MARIANAS REST – The Bereaved

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8.0

• Bands:
  MARIANAS REST
• Duration: 00:57:07
• Available from: 01/16/2026
• Label:

• Noble Demon Records

Streaming not yet available

Raised in a country that gave birth to bands of the caliber of Rapture, Swallow The Sun and Ghost Brigade, in thirteen years the Finnish Marianas Rest have progressively refined their proposal and “Auer”, their 2023 album, was the most convincing episode that the group had ever released.
Three years later and after the transition from Napalm Records to a young but decidedly proactive label like Noble Demon, the Nordics return with a new album and, while remaining within the limits of a dark and intense doom/death metal that fits perfectly into the Finnish tradition, they shift their stylistic coordinates by making some significant changes.

One of the defects of the first Marianas Rest was the lack of consistency of the guitars, but already with “Auer” the textures woven by the six strings had appeared more present: with “The Bereaved” a further step forward is denoted, thanks to an energetic riffing and the use of calmer passages but, this time, it is Aapo Koivisto's keyboards that really make the difference, which allow us to give a new breath to the sound of the sextet, full-bodied but also dynamic.
Among the decidedly positive notes is the vocal performance of Jaakko Mäntymaa who manages to mix growls, clean voices and sighs, often resulting in added value, as well as the inclusion of moments close to post-metal which integrate well into the structures of the songs.
The atmospheres are always balanced between beauty and melancholy and, to describe them, we could talk about a sort of fusion between Insomnium and the morbid and heartbreaking sounds classically Peaceville: in the transition what has been lost compared to the recent past is a certain dose of heterogeneity, but the growth in terms of personality is undeniable.
This alchemy works perfectly in the single “The Color Of You”, a melancholy and pain-filled song that had already foreshadowed the quality of the album, with a lot of melody and Mäntymaa's piercing moans taking on dramatic tones, in “Divided”, with the contrast between the harmony of the keyboards and the ferocity of the context, and in “Diamonds In The Rough”, with Horizon Ignited singer Okko Solanterä as guest and choruses that recall the latest Amorphis.
On a lyrical level, the album revolves around the theme of death, observed from the point of view of those who have left but also of those who have remained: loss leads to contrasting feelings, between pity, torment and remorse, so much so that one wonders whether, in this world, the luckiest are one or the other, a doubt that remains unanswered.

For several years the Scandinavians have worked tenaciously to find their own dimension and, once they achieved this goal with “Auer”, they bravely thought of going further by searching for a distinctive sound, to emerge in a genre like doom/death metal where the standards are still very high: the result is “The Bereaved”, their most personal album.