At its strongest, music is a key to a gate nothing else can pry open. Music is a weapon to destroy the walls we built around us – and Finnish metal melancholists Insomnium are amongst its strongest wielders. Their 9th masterpiece, “Anno 1696”, leads us deep into a dark and troublesome past of Europe. The witch hunt is in full swing across Europe and the gruesome trials have even reached the remote landscapes of Finland and Sweden. Set to their latest batch of achingly beautiful dirges and accompanied by a short story written by frontman Niilo Sevänen himself, Insomnium once more summon a manifesto of grief and hope. Founded in 1997 in Joensuu, they first gained recognition in 2002 with “In the Halls of Awakening”. Quickly building on this with death/doom juggernaut “Above the Weeping World” (2006) or melancholic masterpiece “One for Sorrow” (2012), the Finns surprised everyone with their achingly forlorn “Argent Moon” EP in 2021, only to shed their skin once more. “If someone thought that we have grown soft with the Argent Moon EP, I think ‘Anno 1696’ shows that there is the same old spirit left.”