BJØRKØ
Heartrot
Amorphis axeman goes on a guest-laden set of diversions
SVART
Amorphis guitarist Tomi Koivusaari has taken 15 years to make his debut solo album, and each of Heartrot’s nine songs contains vocals and lyrics from a different singer. It sounds like a recipe for a disjointed listen, and it is. Heartrot fails to truly pinpoint its mood, lurching from extreme metal to post-punk or post-rock arbitrarily, although some of the tracks are worthwhile curiosities. The Heartroot Rots pairs Carcass’s Jeff Walker with slower, groovier death metal than usual, and Värinvaihtaja is a classy rocker with Finnish polymath Ismo Alanko’s solemn voice. These standouts together, however, don’t amount to a sonic adventure that you can truly get lost in.