Sarcofagus

SARCOFAGUS

Anthology 1979-1982 (2009)

FinnArctic-esittely:

Here's a historical record: the first Finnish heavy rock album!

The main protagonist in Sarcofagus was Kimmo Kuusniemi, guitarist and songwriter. He formed the band sometime around 1977, but the band only really got it going after a couple of years when Kuusniemi managed to find a permanent bassist (Juha Kiminki) and drummer (Ari-Pekka Roitto). The original vocalist was Hannu Leiden. Kuusniemi had played bass and guitar for seven years, primarily influenced by Led Zeppelin's second album, and went through several different styles of heavy rock before finding his own style.

He has always been a dedicated spokesman for heavy metal, working as chairman for the Finnish Heavy Metal Association.

Sarcofagus debuted with the now extremely rare single "Go to Hell / All Those Lies", surprisingly released on the JP Musiikki label, whose output mainly consisted of light schlager and dance band music. Sarcofagus offered their self-financed single to various record companies, but they all doubted that it would sell. Someone told that JP Musiikki might be interested, so there it was.

The debut album "Cycle of Life" was released in early 1980, a concept album about a man knowing about his previous incarnation as the Egyptian god Horus. This consciousness starts to invade the man's mind, he gets mad, is put to an asylum, escapes and commits suicide. He becomes an astral spirit, but a cycle of reincarnations begins.

The company had enough faith in the band to market their records prominently in papers without booting them out because of poor sales. The second album "Envoy of Death" (1981) didn't sell very well either. It took years before Sarcofagus' albums found a wide audience.

Kuusniemi started a new band, Kimmo Kuusniemi Band, and made the album "Moottorilinnut" in 1982. With vocals by Kirka and Muska Babitzin and Jukka Ritari plus an album-length video to help promote the album, somehow the results just didn't click commercially. There simply wasn't enough support and understanding for heavy bands in Finland at the time, neither for bands who wanted to break through internationally. Sarcofagus faced all the problems a pioneer band could face.

Kuusniemi has been constantly active in the music and video business, visit the website at http://www.sarcofagus.com/history.htm to find out more.


Here's the second album by Sarcofagus. This time the concept was about a belief ancient Egyptians had, that after death everyone will face a heavenly court that would weigh their souls and then decide whether the person was allowed to Heaven or doomed to Hell. Every song is about one person telling his life story to the court.

Vocalist Hannu Leiden was serving the army, so he was replaced with young and inexperienced Jukka Homi. Not a bad job that he did. Wigwam drummer Ronnie Österberg played on the last and most challenging track "Black Contract" - it was his last recording session before his untimely death.

Also, I found a couple of bonus tracks included on the Italian CD reissue of "Cycle of Life", i.e. the b-side of Sarcofagus' debut single, so I put them here.

I was impressed with this record, which is saying much, since I'm not a fan of this type of music.


Artikkeliskannaukset:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pLgGxoCifHl3lbPGHhDa42QkveyCYVca