Crimson Sun Are Kinda Great
You Should Consider Listening to Them!
It’s 9 a.m. on my birthday. Yesterday, I finished writing a manuscript for a fantasy novella that I’ve been casually working on for 17 years. I should be promoting it, or if not, I should at the very least be taking it easy because it’s my birthday. However, rather than doing either of those things, I’m sitting here thinking about the Crimson Sun album release show that I was at last night. If you haven’t heard of them, for shame! They’re a modern melodic metal band from Finland who have been around since 2015 or so and they just recently released a great new album, “Sorrowbreaker,” on September 20th.
Stay tuned for the live report from the album release show on October 7th, 2024, and you can check out their keyboardist, Miikka Hujanen, on Gathering of Geeks too!
If you follow along with anything I write, you might know that I’m pretty tired of the metal music scene these days. I know that it’s a bit ungracious of me, but I’m one of those people who feels like metal is oversaturated with a lot of copycats and genres are getting watered down by perfectly good bands that don’t really offer anything innovative that hasn’t been heard before. Yes, I’m one of those awful whiners who thinks metal was better back in the day.
Also, I really hate to be critical of women in metal because there should always be more women everywhere, but I find that 95% of symphonic metal bands fronted by women (with the exception of a few of the originals like Nightwish and Within Temptation) fall completely flat for me, because all of them feel like wish.com knock-offs of the aforementioned classics. All of these bands (many of whom probably sent their singer off on tour with Kamelot at some point, thus kicking off their fame), like Temperance, Ad Infinitum, Beyond the Black, Rave the Requiem, Eleine, Edge of Paradise, Arctis, Dark Sarah, and so on… they all sound the same to me and I just can’t find the hook. They’re perfectly good—I’m not saying that they aren’t and I’m definitely not judging you at all if you like them (all art is subjective, after all)—but they’re still a symptom of genericization and mainstreamification of metal. It’s a natural, inevitable thing, but it’s still a bummer.
The other problem I have with these bands (usually the symphonic ones, but not always) is that, sadly, a lot of the time, all they’re really offering is programmed backing symphonics and a woman whose primary role is to be sexy enough to get followers. For example, I’ve literally seen Amaranthe concerts where the band spent the whole show talking about how hot Elize Ryd is, all the while playing off-beat and out of tune, with no word of exaggeration. It bums me out to feel like women in metal are, still, not a whole lot more than stage decorations. Where are the female guitarists, drummers, and bass players? Where are the Marianne Heikkinens and Merel Bechtolds hiding away? Where are the Sara Strömmers? Ladies, we can play instruments and growl too!
This is where Crimson Sun comes in. I’ve been following these guys from very close to their inception and after three albums, they have yet to disappoint me. I’m not sure when exactly I saw them the first time, but I remember catching them at Tuska 2016 and a very weird, very terrible festival called KorsoRock in 2015 or 2016. I was always impressed by their energy and the way that their vocalist, Sini Seppälä, doesn’t seem like she’s just there to be a babe (even though she is a babe, let’s be honest). She gives off a similar vibe to Tarja Turunen, back in the day. Tarja wasn’t up there trying to be pretty and feminine, even though she has always been both of those things. Tarja was up there being a badass in heels. This is the same feeling I get from watching Sini. Even better, though? If you listen through their albums, you can tell that she’s worked her ass off on her voice over this past decade. She’s not here just to be eye candy and suck, she’s here to kick ass and chew gum, and she’s all out of gum!
All of that, of course, is before we consider the music, too. When I was writing the “Sorrowbreaker” review, I was pretty thrown off because I couldn’t think of another band to compare them to. The best I could come up with was “if Roxette was more metal” for one song (“Neon Lights”) and even that doesn’t give a very clear aural image of the single. The keyboards—which are often just used to add some generic symphonic elements—are lively and interesting, adding a lot of little nuances that help give the songs texture and personality. They don’t stick to basic disco/pop rhythms unless it’s genuinely the best beat for a song, and Joni Junnila has always been a pretty stylish guitarist.
I brought two friends along to the show last night and they were both immediately sold on the band. I bought one of them a ticket because I really wanted her to get to experience them live, because I think she’ll really get into the lyrics if she ever gets a chance to read them. While doom and gloom and melancholy will always be popular in Finland, I have to appreciate bands who steer into the positive and remind us that it doesn't have to be like that. Life can also be fun and whimsical and hopeful, too, if we want it to be.
One more thing that’s also really cool about Crimson Sun is that they all contribute to the music. Perhaps that explains the variety and diversity of their sound. Bands like Nightwish or Delain, who have a main composer, tend to develop a sound that’s formed by one person’s vision and remains fairly consistent over time. That’s not a bad thing, by any means, but in this day of extreme oversaturation, it becomes harder and harder for a single voice to be exciting. I remember, during the interview for “Fates” before the pandemic, that I was asking them who wrote the lyrics for which song, and it had been a completely mixed bag. I’m guessing that “Sorrowbreaker” was the same, because “Sailing Home” was written by Miikka and his wife, Lady Enslain (aka my merch mama), and due to some unavoidable circumstances, she wrote the lyrics for “Retrospectator” (love that wordplay still, by the way) all by her onesy. There might be another song or two that she contributed to as well, but I’ve forgotten which ones. I can only assume, then, that the rest of the band contributed other lyrics and concepts. This means that there are all sorts of experiences and perspectives adding to the sauce, but they aren’t over-spicing the soup. It’s balanced, tasteful, and well-executed.
So, I really, really hope that more people give Crimson Sun a shot. Alongside the kickass tunes, they’re really lovely people and I feel like they deserve a lot more notice than they generally get, especially considering how fresh they sound in an oversaturated scene. And, now that I’ve gotten this out of my system, I’m going to blast “Neon Lights” about forty times and continue with my birthday. Check out “Sorrowbreaker”—it’s one of the best new releases from this year!
