- Country: Finland
- Style: Melodic death metal
- Label: Century Media Records
- Release date: 16 October 2026
A frozen spirit begging to be left to freeze again is an odd way to open a melodic death metal record. It is also exactly right for Insomnium. “The Cold Song”, Henry Purcell’s lament from the opera King Arthur, opens the record, and its two minutes work like a door left open onto a snowfield at night.
What follows is a descent rather than a journey. Niilo Sevänen has described the lyrics as a dark and mysterious love story, and Netherworlds wears that idea loosely, like mist over a lake rather than a plot you could draw on a map. Love here is something glimpsed in the dark, never quite held. “Gleam in the Black”, one of the faster songs, carries the whole record’s emotional logic in its title alone.
The key to the album may be “Arch of the Sky”. It borrows from Sámi folklore, where celestial hunters chase a deer across the heavens and the world ends if they ever catch it. The song itself wanders through shifting time signatures, the proggiest moment here, as if refusing to settle would keep the chase alive. Some things have to stay out of reach for everything else to survive.
The centrepiece is “The Hour Grows Late”, eight minutes long and shared with Amorphis’ Tomi Joutsen and Tomi Koivusaari, with Santeri Kallio on keyboards. It feels less like a guest spot than two neighbouring forests growing into each other. New guitarist Tomy Laisto, on his first Insomnium album, turns the band into a three-guitar unit alongside Ville Friman and Markus Vanhala, and the extra layer gives the melodies more shadow to move through. Miiro Varjus produced and Jens Bogren mixed, and the result sounds wide and cold without losing its warmth.
Then “Journey’s End” closes the book slowly, darker and more funereal than a typical finale, part dirge, part recited farewell. Nothing resolves. The deer is still running.
Best tracks:
The Hour Grows Late
Arch of the Sky
Gleam in the Black
Journey’s End
Author’s rating: 8.5/10
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