What do you get if you cross psychedelic occult rock with macabre Finnish melancholy and surf guitars, add a touch of blues, then throw in more hooks than a cloakroom?
If your first thought involves the words “an unholy mess”, you’re roughly where I was when I saw Pääkallo on last week’s press list. Now, depending on what sort of metalhead you are, the above description has either got you running in the opposite direction, or you’ve already opened Spotify and found one of the three singles Pääkallo have released over the last eighteen months. I fall solidly into the latter category (the weirder the crossover the better), and even I was somewhat sceptical.
The thing is, this absolutely, 100% should not work, on paper or anywhere else. For all sorts of reasons, and if it does somehow work, this is a novelty band at most, surely? Well. I don’t quite know what to tell you at this point, except that Pääkallo are indeed serious, and it does indeed work. I don’t know how/why/etc, but honestly I cannot overstate just how gloriously, how catchily, how superbly this mishmash of genres actually comes together.
The obvious highlight here is also the most recent of the three existing singles, Levitoiva Nainen. The last earworm I had that was as persistent as this was when my brain decided to play Frankie (Sister Sledge) on a loop for most of 2021. Other highlights are Muodonmuttaja, Kuoleman Taikaa and Jumalan Myrkky, but honestly there isn’t an outright bad track to found here. Which may not be immediately obvious on first listen, because this is one of those albums where the best tracks are so good, that anything that’s simply “good” (or even “very good”) pales by comparison. I’ve heard worse already this year than the “worst” tracks on this album. If I had to pick out a couple of the weakest spots, Kuparikäärme drags a bit, and I’m not mad keen on Loppumattomat Pimeäl Kuilut in places. But that’s about it.
Overall, it’s a staggeringly coherent, self-assured debut from a band that have all of three singles available to the general public at the time of writing. Of course, Pääkallo is made up of members of Deathchain, Jess and the Ancient Ones, and Cosmo Jones Beat Machine, so realistically this isn’t really anyone’s first rodeo, to the point where “debut” is potentially something of a misnomer. It’s also reasonably easy to see where all the different elements of this album come from if you dig around in the back catalogues of those three – Jess and the Ancient Ones has clearly had significantly more influence than the other two, but all three are there to be found. So the Pääkallo sound hasn’t come out of nowhere by any means, but I still think it’s a remarkably coherent album given the disparate influences and pedigrees on display here. It’s lighter and more melodic than Deathchain, weirder and catchier than Jess and the Ancient Ones, and more accessible than Cosmo Jones Beat Machine.
So it’s good. Very good, in fact. But the ultimate burning question is will you like it? And honestly I don’t know. Pääkallo aren’t quite enough like any other band out there for the usual “for fans of” type reference points (although Last.Fm assures me that “gothic surf rock” is already a thing, which will be my next musical rabbit hole). The best advice I can give you is to go and listen to Levitoiva Nainen: if you love it, you’ll love this album. If you don’t, there are other albums.
Oh, and if you do like this, have a listen to Jess and the Ancient Ones as well: a fair bit of what makes Pääkallo so much fun to listen to comes from them.
(9.5/10 Ellie)
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