Tuhosieni - Kiinni Sinuun

Piki Records (PIKI 003)

One year ago I was blown away with a new band I saw live during a private First of May celebrations in Helsinki. This band was Tuhosieni and they luckily had a brand-new 8" lathe cut single I could take home with. I especially enjoyed the hard-rocking Hawkwind-like A side "Suolaulu" that you could also hear in one of my Mixcloud shows last year. I also saw the band live again later on and now with another guitar player Lauri. Some of my more progressively oriented listeners might remember him from the prog band Uzwa. Cool! With two guitar players the sound of Tuhosieni has become fuller and more complex.

Now the band is just about to release their debut full-lenght that I was able to get a couple of weeks before the official release date. I was sort of expecting to hear "Suolaulu" and some other older songs here as well but apparently the band decided to use just new recordings with the two-guitar line up, which is quite understandable. Apart from "Tunturi" these tunes were all originally written a few years ago anyway. There would have been room for a couple of more songs since the six tracks included only last a bit over 30 minutes in total. All the songs are band compositions with lyrcs by the guitar player/vocalist Toni Haapanen. The other members are bassist Tero Lehto and drummer Markku Koskinen. The album that was recorded, mixed and mastered by Toni sounds really great and professional and the cover art by Lauri is also amazing. The music of Tuhosieni is some kind of mix of progressive rock, psych, folk and hard rock. The vocals in Finnish sometime remind of classic Suomi-Rock, for example the main line of the great opener "Liekkirinta" sounds a bit like "Kulkurin iltakalja" by Hassisen Kone. Nothing wrong with that, it's more like part of the charm of Tuhosieni. The band plays really well together and I like the overal vibe of the album. The atmopshere changes from emotional and beutiful to heavy, dark and oppressive, sometimes within one song. My favourites are the opener "Liekkirinta" and "Vihreä kajo", but all songs are very good. There are also some sound effects and probably synthesizer sounds to make things more varied and exciting. Kiinni sinuun is an excellent debut album and warmly recommended for all fans of progressive, melodic and psychedelic rock music.

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