Like a tornado the new song “Dead Like Silence” from Post Pulse kicks off. Nothing of silence in here. Not all. But then again who needs silence if you can have the growls and screams of Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow the Sun), Otto Aleksanteri Eräjoki (Mørket), Niko Kalliojärvi (Humavoid), and Sami Silvennoinen (Skein) adding to Doe‘s [Tapani Rantanen]?
It’s Friday night and I sit at home chatting with a young musician I met only recently. While we discuss the essential role of networking the timeline shows a new video of my Finnish, former interviewees from Post Pulse. And how fitting it is the context of my conversation. „With all the featuring musicians it’s a perfect example“, I say pasting the URL to our chat. “F*, I had no idea what they were really planning”, I add and go on frowning, “Ok, honestly I had the term ‘plotting’ in mind.” I hear a laughing in return. We both start the video and listen. Wow! Metal energy in its purest form crushes on me in the darkness! Watching the video, I can’t help thinking that Anttoni [Välimaa] looks just as bored as if he was waiting in the line at the supermarket cashier. But I know he is focused.
Just as I dive into Antti’s [Karhu] passionate shredding, somewhat unexpected in the middle the song slows down. A sax adds to Post Pulse’s otherwise straight guitar/bass and drums sound. And hei, this really works fabulously good. There not many sax players I have listened to a notable extend. And this is a long, long time ago: Clarence Clemons and Steve Norman. So no surprise my first association goes back all the way to them. This here, however, is something completely different, naturally. Jørgen Munkeby’s (Shining) sax tunes here have a bit of a jazzy vibe – to me – and my impression is supported by Sam’s [Roon] bass lines of this slower middle part. Post Pulse were not Post Pulse if this song was allowed to drift into slow motion and from there to its end. No. The final shows all their energy again. Exclamation mark!
I take my chance to ask how all this came to be and Doe replies: “We had the song almost done including lyrics. One day I was listening to Destruction‚s, ‘Alliance of Hellhoundz’ and thought it would be really awesome to do something like that. I presented the idea to the band and everyone liked the idea. We started thinking about who we would want on the track. We wanted people who we’ve worked with in the past and also who we thought would sound good on the recording. We added the sax solo because we thought it would be fun and different. After we decided on the guests I adjusted the lyrics to match each singer. If you read the lyrics, you’ll notice that every guest has lines that reflect the stuff they have done in the past.”
The song works really good to me. The mix of the Post Pulse classical degree of aggression highlighted by the fine selection of featuring vocalists combined with the much warmer emotions of the sax make a very remarkable song. Hm, no. Actually: it makes a song hard to get out of your ears once you listened to it! 😉
PS Available as stream by June 8th, 2018
