Intimations of Sorrow

Valerian

City Canyon Records

Indie CDs Australia

Web: http://www.indie-cds.com

Valerian sound like a well established rock band with catchy tunes, solid guitar work and intriguing lyrics. Then why haven’t you heard of them? Well, these five rather gifted musicians hail from Finland and it takes a while to get an audience in the West. While Finland is probably better known for its heavy metal, this is an impressive change, solid rock, certainly with metal influences, but melodic and polished and showing an amazing maturity in both musical ability and lyricism, especially for a second album. Olli Koskela, the lead singer, offers great vocals with an impressive range, he has a great rock and roll voice which easily manages to move between grudge to flights of metal, ballads to harder rock.

The music itself covers the spectrum of rock but does seem to have a certain 80’s hardrock/metal resonance, songs range from ballads to anthems but many seem to have a certainly angst ridden ambiance. The lyrics are not “throw away” and clearly have something to say ranging from personal reflections on love and loss such as Homesick to the rather dark serial killer song “Nothing Will Ever Take Me Away From You”. There are many stand out tracks but Liar is quite an astounding ballad which is not only musically adventurous but loaded with intense emotion and intelligent, even socially aware lyrics !