Silver Lake by Esa Holopainen - Silver Lake by Esa Holopainen (2021)

With the COVID-19 pandemic canceling all touring plans for all bands, some special projects and solo albums have come out of this down time. Luckily for us, Esa Holopainen from Amorphis was already itching to come out with his own solo project: Silver Lake by Esa Holopainen. Featuring over 37 minutes of superbly catchy and moody music, Esa manages to capture some of his signature Amorphis sound while further exploring personal influences to create nine very unique and engaging songs.

Featuring that warm heart-felth wonder of his Amorphis music, the opener “Silver Lake'' creates a mystical mood for this release. With each other song featuring guest vocalists, “Sentiment” delivers a very moody and a bit folky vibe with Jonas Renkse of Katatonia on vocals. The album’s first single comes under the name of “Storm”, with the talented Håkan Hemlin on vocals. This track has that certain epicness vibe that Esa is very proficient, while delivering uplifting atmospherics and crafty drums.

For those of us that can’t get enough of Leprous and Einar Solberg, “Ray Of Light” is one hell of a dreamy and playful track which fully takes advantage of Einar’s talents and pairs them with twangy guitars. Probably the two most ‘Amorphis’ like tracks are the jazzy “Alkusointu”, and the heavy “In Her Solitude”. This last track features Tomi Joutsen, and it features the signature soaring combinations of clean and harsh vocals alongside heavy and distorted guitars.

Our favorite songs have to be the magical “Promising Sun” and its ethereal atmospherics, featuring Björn 'Speed' Strid of Soilwork, and “Fading Moon” with the sweet voice of Anneke Van Giersbergen making the song even dreamier than the basic instrumentation does. As a whole, “Silver Lake” is one very interesting release that showcases Esa Holopainen making unique and different (from his usual) music. While this release is not full of shredding as many solo guitarist releases are, it is full of well crafted and enjoyable music for fans of either Amorphis, or melodic Metal in general.

Label: Nuclear Blast Records

Release: May 28th, 2021

Genre: Melodic Metal

Country: Finland