Amorphis Under The Red Cloud

Founded in 1990 in Helsinki, Finland-based melancholic metal masters AMORPHIS wrote music history, incl. classic albums like f.e. their debut »The Karelian Isthmus« (1992), their breakthrough »Tales From The Thousand Lakes« (1994) and »Eclipse« (2006), their first album with the new vocalist Tomi Joutsen, which marked the beginning of a new era in the band‘s history. Regardless of their relentless touring schedule, they secretly returned to the studio to write and record their forthcoming, twelfth record with famous producer Jens Bogren (SOILWORK, KREATOR etc.) at his Fascination Street Studio in Örebro. The result of this two-month recording session is once again a heavy, melodic statement, called »Under The Red Cloud«. During the recordings, the sextet was joined by some famous guest musicians: Chrigel Glanzmann (ELUVEITIE) played flutes on 'The Four Wise Ones', 'Death Of A King' and 'Tree Of Ages', Martin Lopez (ex-OPETH drummer) played percussions on 'Death Of A King' and Aleah Stanbridge (TREES OF ETERNITY) sang guest vocals on 'The Four Wise Ones', 'Sacrifice' and 'White Night'. “It was a great honor to have such talented musicians appearing on »Under The Red Cloud«,“ guitar player and founding member Esa Holopainen comments. “Each one of them puts his/her personality and character in the very right spot.“ The whole recording process was a time full of extremely intense work for AMORPHIS. “It was the first time, that I woke up at 08.00am to start recordings. They went on until 06.00pm in the evening - every day! But the result was definitely worth it,“ the guitarist continues. “It was a great experience and Jens made us playing more aggressive and working really hard“, drummer Jan Rechberger adds. Jens Bogren also handled the mixing and mastering of »Under The Red Cloud«. A perfect example for the variety and feel is the first single 'Death Of A King'.It starts with an oriental melody & crashing drums, and has a lot of dynamics. The follow-up 'Sacrifice' is more upbeat and relies more on the soaring lead melody, like the opener 'Under The Red Cloud', which starts with a tension-creating piano intro. The title track flows over into the double bass-dominated and one of the most aggressive songs on the album - 'The Four Wise Ones'. Finally, the closing track 'White Night' marks a kind of summary of the album, because it contains some trademarks of other songs like an oriental feeling or driving double bass drumming at the end. So it’s a worthy last chapter of the story, AMORPHIS are telling us this time.