When you think about music and Finland I?m sure that many like myself think about powermetal acts like Nightwish, Stratovarious and Sonata Arctica. By judging from the band name and albumtitle-my first thought was that this was a new powermetal act from the land of the thousand seas. But after listening to the opening track I realized that I was totally wrong.
Human Temple is a new melodic hardrock/AOR sensation from Finland that delivers songs with fantastic melodies ,strong hooklines and lots of lovely keybords in their sound and reminds sometimes of the best Scandinavian 80s acts. The singer Janne Hurme used to be a soloartist and has achieved sales of 150.000 albums,he?s got a very strong voice.
Just to add a little extra flavour to the album they invited few guests to be involved on "Insomnia". The names I?m talking about are Emppu Vuorinen (Nightwish), Jani Liimatainen (Sonata Arctica) and Erkka Korhonen (Urban Tale) with guitarsolos to one song each. Altarias metal shouter Taage Laiho provided the backing vocals. "I?m Sorry" is a treat to your ears with a nice Hammond organ in the background. The chorus is filled with hooklines all the way like a mixture of a rockier Urban Tale and Grand Illusion.
If you miss the days when Treat and Talk Of The Town was on the move then listen to "Goin? All The Way", this is a marvellous song with powerful 80?s pompkeyboards and straight aheard guitarriffs that hooks you up real good. "Out Of Love" smells Talisman?s debut a long way with a chorus that will make you wanna sing-a-long,really strong background vocals.
The ballads on the album are also very strong in "Forever" and "Desert Rain" which are two brilliant pianoballads with awesome melodies. If you miss dutt-dutt keyboards then put on the song "Till? The Day I Die" and just dream away, relax and enjoy one of this years best air-keyboard songs. If you love Grand Illusion and Urban Tale then this song will please all your needs for a long time. The chorus is very catchy with strong background vocals and hooklines all through the song. This was a huge surprise for me because I had no expectations at all about Human Temple and I?m glad that Finland is producing more AOR bands and not just powermetal. Urban Tale is no longer the only high-class AOR act from Finland, now you can also count Human Temple to that list.
This is a must for everyone that are into 80s melodic hardrock/AOR with class, so get yourself a copy of this fantastic album.
