Lykaion
Heavy Lullabies

Finnish band… sorry Italian band Lykaion are back, back with their second real album that they are calling Heavy Lullabies. Yeah, that gets me sleeping sometimes but generally there are better means for that. For their debut there was nothing but death and the cover of this one points towards that fact as the characters on the cover looks kind of dead. They have also gone even more Finnish than they were on their debut album by changing their label from Italian Bakerteam Records to Inverse, one might suspect that the Finns like Sentenced etc. are their housegods and their posters probably hang all over the walls in Lykaion’s rehearsal room.

Stylistically they sound very Finnish, just like their debut album. I think it is a solid production but not something that stands out, the singer is decent and he sounds very Finnish just like the sound of this band. There are eleven tracks on the album; gothic metal in the Finnish style is what it is. The variation might not be most impressive I have ever heard but as the album is around 48 minutes long they get away with it fairly well. There are eleven tracks on the album, eleven heavy lullabies that might rock some fans to sleep.

It is a quite good album, the songs are fairly catchy and they all sound quite good. Fans of Sentenced, To/Die/For and their likes will probably adore this album and why not? That style definitely pushes the right buttons for those fans. So, it is good but one might argue that the lack of originality is a bit troublesome and they will probably just drown within the over crowdedness of the music world of today. You need to make something different to stand out, either that or something of sensational quality and unfortunately these guys do not do either of those. Their music feels mostly geared to those that are already very lost in this genre, so mostly for the fans and I find it doubtful that their music will appeal to a wider audience.

No song really stands out; they are all of a good quality. An average high quality from start to finish is what they give us but Lykaion really needs to do more if they really want to stand out from the rest and if they want to be relevant to all those only giving a fleeting glance to the records while looking for that one special album. I think that we can summarise this album as heavy lullabies by some wannabee-Fins – cool cover art.

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