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AITTALA "Machines"
AITTALA "Machines"
By Dr. Abner Mality
What an oddball release this is. A mixture of inspirational heavy music with a jarring misuse of track placement, the music on "Machines" (nice "Metropolis" cover image, by the way) was actually written between 1990 and 1997...an eternity ago in the musical world. Band leader Eric Aittala found it necessary to re-record these almost more than 30 year old tracks and release it in the form of "Machines".
The amazing thing is, the music here is not dated at all and I could easily believe this had all been written during the Covid lockdown. AITTALA is labelled as "eclectic doom" but I think a better tag for them would be "emotional heavy metal". The title track bursts forth with a sharp pace and an excellent mixture of riffing and melodic lead work. Then the song simmers down into something mostly acoustic, where Eric's powerful clean vocals are heard. The track returns to heaviness for a rousing conclusion. and I'm left impressed with AITTALA. Yet this whole track is reprised later on in the most awkward way, which I'll cover in a minute.
"Myself Deceived" slows the pace and yet I wouldn't call the cut true doom metal. I think where the doom tag comes in is the sad and melancholy atmosphere on every track. It's rare you hear any real emotion except hate and aggression in metal, but AITTALA know how to transmit it. "Misery" features some of the best integration of piano into a heavy song I have heard...this is on the level of MY DYING BRIDE, if not superior. There's a line here that say "making love to you makes me feel like a necrophiliac", which is pretty disturbing, and the rest of the track follows the theme of an emotionally dead relationship. "To Know The Man" is a compact piece of sad, emotional metal, where Eric sings "To know the pain/Is to Know the Man", which is rather haunting.
What we have had up to this point is a great mini-album of uniquely dark heavy metal. The AITTALA does something that really makes me scratch my head. The "Machines" song is pretty much repeated with very minor differences, but broke up into two songs, a "Prologue" and an "Epilogue". Why? The only answer I have is that they wanted to stretch an EP to LP length. To charge more for it? It seems a pretty cheap trick to me and it really throws a wrench into my enjoyment of the album.
If that needless repetition doesn't blunt your interest in "Machines", then by all means pick this "album" up.
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