The more metal you listen to, the blurrier the lines between subgenres seem to become: ’Brymir’ are a melodic death metal band, most certainly, but their latest album ‘What We Leave Behind’ is so grandiose and cinematic as to border on power metal! The Finnish crew are clearly out to impress after the success of 2022’s ‘Voices in the Sky’— if only the follow-up was a little steadier on its feet, Brymir might’ve truly won us over.

You’ve got to hand it to Gullichsen and company: ‘What We Leave Behind’ isn’t lacking in energy. The one-two punch of ‘Sleipnir’ and ‘Tempestbound’ is out to get your blood pumping with its thunderous percussive patterns and excitable lead guitar melodies, with neither song letting you breathe for even a second— it’s not until the title track that drummer Patrik Fält even considers taking his foot off the gas, not that the cut could reasonably be described as ‘restrained’ in any sense of the word. It’s telling that even interlude ‘Moment Of Silence’ finds room for scores of choirs, strings and drums both programmed and live. The comically foreboding arrangement of ‘True Darkness’ and the militaristic roar of ‘Buried Legion’ are just some choice examples of the level of bombast we’re dealing with here.

Is it any surprise, then, to hear that ‘What We Leave Behind’ is a greatly overstuffed record, one swallowed whole by its own outrageous ambitions. The climactic choruses that came to define ‘Voices in the Sky’ feel like an afterthought here when Fält plows his way through the hooks on the aforementioned ‘Sleipnir’ and ‘Tempestbound,’ leaving Gullichsen’s layered vocals in the dust— the latter manages to survive by the sheer thrill of its enthusiasm, but the cut could hardly be described as catchy. It’s quite telling that the huge half-time feel of the title track jumps out at you immediately amidst such auditory maximalism, making the number a bonafide highlight. The orchestral swells of the album’s three interludes are almost necessary to break up a record barrelling down the tracks, even if none of them are overly memorable on their own.

The group themselves seem aware of the whiplash their music is inducing, which might explain why the project veers off into a variety of lanes in its second half: it’s just disappointing to find that ‘What We Leave Behind’ ultimately struggles to find its own identity, divorced from the triumphs of albums past. The slower pace of ‘The Roaring King’ is a solid idea on paper— it certainly gives the band’s penchant for lavish arrangements some more room to work with— but it’s hardly Brymir’s strong suit, acting as an unfortunate overcorrection from the melodeath crew. By its end, the album is indulging in a larger-than-life epic in ‘Broken Dawn’ followed by a peppy cover of Scooter’s ‘How Much Is The Fish,’ and both are truly anthemic and thrilling inclusions… even if they’re also indicative of the uneven nature of this tracklist.

For their fifth studio album, what Brymir have left behind is a sense of restraint, coming out with a whirlwind of a record that you can barely grasp onto: in their attempts to envelop you in dizzying drum parts and over-the-top string harmonies, the band ironically distance you from this, their most balls-to-the-wall outing to date. The Finnish melodeath crew are excellent musicians and strong songwriters, and their newest album is yet more proof of exactly that— the title track and ‘Broken Dawn’ alone are worth the price of admission. We can’t exactly recommend the record over its predecessors though.