REVIEWS

During his lifetime, Bob Ross was one of the modern world’s most beloved artists. He wasn’t necessarily a technical master of his craft, but he spent the majority of his life teaching us that you don’t need to be to create something beautiful. He introduced a generation of people to the joys of art, and despite a life of hardships, he kept his positive world view, earning him a spot in the hearts of millions. To this day, his legacy ensures through not only his own works, but through the works of the artists he inspired.

And these artists have taken his approach to artistic self-expression and applied it to more than just music. Finland’s Strunkiin is an atmospheric black metal band whose debut full-length, The Joy of Creation, was inspired directly by the teachings found in Ross’ series, The Joy of Painting.

One of Ross’ most famous lessons was that if there is to be light, there must also be the contrast of darkness. Strunkiin understand this lesson perfectly. On this album there are lush orchestral movements, twinkling keyboards and gentle acoustic interludes, but at its core it is a black metal album. And that means there’s plenty of frenzied tremolos, blastbeats and harsh soundscapes to navigate over the course of the album’s five eight+ minute long songs.

Despite the songs’ length, the album manages to keep things interesting with its varied songwriting. Each song takes its title from a Bob Ross piece and does its best to capture the feel of the painting it’s based on. “Island in the Wilderness” features roiling, tumulus riffs that move like waves in a lake, but also boasts idyllic, peaceful orchestrations that acts as a calm shore amidst the raging waters. “Blue Ridge Falls” starts off with a folky acoustic scale and sampled bird sounds, and you feel as though you’re walking through the beautiful landscape of the falls themselves.

Despite my obvious enjoyment of The Joy of Creation, I do have one issue with it, and it’s a difficult issue to cover. This is an instrumental album, as many atmospheric black metal albums are. But I feel that it would be a much stronger record with vocals. That said, I have to ask myself – would lyrics dampen the effect of the album? Some things are better left unsaid, and I think that lyrics would diminish the album’s effect. Perhaps the Ghost Bath method of vocals consisting entirely of wordless sounds would work?

BUT for what it is, The Joy of Creation is a very good album with a rock-solid concept. It touches on the works of Bob Ross in a way that is respectful and demonstrates a deep reverence for the man’s art and ideas. This album probably won’t end up on my year-end list, but with all the potential Strunkiin display here, it’s very likely that their extreme album will. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for anything this Finnish black metal upstart does next.

You can order The Joy of Creation from Strunkiin’s Bandcamp page.

Strunkiin
Slavery Redux
self-financed
2/5

TLDR: Crappy industrial death metal with horrible drum machine.

Review: Strunkiin was formed in 2014 as a two-man band playing sort of extreme metal. This Finnish duo is kind of industrial metal, partly because of their machine samples and partly because of their hideous drum machine, which in fact sounds like shit.

Slavery Redux is only one song, even if ten minutes long. The style is more or less fast-tempo death metal with some melodies and the fore-mentioned industrial vibes. The song ain’t totally bad, but even with some good ideas here and there, it’s mostly rubbish. Growling vocals are mediocre and are far from anything unique or original.

But the main problem is the production. The drum machine is way too lound and the sounds it uses are horrible. Just horrible shit. In addition, the guitars sound very weak and just like they are coming straight from computer, not like some good distortion pedal were used. The result is hideous shit, even on demo standards. Due to some better ideas on the songs, Slavery Redux is not total ultimate crap. For that sake only, two out of five instead of one out of five.

The Joy of Creation is an album by Finnish atmospheric / melodic black metal act Strunkiin. Almost forty-nine minutes long, the record has only five very extensive tracks: Island in the Wilderness, Northern Lights, Blue Ridge Falls, Crimson Tide and Wilderness Day. A very atmospheric work with exceedingly beautiful and captivating melodies, The Joy of Creation is a formidably lucid, sensational and virtuous work. With calm, serene and sober, but vigorous melodies, this album is an invitation to a permanent daydream of imponderable joy and satisfaction, that departs from a place that never gets short of happiness. A place where the ancient Celtic culture lives on forever, and its nobility drives the world in a spectacular journey of peaceful fraternity and infinite splendor, compromised to a mutual coalition of generous ascendancy, that never gets tired of discovering the inviolable secrecy of its everlasting affability.          

With beautiful and positively assertive harmonies that seems to ascend directly from the sensitivity of a splendorous creative heart – true to the veracity of its altruistic principles –, The Joy of Creation is an album that lives up to its title: the work is a vigorous, credible and genuine attestation of glorious victory for the genre it represents, being ostensibly original, and fulfilled with an extraordinary level of creativity, that impersonates on the fluidity of its splendor a celestial and cohesive beauty, that seems innocent and pure as a child, as well as determined and persistent like a heroic knight of an ancient medieval kingdom, eager to reproduce itself on the infinity of its remarkable, but  flexible, harmonious occurrences.   

The album seems to be one long beautiful symphony, divided into five chapters, each one of them communicating itself amazingly with the next, as the sense of continuation is strongly evident as the work progresses, and the harmonies overall evolves into an ever ascendant glorious rapture of gracefully imperial anthems of life expectancies. A brilliant soundtrack for a journey into a solemn past, The Joy of Creation is a very lucid and imperative work, that experiences on the conflagration of its nature the excellency of an integrity that discreetly permeates the confabulation of all dreams that are out of this reality. 

While in the context of some passages the high concentration of organic melodies seems to give the album an absurd impression of sonorous uniformity and striking similarity that is unwilling to change too drastically, maybe fearing to take the risk of deforming the overall symphony of the work, it is true that the general harmonies can become quite exhaustive after some time; but taking into consideration the fact that the elusive atmosphere of the work is genuinely compassionate, and illuminates at the reinstatement of its panoramic overview the dissolution of a formidable sonorous drama, that extends to the request of its content a pragmatic soul that seeks in the intention of its compositions the true affinities of a deeply gracious phenomena, The Joy of Creation deserves to be credited as a very intelligent, interesting and beautiful album, that certainly will find a captive audience, wherever it is played.      

Wagner

Strunkiin – “Island In The Wilderness”

Location: Finland
Subgenre: atmospheric black metal

Unabashed nature worship metal can be great, and when you frame it as a tribute to Bob Ross you’ve got my attention. From the Bandcamp bio: “This project could be considered a tribute of sorts to the legacy of Bob Ross, particularly his The Joy Of Painting TV-series.” L.P, the maitre behind the music, goes on to say that he attempted to “capture some of the atmosphere and tone of each painting and the progression of the respective episode…I was able to literally convert thoughts into sound, experiencing what Bob described as ‘the joy of painting’.” On “Northern Lights,” smeared synths provide the base layer for mountain soaring melody. If you listen closely, you can even hear some happy trees. [From The Joy Of Creation, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall