Finland Metal & Hard Rock Albums of the 1990s

Tuonela keeps Amorphis’s heavy guitar foundation while giving greater weight to quiet keyboards, folk-tinged melody and a submerged atmosphere.

Hatebreeder fuses cutting guitar riffs, rapid drumming and flamboyantly active keyboards into Children of Bodom’s distinctive attack.

HIM's second album, published in Finland in December 1999 and internationally in January 2000. "Join Me in Death" is the single that carried the band up.

The fourth solo album, with Monroe playing almost every instrument himself; Andy McCoy shares a writing credit and Hanoi Rocks' "Self Destruction Blues" is revisited.

Ecliptica announces Sonata Arctica with rapid rhythm, sparkling keyboards and high, urgent vocals.

All Eternity introduces To/Die/For through heavy guitars, shadowed keyboards and low, emotional vocals.

Inquisition Symphony uses the low end and sharp attack of cellos to translate metal riffs into a different kind of sound.

Oceanborn combines shining keyboards, fast guitar and operatic vocals in Nightwish’s symphonic-metal language.

Frozen by SENTENCED: track list, Spotify player and English liner notes on METAL BOOST.

Destiny uses fast guitar, shining keyboards and soaring vocals to create grand-scale power metal.

Something Wild is Children of Bodom’s debut collision of fast guitar and keyboard, rough vocal and classical melody.

HIM's debut, published in Finland in November 1997. Nine songs are followed by fifty-six tracks of silence, with a hidden one at number 66.

Angels Fall First is Nightwish’s debut, combining acoustic color, rushing metal and Tarja Turunen’s classical vocal presence.

Visions combines fast guitar, flowing keyboard and Timo Kotipelto’s high vocal range with unusual clarity.

Elegy keeps the weight of death metal while opening the music to clean vocals, airy keyboards and folk-colored melody.

Plays Metallica by Four Cellos proves how naturally the weight of metal riffs can meet the force of low-register cello.

The third solo album, made after Demolition 23. broke up and released by Finland's Poko Rekords: ten songs including covers of MC5 and The Damned.

Down moves Sentenced beyond the aggression of its early melodic death metal toward a gothic world of heavy guitar and dark melody.

Episode brings Stratovarius’s fast twin leads, grand keyboards and steady rhythm section into one broad flow.

Amok retains Sentenced’s death-metal aggression while drawing strongly on cold melody and gothic shadow.

Fourth Dimension introduces Timo Kotipelto and gives Stratovarius’ fast rhythms, flowing keyboards and high-reaching vocal a clear new shape.

Tales from the Thousand Lakes, a turning point for AMORPHIS, sets the world of the Kalevala to death-metal weight and Finnish folk-like melody.

Dreamspace is the third STRATOVARIUS album, with Timo Tolkki on vocals as well as guitar, joining neoclassical playing to an introspective, uneasy mood.

North from Here is a useful way to hear SENTENCED from a different angle within the 1993 catalogue.

The Karelian Isthmus is Amorphis’s debut of sinking heavy riffs, low growls and desolate atmosphere.

Twilight Time is an important early Stratovarius album, combining fast-moving riffs, flowing keyboard and Timo Tolkki’s guitar and vocal.

Shadows of the Past is an early Sentenced death-metal record of sinking riffs, rough growls and dark air.