Sydän, Sydän – Au (2006)

I never really planned to buy this album. I had only heard the Finnish band Sydän, Sydän's previous album Auto, and I quite liked some of the songs on that album. I found a double box set that included both of these albums online with a cheap price and decided to buy it even though I had never heard this album before. Turns out that Au was a very different album to Auto. This album has lots of heavy guitars and outright metal music in addition to strange experimental rock that I had accustomed to with the other album. At first I didn't like this album at all. It was a time in my life when I really didn't care about metal music at all, so I forgot this album into the shelf for years. Now that I returned to it, I think there are some merits to this album as well, although it's still not among my favourite albums.



Au has lots of short songs. There are 15 songs of which only two are longer than four minutes long. The style of the songs varies a lot. There are some outright heavy metal songs, some strange and hypnotic alternative rock songs where the rhythm is the most important part. There are also some space rock songs that sound a bit like Muse. Sydän, Sydän has a completely unique way of making music. Nothing sounds quite the same as them. Also, their lyrics are very strange and most of the time I can't find any sense in the lyrics. When the singer starts to growl, he sounds like the lead singer of a Finnish heavy metal band Stamina's lead singer. When he's stinging normally, his voice has a bit of nasal and it's quite laconic.

Most of the songs on this album have been named after animals. There are songs named after cat and mouse, shark, rooster, dog, rabbit, ant, Guinea-pig, cuckoo, fly and tiger. I don't know what's behind this, because the songs themselves don't necessarily sound like they would have anything to do with those animals.

If I would have to mention one song from this album, it would probably be Viha ei vaihdu koskaan. This song basically has all the different styles of the band in the same song. It has some heavy sounds with growling, some strange rhythmic and shamanic sequences, some slow and quiet sequences and even some rumba rhythms. These kinds of songs may be a bit chaotic, but of course, if you're into this band, you probably expect to hear strange sounds and weird compositions rather than wholesome and simple songs.

I don't really have that much of an emotional bond with this album so it's difficult to write about it. None of the songs on this album really stand out and there are no music videos. That's why this text is a bit short. I don't listen to the album that much, but I was glad to get a bit more out of it this time around than when I first bought it.

Listen to the album on Spotify.