"Hail Perkele!" comes to us from a small "tape label" out of Finland. The tape's liner notes say something about this compilation being the label's tenth release and featuring "highlights" from the previous outings. Well, congratulations on your anniversary (although it's kind of late for that since this thing came out two years ago). There is, however, one unnerving nuance I have to mention: there aren't any highlights to speak of. Seven bands, fourteen songs, and not a single worth while moment. The only exception, relatively speaking, are AZAGHAL. They play raw yet melodic black metal, and are the only passable band here, although that's hardly a compliment. The rest of the bands are simply awful.

VALAR and WIND specialize in some sort of half-baked medieval/fantasy keyboard music. Five tracks from these bands are a complete waste unless you are looking for some crappy background music to lull yourself to sleep.

There are three tracks from SVARTALFHEIM, who are a total joke of a band. On one song these guys rip-off Storm in quite a pathetic manner. On the other two they do a totally ridiculous and juvenile medieval-folk keyboard music accompanied by some rasps and drumming. Man, you can't even laugh at this band. You just feel sorry for them.

Then there is THORONATH. These guys are big fans of raw black metal done Northern style. Unfortunately, they don't have much talent to create something of their own, so they just rip-off Burzum on one of their songs, and Darkthrone and Arckanum on the other.

The remaining two bands are WITH HATE I BURN and DRUADAN FOREST. The former play some sort of bland black metal with cheesy, pseudo-folk, pseudo-symphonic keyboards, while the latter clumsily attempt to replicate Summoning's medieval-fantasy atmosphere. Ugh.

This compilation is NOT a good representation of the Finnish underground. Surely they can do a lot better. You just have to know where to look. Right?

© 2000 boris