Tuliterä - Tulikaste

(CD 2015, 60:37, Self-Released PLUG4)

The tracks:
  1- Percolator(4:56)
  2- Alpha Blade(7:21)
  3- Jagat(4:06)
  4- Firedew(8:04)
  5- Cetus(2:41)
  6- Voidborn(8:49)
  7- Star Rodeo(4:18)
  8- All-Seeing Delirium(14:11)
  9- Menticide(6:09)

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When you start listening to the album Tulikaste, by Finnish band Tuliterä, the first minutes of the opener Percolator will give you the impression you are listening to another space rock album; meaningless and perhaps redundant. But ... there is a nice bass sound underneath the spacey keyboards and quirky computerized sounds. That's positive ... then hell breaks loose; the final part transits the space rock into a double bass metal drum inferno, but still holding the typical space rock elements. Do we have something special here?

Tuliterä is founded in 2008 and play space rock, the metal way. Grooving music, combining the traditional space rock elements with deadly heavy metal, blast beats and outstanding soloing. After two EP releases, the band was ready to impress the world with their unique form of entertainment. Founder Vesa Partti plays guitars, synths, some bass and does the programming. Partners in crime are guitarist Hannu Willman, who adds some synth parts to several songs, bass player Tommi Tolonen and drummer Tommi Nissinen, who also adds synthetic noises to one song.

When we continue with the album Alpha Blade shows up; a song that due to the special sounds, shows the band must be Star Wars fans. Regarding the amount of spacey shooting sounds, I guess the Empire should be destroyed by now. But jokes aside, still this composition is something special, brutal riffs go hand in hand with ambient synth playing and the drummer plays like it's his last day on earth. Bravo for this composition. Jagat basically sounds as a speedy power metal composition, but the whole atmosphere during this song is like you are listening to Ozric Tentacles injected with metal and a lot of power. The short song Cetus has more of a traditional hard rock vein, less metal, but still filled with recognizable space elements. I do miss the metallic outbursts here. Voidborn is a composition that, as most space rock songs, takes a while to come to the point, melodies are stretched and musically metal has turned back into a softer form of rock, basically going nowhere. During Star Rodeo the band got a new injection and shows the powerful space metal combination of the first compositions again, guess I'm straight up in my chair again. Smoothly the following, fourteen minutes long All-Seeing Delirium takes over in a heavy style, too bad Tuliterä cannot keep me focussed the whole session, but the repeating themes are cool, but just take too long to remain interesting. The album finishes with Menticide, a mellow chaotic soundscape, taking you back to the traditional genre of space rock.

Tulikaste is a special album, the perfect blend of space and dirty heavy metal sounds do work for me. The more traditional space rock parts on the album are too common to be excited about, but the frequently used spacey sound effects do work in their advantage. Tulikaste certainly is an album that heavier space friends should check out and metal heads who want to see how their favourite style sounds when it is filled up with mushrooms, also should give this band a try.

***+ Pedro Bekkers (edited by Astrid de Ronde)

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