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.

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, music videos 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.

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.

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 finds AMORPHIS in a phase that joins death-metal weight, Finnish folk-like melody and mythic atmosphere with a density that made it a m

Dreamspace finds STRATOVARIUS in a phase that captures Stratovarius in a transitional phase, joining Timo Tolkki's neoclassical guitar language to a more inward-looking a

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.