"Since feeling is first..."

Who pays any attention to music of the utmost atmospheric kind, should know Kauan. This band has proven itself to be nothing if not masters of mood. Their last album had very little in the way of metal heaviness, but was all the heavier for its many layers and emotional delivery. A similar evolution to Anathema, though Kauan stayed closer to the band's roots in terms of song progression.

They're releasing a new album on 9 April, titled Ice Fleet: "It comprises a 43-minute long opus dedicated to the terrific story from the 1930's northern shore of the USSR where a flotilla of frozen ships were suddenly found by geologists. The story is based on real letters, articles and events. The album is separated into seven narrative chapters carefully described with an included libretto. Together with the album, we wrote a 40-page tabletop RPG adventure to interact with the story. It will be available in print together with limited LP and CD versions of the album."

One of those 'chapters', Raivo, is available for streaming on Bandcamp now: https://kauan.bandcamp.com/album/ice-fleet


Sounds like they're returning to an atmospheric doom metal style, with rough vocals even. There's an aggressive part halfway through the song that evokes a black metal feeling. It's the only verse of the song too, which is for the most part instrumental and astonishingly beautiful. I'm always amazed by Kauan's ability to create these rich musical textures, adding different elements like keys and electronics but never too much, everything in balance. I'm looking forward to hearing more of this!

Brilliant news, everything they do is good, great to have more to look forwards to. Thanks for sharing !

Sorni Nai and Kuu are immensely influential towards my own music. Extreme hype. Could make AOTY material

So excited for this. I posted the new single in the "most anticipated albums of 2021" thread the second I heard it. Amazing song. Perhaps more than any active band, these guys truly understand how to create captivating, atmospheric music of the highest quality.

Yes, this reminds me heavily of "Sorni Nai", which is an amazing album. I'm ready.

Very excited for this, Kauan are masters at their craft

for those interested, the song titles translate as:
1. premonition/omen
2. battle
3. exile
4. call (to come over) / invitation
5. rage
6. grip (as in having a hold of something)
7. grave/tomb

One of my most cherished bands. Can't wait!

What an amazing track, hyped for the album. For some reason I missed their last albums, got some catching up to do, thanks for reminding me of them!

You need to get on Sorni Nai immediately. Best album of 2015 by a wide margin.

As a native speaker, how good would you say their Finnish is?

just looking at the lyrics of a few tracks on sorni nai, it looks to me like a native finn wrote them - the pronunciation also sounds totally native. i'm guessing one or more of the members lived a significant portion of their lives in finland, had finnish parent(s), or both

What I understand is that for Kuu.., Pirut and Sorni nai, Anton Belov wrote Russian lyrics and got reworked translations from a native speaker, Juha Kuusela. He speaks about it in this interview from 2011:



So we can agree that he's put a lot of practice in! It's really interesting that a teenager from Russia hears Finnish metal and thinks "that's a nice language, I'm going to learn it". I agree with him, by the way. Finnish is beautiful!

Oh and the lyrics for Kaiho were written by Finnish poet Marja Mattlar.

My birth mother was from Rovaniemi, I wish I could speak fluent Finnish again.

Thanks a lot guys, so looks like it's safe to me (as a person who studies Finnish) to listen to them =)

I'd hate to be "that guy" but I did not enjoy Sorni Nai as much as Kauan's other outputs.

I discovered the band by a complete accident just before they released Kuu. I've spent many many weeks, months even, sleeping to Aava Tuulen Maa and Kuu in a playlist (back then not really enjoying the soundscape of their first two outputs, as good as those albums were) - and not knowing any Finnish really, enjoyed daydreaming and creative inspiration coming from those unknown lyrics in a wide variety of scenes I've built up in my mind, unraveling story after story of my own to the same music - and then came Pirut. Pirut was absolutely fucking amazing! Soul-crushingly gloomy, melancholic, painfully beautiful and dark at the same time, I've slept to that album as well feeling dread and having sweet nightmares about helplessness, loneliness and hopelessness, something that went well with lots of waves of depression I've been experiencing at that time in my life.

This is how I enjoy Kauan.
Not to undermine the lyrical prowess of Belov, but the fact that a Russian band sings in Finnish feels special to me, and serves as an invitation to just acknowledge the lyrics but pay them no mind (most of the time), instead imagining my own stories and searching my own mind for different meanings in music that relate to me, my life, or something I wish my life to be.

But then came announcements and snippets for Sorni Nai, and I made the mistake of reading and listening to a lot, if not all of the news Belov shared with fans on Facebook at that time. Coming into Sorni Nai fully aware of the lyrical concept destroyed the album for me, as I now could not possibly ignore the heartbreaking story that went along with the music - it was so specific, so detailed that it did not breathe any inspiration into me to do the same thing I've always done listening to their music - and speaking of the music of Sorni Nai, somehow, especially after Pirut, some of the stylistic choices of Sorni Nai did not sit well with me at all. It is still a good album, don't get me wrong, but if I'm sleeping to Kauan at night, Sorni Nai is being excluded, along with the first two albums, from that playlist.

Full discography is only warranted when I'm specifially in the mood to pay attention to the lyrics and sing along here and there.

For Kaiho I intentionally avoided any and all music samples, and very carefully observed the band's website and Bandcamp page. Kaiho was as sweet and enjoyable as Aava Tuulen Maa, and although I've given in and am listening to this single from the upcoming album, this time I'm making sure not to repeat the same mistake as with Sorni Nai. Although the album is due in a month, so I think I'll be fine. It sounds amazing so far, like a blend of Aava and Pirut, which is really impressive as usual.

Pre-ordered my CD today. I've been a fan since their second album and have mighty high hopes for this one; they're yet to disappoint!

Here's a full album stream via Metal Injection.

https://metalinjection.net/av/full-album-stream/stream-of-kauans-epic-mix-of-post-rock-and-doom-metal-ice-fleet

It's so beautiful, I'm moved to tears.

Hoping for a cd-only deal as I have no interest in the tabletop game.

1 min into this album, and it's already just mesmerizing. Absolutely gorgeous guitar melody going on, and the soundscape underneath is just brilliant.

I think they got the mix between doom and post-rock/metal absolutely spot on. There are some absolutely lush sounding melodies on here.