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Today, Finnish black metallers Sielunvihollinen stream the entirety of their fifth album, Helvetinkone, out on 8 September via Hammer of Hate.
Formed in 2011, initially as a solo project, throughout four albums and a handful of splits, demos, and EPs, Sielunvihollinen is a standard-bearer of pure 'n' proud Finnish black metal. While neither shying away from the spotlight nor intentionally cultivating an air of mystery, Sielunvihollinen's catalogue over the past decade has come to speak of itself - thoughtful songwriting, impassioned performances, a totality of form meeting content - and with its development into a full band unlike so many other black metal "projects", it has also become a considerable force on the live front.
While it has no doubt been prolific in the number of EPs and splits they've released over the past decade-plus, Sielunvihollinen has fastidiously released a full-length every two years. Now, like clockwork, two years after the widely acclaimed Teloituskäsky comes their fifth album, Helvetinkone. Roughly translated into English as "Hell Machine", Sielunvihollinen's latest full-length is a hellish affair, but one not without the band's characteristically poignant melodicism. Carrying forward that deadly precision of its full-length predecessor, Helvetinkone cruises with a clarity of focus that heightens the heartstrings-pulling push of their anthemic songwriting. Indeed, the attack is squarely black metal - rough and rowdy at heart, "catchy" in the Finnish post-millennial tradition - but these eight anthems are ridiculously compact and contoured. And whereas the Teloituskäsky was Sielunvihollinen's cleanest-recorded work to date, it was a sea-change that only benefited the band's increasingly compact nature; with Helvetinkone, it makes perfect sense and lends a strangely sparkling character to their quintessential Finnish filth. Iron fists lined with velvet and poised to punch you in the fucking face!
Once again presenting authentic 90s classicism whilst trampling the graves of the present, Sielunvihollinen stands firm in the upper echelons of international black metal with Helvetinkone!
Sielunvihollinen - Helvetinkone... Link
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