Kätyrlauma (Google's translation is A Herd Of Minion... I'm
not sure it's correct but it looks like a very Finnish word anyway) is a
quartet from Turku, Finland, which has been around since 2018 or something
like that. These ladies and gentlemen play some very straight forward
hardcore punk with female front vocals which has the unusual, and
distinctive, feature of being deeply inspired by the history and mythology
of Finland.
Their video-clips, the way the singer is dressed on stage, the group
pictures etc... the whole band aesthetic is more reminiscent of
Nordic-mythology-obsessed gothic and metal bands than of furious hardcore
punk bands so that's quite original (and why not after all).
I couldn't find much about the musical backgrounds of the four Finns
except for Teemu (guitar) who sings in
Västiä.
Released in 2019 on Blast Of Silence Records, Kätyrlauma self-titled 8-track EP is full of that Finnish folklore I'm was mentioning before (it's pretty obvious even for a guy like me who don't know much Finland, its folklore and its language). Indeed God Google's telling me that some of the songs' titles are Noitanainen (Witchcraft), Metsän Kutsu (The Call Of The Forest) and Maailman synty-trilogia: 1. Maan sukellus / 2. Polvella muninta / 3. Taivaan taonta (The Birth of the World trilogy: 1. Earth Dive / 2. Knee Laying / 3. Heaven Forging) and all that kind of stuff... And yes I agree that's a very long song name.
Eight songs (for a total of almost 11 minutes) on a 7", that's a pretty good
score. The record kicks off with bells ringing
like a medieval alarm on a grey autumn morning, the enemy's on his
way, fighting is inevitable! And yes
Kätyrlauma throws us into battle without hesitation! Thanks to a
powerful,
but too "clean"
sound, clearly lacking of a "sonic identity" in my opinion,
and the furious vocals of Lotta-Lucia (who works as a
visual artist
when she's not screaming at the top of her lungs dressed like
a Pagan priestess), the songs exude an uninterrupted feeling
of overflowing rage that doesn't leave a second of rest
(that's the kind of folklore that will get grandpa up for
sure!).
Thinking of Finland and ripping hardcore bands it would easy
to draw comparisons with all the distinguished pioneers of the
furious Finnish sound but
Kätyrlauma's not there really. My brain leads me rather in the direction of
other bands with powerful sound and female vocals like
C.H.E.W
or
Torso
even though these two bands got a stronger and more obvious hardcore
twist.
In this early 2022 the band is back with Aboa Furvus (Aboa is the old latin name of the city of Turku and Furvus is a latin word meaning dark/gloomy so, and based on the cover artwork and the songs' titles, I guess it refers to the 1827 "Great Fire of Turku" which is still up-to-now the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries), a new 7" released, once again, on Blast Of Silence Records (and Hyiset Lewyt, which seems to be the band's label).
Opening once again with the ominous sound of the bell,
this new EP picks up right where the previous one left off and
Kätyrlauma's lost none of their furious energy! I would even say that
the band has gained in intensity thanks to a slightly less "clean"
sound. These guys play very fast and very tight hardcore punk, showing
no mercy for the listeners' poor ears throughout the seven tracks of
Aboa Furvus...
no slowing down and no tea-break here, you'll have to hold on
till the end! And as much as I enjoy speed and rage in punk I also
appreciate when bands manage to leave "resting spaces" along the way, and I
feel that
Kätyrlauma's music would have been easier to enjoy in the long run with
a few "breaks" here and there.
Confirming its penchant for a dark, and almost "gothic", aesthetic, the band continues to explore Finnish myths, folklore and
historical events (from a time when present-day Finland did not yet
exist) in a way that, literally, sounds particularly
hard-hitting and brutal for someone like me who doesn't grasp
anything about the language. This time they also deliver a few music videos whose atmosphere alternates between cheap (and quite funny
to be honest) winter scenes of boredom and gloomy evocations of the
aforementioned dark folklore the band is particularly fond of.
The good point is that, based on what I see the below video, they
don't seem to take it too seriously either...
As expected, the female vocals remain the most remarkable component of Kätyrlauma's hardcore punk, alternating between shrieking banshee-like screams and hateful guttural roars, the vocalist gives off an absolutely tremendous energy... her very high-pitched tone will surely tire some in the long run (I personally like it) and it's really appreciated when she's joined by a second voice, male this time, which revives the whole thing a bit once in a while.
So Kätyrlauma is the kind of band that, without any doubt, exudes something very unique (the atmosphere, the songs' topics, the vocals etc...) and manages to play a very high-energy kind of straight forward hardcore punk reminiscent of some of the biggest names in the genre, however I feel that the records would have gained of two things: a "more punk", dirtier kind of sound and, most of all, of slightly different song structures at times, more ventilated, more " free-flowing ", in order to be able to walk our ears more easily through the spectrum of its hardcore punk.
N,J'Oi!
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