ON A THIN ROPE

In 2005 after a few years of gigging and numerous personnel changes Discordia finally got a stable enough line-up to enter the studio to give the world the first taste of their polyrock. They came out with three very strong songs, one written by vocalist Tero Väänänen, one by founding keyboardist, the sadly deceased Juhani Kauhanen and one co-written by Kauhanen and founding guitarist Antti Tolkki.

Little Souls is driven by a strong rhythm section and covered in vocal harmonies, culminating in a powerful chorus and a fantastic a capella mid section. I wonder how they pulled it off live at the time, with only Tero Väänänen holding a microphone. The title track opens with sparkly clean guitars and a soft march rhythm before going through a bouncy verse and a beautiful bridge into a bouncy chorus, after which they launch into some heavy metal jam with a cool keyboard solo on top of it. The closing track Going to goa has some funky rhythm work and trippy keyboard parts. Tero Väänänen shows off the highest reaches of his vocal range after the rest of the guys throw in an up tempo heavy instrumental section with a really nice keyboard solo by Ahmed Ahonen. The Antti Tolkki guitar solo near the end is just flawless.

Discordia's debut ep displays the band's strong songwriting talent and urge to explore many different kinds of music, and delivers it in a compact form of short concise songs. The vocal harmonies are especially ambitious and after the addition of vocalist Riikka Hänninen the band went on to pursue that area even further with fantastic results. If you enjoyed Utopia Perfection you can't miss this one.