Kauan – “Sorni Nai” (video) (premiere)

Taking their name from the Finnish word for “for a long time”, Ukraine-based band Kauan will be releasing their sixth album Sorni Nai on 20 October. I have no idea why a Russian band is singing in Finnish, but Sorni Nai has a great little story behind it. A sprawling 52-minute doom/folk/post-metal piece, it’s a retelling of the Djatlov Pass Incident of 1959, in which nine Soviet hikers died mysteriously in the Ural mountains.

“Their bodies were found a mile from their campsite, missing their skis, shoes, and coats while braving -30°F weather. Two of them had fractured skulls, two had major chest fractures, and one was missing her tongue. Investigators listed the cause of death as ‘a compelling natural force,’ and the case was immediately closed.”

“Our ultimate mission as a band is to create an aural journey with every song we create,” the band says. “We don’t believe in being tied down by genre descriptions or ethos in regards to our direction. Instead, we aim to guide through a specific dimension into fantasies inside the listener’s imagination. ‘Sorni Nai’ is a single-song album where the frozen bodies of the dead, torn to pieces by a mysterious force in the Ural mountains, are a spark to guide you through a sense of wonder and desperation.”

The video below is a spellbinding, six-minute excerpt from the opus, an example of how engaging the music is, regardless of whether you understand Finnish or not.

Pre-order Sorni Nai from Blood Music.