“If it leads to success we don’t have anything against it. We still have the death metal vocals, after all – those put a lot of people off”: Amorphis steered surprisingly close to pop-rock on their latest album. But they’re not selling out

Amorphis.

Finnish progressive metal veterans Amorphis are 15 albums into a career like few others. Explaining latest release Borderland, bassist Olli-Pekka Laine tells Prog that the nexus of death metal and neo-prog is a truly strange place to be.

As anyone who has been to Finland will tell you, there’s no other country quite like it. Its native language has little in common with that of its neighbours Sweden and Russia; its topography is bizarre, with more than 180,000 lakes to fall into after too much liquorice vodka; and it’s the most heavy metal country per capita in the world.