It's tempting to think that 1980 is when the shit really hit the fan, for at least three obvious reasons: 1) The birth of this reviewer, 2) the release of the first SARCOFAGUS album "Cycle of Life" and 3) the release of the second SARCOFAGUS album "Envoy of Death" all during the same year! Anyone who heard those albums knows that the band didn't just think of a couple of cool title tracks and indulge in filler for the rest. Instead, the albums together work out existential aspects of life and death (such an easily manageable and humble concept) into a narration that aims to teach us to take responsibility for our decisions and stay true to our hearts. Whoa. We are getting at what was truly great about this band: they weren't afraid to cross borders and go for what is dramatic, exciting and worth our time still 30 years later.

The albums didn't hit the charts, but created enough media interest for a few prominent TV appearances and ultimately brought heavy metal in all its mysticism and dark power to Finnish ground. The third album "Moottorilinnut/Motorbirds" engaged popular Finnish musicians into Kuusniemi's abyss of melodic, multidimensional heavy metal but legal screwups forced them to release it as KIMMO KUUSNIEMI BAND. Consecutively, the hyperactive main man moved on to TV and music video business, from where he has emerged again in the recent years to stage sporadic SARCOFAGUS comebacks and continue supporting the phenomenon he was elemental in creating: Finnish heavy metal.

THE BAND: Kimmo Kuusniemi (guitars, voices), Jukka Homi (vocals), Juha Kiminki (bass), Ari-Pekka Roitto (drums) with special guests Esa Kotilainen (keyboards) and Ronnie Österberg (drums in "Black Contract").

THE GUITARS: The self-taught ADHD-riddled, flamethrowing guitarist shows us here he's not only big talk and big ideas. All tracks are built upon sequences of riffs heavy as hell, which will be impossible to get out of your head with anything less than a drilling operation after a couple of listens. Unlike several unnamed Finnish guitarists of later generation, Kuusniemi does not smother energy and mood with neo-virtuoso runs of scales back and forth, but when the time comes to unleash a solo, it's an electric spasm of metal rage, desperation and joy of freedom in expression. It would only take this album to lift him to the hall of fame of unique guitar players, but he did a couple of others as well.

THE VOCALS: The album hosts the debut of Jukka Homi, better known as Jay C. Blade of Finnish speed metal maniac collective OZ. It's only honest to say that his hard rock vocals aren't the strongest yet, with barely enough force to convincingly take us through the horrid stories of choices, death and judgment. Yet, as with a great deal of older metal, the occasional confusion and lack of development bestows innocence and authentic rawness, giving more of the feeling that it's one of the characters described in the story, a more or less normal person like us, instead of a faceless perfect studio musician voice.

THE PRODUCTION: Esa Kotilainen and Kimmo Kuusniemi have harnessed all the power of the 1980 Finnish studio, creating a dimensional ambience where the guitar grooves heavily, keyboards glisten in the backdrops and the evil conjurations of "Black Contract" that would confuse the hell out of any modern day cookie cutter producer are dynamically handled in the mix so that I can't help but jump at the disembodied knockings and alien voices no matter how many times before I've heard them. Overall it's a job somewhere between the professional clarity of hard rock and the muddier but more atmospheric sounds of occult NWOBHM.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO JELLO BIAFRA?: The timing of DEAD KENNEDYS and SARCOFAGUS careers make a good match. Both bands were formed 1977-78 and their debut albums along with their most groundbreaking overall work coincide to 1980. Both released their third albums in 1982 as well, after which both Kimmo Kuusniemi and Jello Biafra became media figures and spokespersons on a wider scale than the influence of their actual albums, in representation of the ideals they believed in.

SOME KEY TRACKS:

"The Deadly Game" - The tale of the premature burial of a businessman is driven by some of the most mind-bending, yet rocking riffs of the entire LP. Try not to bounce along to the rhythm. A video of the band performing this song on Finnish TV is online somewhere. The guitar squeals emitted at the end of the choruses are little gems of beauty and the solo at the end is the crown of all.

"Wheels of Destruction" - A dark ballad adorned by sparkling leads including a noisy improvisation at the end and the most emotionally charged vocals of the album. The complex arrangement includes symphonic keyboards so subtly mixed it will take a bit of time to notice they even exist. This mini-symphony would neither be out of place on a 70's progressive hard rock album or an 80's progressive power metal epos.

"Insane Rebels" - Another catchy hard rocker with a surprisingly brutal storyline again, which might be based on real events as the liner notes dedicate it to some guy. I might be starting to repeat myself but listen to the goddamn guitars again, as basically every line sung by the vocalist is followed by a mini solo which is not a random run through notes but something that responds to the mood of what was being narrated.

"Black Contract" - The magnum opus of SARCOFAGUS remains such a threatening and so-totally-out-there architectural monument, it gives any avant-garde metal band today a run for its money. SABBATH-ian torment and heavily distorted vocals open the piece and lead us to "the secret tides of my subconscious". About a third into the "Contract" the going gets really weird, with all kinds of pitch shifted voices, knockings and absolutely fucking scary guitars and keyboards gradually transmuting from regular metal album fare to a theatre of the macabre. An amusing fact is that the drums on the track were played by the prime Finnish prog drummer Ronnie Österberg of WIGWAM and he died after the recordings under mysterious circumstances. In addition, it was rumored that some of the crew fled the studio during the recording of the track because they feared for their sanity. If you can tolerate the synthetic gurgles, futuristic noises and abrupt events far enough to get to the absurd dialogue between "God" and "Devil" at the end of the track, you won't blame them.

AND IN CLOSING: I would say that for 80's metal lovers there are plenty of cult classics from Finland deserving of attention such as OZ's "Fire in the Brain", RIFF RAFF's "Give the Dead Man Some Water" and TAROT's "Wings of Darkness", but none of them are so absolutely groundbreaking and essential as "Envoy of Death". The LP was hard to find for decades, obviously because of a lack of commercial potential, but a couple of years ago the weirdest thing happened. SARCOFAGUS and KIMMO KUUSNIEMI BAND reissue CD's started peeking at you from the depths of cheap Finnish schlager, polka and pop music bargain bins in grocery stores and gas stations because the rights to the albums had traveled from the extinct JP-Musiikki Oy to Poptori, whose catalogue mostly interests our rural grandparents. Going out to get a carton of milk and returning with the SARCOFAGUS discography, it wasn't hard to believe that their "black contract" had somehow worked and in appropriately mysterious and unfathomable ways!

SARCOFAGUS (www.sarcofagus.com) is alive and well as of this writing and Kimmo Kuusniemi (www.kimmokuusniemi.com) is hyperactive with all kinds of media projects such as the recently released feature length documentary about Finnish metal, "Promised Land of Heavy Metal" (www.promisedlandofmetal.com), and anyone who wants to make a flamethrower guitar should look up his stuff on Youtube.

- Devamitra

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