Rotting Ways to Misery: The Story of Finnish Death Metal

by Markus Makkonen, Kim Strömsholm

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

300 pages, Hardcover

Published November 30, 2020

Reviews

[Katrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, I've never been a pure death metal girl. I love some awesome death/doom and black/death, but I haven't started off with pure death metal. For me the journey goes like this: gothic metal - symphonic metal - doom metal - black metal - suicidal black metal, atmospheric black metal and many subgenres. So yeah, death has been a .. hm.. byproduct of what I was listening to actively. That doesn't mean that I'm not interested!! I love sentenced and Amorphis, also their early works and their death metal phases. There's a lot death metal I'm actually listening to, but mostly in a mix. This book has been a true joy to read because I have been a very active member of the Vaasa and Jyväskylä concert scene from 2002 to 2008. Heck, I was at Lutakko almost every weekend, watching everything that came through, be it death, black, gothic or whatever!! So to read about the scene back then was amazing. Of course I'm too young to have been part of the first wave of Finnish death metal, but as described well in the book, I sure as hell was in the midst of the second one. And it was fantastic and I loved to hear opinions, descriptions of the scene, everything. I'll surely listen to some mentioned bands, too. The editing of the book got a bit out of hand in the last parts of the book with quite a few mistakes and the map of Finland in my opinion should in any case include the most important places featured in the book, not just what any map will show you, but other than that I recommend this SO very much to every fan. This is a testament to a time and scene that will never return. After reading pirunkehto (finnish black metal) and this book, I'm not sure what else could come around from good old Suomi, but I hope for more 🤘

[Julian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow read since I wanted to spend time listening to each band as I read this. Maybe it speaks to Finnish death metal as a whole that I spent most of the book waiting for the Demilich chapter, and then rushed to finish once it was over.

There are some interesting things, like the profound influence of Kingston Wall, that I never realized before, but the anecdotes about each band are similar, and the same history gets retread many times. Weirdly, some great bands with multiple album releases are relegated to final clean-up chapters, even though I would have expected them more worthy of full chapters than some of the bands that got them.

This seems like an obvious companion to Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal, but the latter tells a more coherent story. Still, if you already own Swedish Death Metal, this book is a logical appendix to keep next to it, and it's a great way to find out about demos and albums that are now, mostly, far more accessible than ever before.

[Oliver Holm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many books on death metal (etc.) are basically inexpertly written, shoddily proofread collages of encyclopaedic fanzine interviews. A book should be much more than that ... "of corpse".

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been waiting YEARS and I mean YEARS for this book!!! I adore Finnish death metal. It's my favorite next to Swedish death metal. Rotting Ways to Misery is perfect. Unlike other similar books on the subject of death metal or heavy metal it's not some nerd's opinion. The fact that it's all quotes similar to Jason Netherton's Extremity Retained clears bias away. Yet the reader still learns really cool information about the Finnish death metal scene. For example, I never knew that Rippikolou was originally a hardcore band. Neat! Because I own 90 percent of the music mentioned in this book I listened to the albums while reading each chapter. Makkonen and Strömsholm did a fantastic job organizing their book. Every chapter is broken into periods and bands.

The Finnish death metal scene was influenced by punk and crossover similar to the Swedish scene, but that's the only similarity. This information is true of all Finnish metal. Finnish black metal is also like this, it's why I like Impaled Nazarene and Beherit. It was later influenced by American thrash and Death metal. Another duh. I can hear Slayer, Obituary and Morbid Angel in both Swedish and Finnish death metal. Only they made it better. What did surprise me was how much Paradise Lost influenced Finnish death metal. I hear it in Sentenced, but the rest was very surprising. Rotting Ways to Misery also confirmed my suspicion that Xysma's Yeah influenced Entombed. That's how and why that abomination, Wolverine Blues was made. Xysma is the only band that made Rot n' Roll and I liked it. Why did it have become a fad?! I hate Rot n' Roll.

What I love the most about Finnish death metal is how different every band was. As much as I treasure the HM-2 sound, it's very hard to be creative when every band sounds the same. Perhaps, it's because I'm extremely picky, but I appreciate bands wanting to create only the best. Every Finnish death metal band wanted write something different and unique. I admire that they did not force themselves to write mediocre albums just for the sake of adding more to their discography. This is why so many Finnish bands only have demos or one albums. Or like Xysma or Sentenced they changed their sound. They did not want to be fakes.

Rotting Ways to Misery has so many cool photos that I've never seen, not even in the box sets that I own by Svart Records. Incredibly honest quotes, references and a listening list. I even discovered two bands that had escaped my listening radar because of this book.

Overall, Markkonen and Strömsholm did the best job writing this book. Rotting Ways to Misery makes the reader feel like they were a part of the Finnish death metal scene. It was a treat to read. And it was worth all the years of waiting. I love it even more the Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal. To put how much I love this book. I want to be buried with this book and my copy of Karelian Isthmus and Nespithe.

[GregoryOvDoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally had a lot of fun reading this book. I see some lower reviews, but you sort of know exactly what you’re getting: The history of Finnish death metal as told through research, first hand accounts with some incredible names, fan zines and interviews. It’s a decently deep dive and as an obsessive metal head for almost 20 years now, I actually left with a list of bands I’d never listened to, some never even heard of. But it touches on some of the greats/firsts, as well as some of the names that came later and still rage. I’d say I’d you’re a fan of death metal or extremes music, definitely give this a read. The inspiration alone will make you pick up your guitar in between pages.

[Sam Whitehill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Finnish death metal scene was short lived and full of delightfully strange and brutally heavy music. This was a fun read that turned me on to bands like Thergothon (first funeral doom band ever?), Depravity, Cartilage, and Lubricant. The cult classics, including Abhorrence, Funebre, Demigod, and Demilich are also well represented.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is everything I was hoping Ekeroth's Swedish Death Metal would have been. This book wastes little time jumping right into the thick of the Finnish Death Metal Scene, giving each major band of the scene its own time in the spotlight. On top of that, the book talks about the various other underground bands of the scene and how things have changed over time, with a fair amount of recommendations spanning roughly 30 years.

It's well-paced, jammed packed with content from cover to cover, and introduced me to bands that I never even knew about - like Xysma, Funebre, Cartilage, Lubrication, and plenty of others. It's an absolute must-read for any death metal fan there is!

[Alejo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It focuses heavily on the first bands of the Finnish scene, as it argues that by 1995 Death Metal was somehow dead, at least in Finland, and it's a great review of the bands of that time. Some of the edition was shoddy, it's not necessary a single sentence paragraph just to state the importance of the band being reviewed, and one third of the book is spent on the early Thrash Metal scene, although interesting in its own right, after while you start to pine for the Death Metal.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me months to get through this encyclopaedic account of the development, peak and decline of the Finnish death metal scene from the first demos of 1988/89 to 1995 co-written by Makkonen, formerly of the band Hooded Menace.*

That's not because it's a bad book. It's not. It's because it's so densely packed with band histories, interviews and anecdotes that it would be hard to take anything in otherwise. I also had to factor in time for listening to some of the music I'd just 'discovered.'

Books like this often suffer from an amateurish over-enthusiasm with cramming in as much information as possible, breathlessly written, horribly edited and stuffed to bursting like an overblown fanzine. Rotting Ways to Misery largely avoids this (though the proofreading is lacking at times) and does a good job of picking up themes and trends as it details the history of so many bands with long hair, oversized white trainers and time on their hands. What struck me was the DIY nature of the scene, how diverse and experimental the music was, just how young these bands were and the role compulsory national service, and simply being old enough to buy beer played in its demise.

A fascinating, hugely enjoyable book, and one that introduced me to my 'new' favourite death metal album, 1992's 'Slumber of Sullen Eyes' by Demigod.

*I first stumbled across Hooded Menace last year, loved their 2021 album 'the Tritonus Bell' and started looking deeper into Finnish metal, which is what led me to this book in the first place.

[Sergio Armisén · Rating 3 out of 5]

Últimamente se están poniendo de moda estos libros que son como una especie de "historia oral" de un género y/o escena musical concretos: el DM sueco cuenta con el excelente "Swedish Death Metal" de Daniel Ekeroth, el nacimiento del Grind/Death es magistralmente retratado en "Choosing Death" de Albert Mundrian, mientras en el Black Metal la bibliografía es extensísima y de calidad irregular. Por lo tanto no es de extrañar que una escena tan singular como la finesa cuente ya con su particular crónica, que este "Rotting Ways to Misery"

El libro está dividido en capitulos introductorios y biografías de los grupos más destacados del fenómeno: por él desfilan Xysma, Amorphis, Abhorrence, Demigod, Demilich, Sentenced... En cualquier caso (salvo excepciones) el patrón es el mismo: una rápida explosión, de gran variedad y calidad, seguida de un igualmente rápido declive: la mayoría de los grupos reseñados -todos ellos clásicos de culto por derecho propio- cuentan con apenás un disco de puro Death Metal en su haber. A veces ni eso, alcanzando su estatus mediante oscuras maquetas.

Aunque el libro puede hacerse un pelín repetitivo a veces, cumple admirablemente su función como obra de referencia: lugar excelente para descubrir nueva musica. Si te va el rollo fuerte, claro...

[Lucy Batson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another exhaustively researched deep-dive into a regional metal scene by Decibel Press, Rotting Ways isn't quite as excellent as the few books that preceded it. While I wouldn't say this is too short, the band stories feel extremely truncated in that chapters tend to stop after the heyday of a band is over, most notably in the case of Sentenced. Some of that fragmentation is also due to external circumstances that led to shorter careers for many of the acts covered here. Still, this is well-written and leaves no stone unturned.

[KarhuAnderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Adoration of a ghost.