Tuomas Saukkonen is in many ways a remarkable person. Without having ever met him in person, I picture the Finn as an adamant, extremely serious worker bee. I also picture him as someone who can be difficult to work with if he doesn’t get his way with things. Which is not a bad thing – especially not if you have a talented musician with a clear vision such as Saukkonen.

Searching for different channels of expressing his metal, Saukkonen has now open the gates to Black Sun Aeon, a project that draws upon the sounds of early doom inspired death metal such as Paradise Lost and Katatonia. Unlike with his other major project, Before The Dawn, and Dawn of Solace, the clear goth elements are explored thoroughly and very obviously in e.g. with the tune A song for my sorrow which has more than a touch of Dead Can Dance.

The sadness is more evident, the tone more melancholy than in Saukkonen’s other work and in a way more deep, although still crushingly professional is always.

It is worth mentioning that Saukkonen of course (?) handles all instrumentation himself, but that he is aided by Mikka Heikkilä from Sinamore on the clean vocals and that Amorphis vocalist Tomi, Ville Sorvali from Moon-Sorrow and Mynni Luukkainen from Sotajumala all have made dark vocal contributions.

One for the dark days. Check it out.