Review: Antipope “Denial/Survival” [Antipope/TCM Entertainment]

When I hear or read the name of Oulu I have only one connotation: IMPALED NAZARENE. This is quite big city with population of over 200.000 people and this is as clear as a day that there also another bands exist. And well, ANTIPOPE is very far from what mentioned above legend plays. To be honest their creativity has nothing to do with any kind of Black Metal. Guys call their music Progressive/Industrial/Gothic Metal. I know, I’m old-school orthodox, but this complicated term said nothing to me before I heard the album. After that I can’t agree with this, unfortunately – especially that I could never hear huge difference between Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal. Anyway, I even more can’t see any signs of Industrial here.

Denial/Survival is the fifth full-length of Finnish and contains ten compositions. Music is rather calm, but in the same time powerful as well. There’s also a dark climate characteristic for some kind of Doom, actually from time to time it connotes to me with one really legendary English band. Some touches of old-school Gothic are here, too. Melody plays important role in creativity of Oulu’s residents, but this absolutely isn’t any sweet shit and you can recognize that guys grew up and still are influenced by Metal, first of all. This is created with guitars and even more so with Mikko’s vocals. He sings clearly, which in my opinion even shouldn’t be written, because it’s a obviousness in such music. However, especially guitar riffs say to us about roots of this music. As I said, they’re not fast at all, broken or something. But energetic and even with some kind of aggression. During the listening to this stuff you’ll surely don’t be bored in any moment: Mikko, Antti and Tuska play variable, with huge imagination.

For sure this is nothing for people who appreciate and love only brutality, speed and stuff like that in music. Anyhow, even someone with my background will like this. I dare to say this because this album touched me. I’ll surely listen to this in the future, of course when the mood will be right, a little melancholic, thoughtful and so on.