the rest of the album hold true? Well, yes and no. It all adheres to the same outstanding production values and bludgeoning vocals, but none of the tracks are quite as catchy as the opener. Then again, very few things in this plane of existence could hope to match that, much less surpass it. "Everlasting Ward" (in keeping with my Elegy comparisons) is a catchy folkish track which picks up pace and features some good clean vocals. "The First Drop" is a moody fist pumper. "Slain Memories" does the melodic folk/death thing once more, quite succesfully, with some tasteful female folkills. "A Day to Depart" is close in style to "The End of the Century" but with the added joy of a well-timed HEY! during its chorus. "Prey of the Tempter" is also fantastic, with more good use of the clean vocals and superb guitar melodies. "Here We Lie" is another beautifully melodic track that will at least have you slapping your desk and banging your head out. Ditto with "All Failed", while "The Dream and the Escape" has some nice acoustic intro licks akin to those you'd find on The Jester Race. The album ends with "The Great Anonymous Doom", glorious and much like it started, though the female folkills here did little for me.

Absence is just hands down one of the best Finnish melodic death metal albums I've heard so far in the 21st century. It has the perfect sound standards that should impress almost anyone listening to it, and the riffs are hard to match. The quality is so high that the band's follow-up Anatomy of Life (while not necessarily bad) was a major disappointment. This album is so good that it puts to shame much of the noodlier, faster Finnish bands with all their keyboards and shred intentions. A powerful, emotive statement in the finest tradition of Sentenced and Amorphis, I'm hoping lightning can strike twice for this band because Absence was criminally overlooked by a vast percentage of metal fandom that would actually love it to pieces.

Verdict: Epic Win [8.5/10] (No one will ever leave)

http://www.noumena.info/