Thinking of Finland, images of snow, huge icy forrests with christmas trees and hot women in Helsinki, wearing short skirts combined with wooly hats and mittens, spring to mind. Terhen is a band who probably don’t really appeal to the latter group (if said group even exists, I mean, who ever goes to Finland?), because they make (very) slow, gloomy doom metal. They have been at it since 2004 and this here ‘Eyes Unfolded’ is their first full-length album. And from the sounds of it, they’re off to a pretty good, albeit very slow start.

In my head I recall when JD and Turk were slowrunning into Sacred Heart. Carla, the nurse who was already there, saw them and asked something like: ‘Why are you slowrunning?’ And JD said: ‘It makes everything seem more dramatic’. That (hilariously brilliant, especially when Turk slow rushes further in the background and it just looks really dumb) scene out of an episode of Scrubs seems to be what doom is all about. Play slow, make everything more dramatic. Terhen have taken this wisdom and ran with it.
Oh boy, I hate clichés.
‘Eyes Unfolded’ is so incredibly slow, it’s like Terhen are competing in a Harley Davidson-race -slowest bike wins- with other doom bands. It has dragging riffs, long intro’s, long outro’s, much instrumental repetition and a low grunt over it all. At first that grunt sounds a bit out of place, but you get used to it quickly and it is a grunt of decent quality.
The riffs I find to be a little unimaginative. The guitars retrace their prior steps so frequently during the same song, I wonder whether they should’ve hired a second guitarist to come up with more.

It just gets a little tedious. Of course, doom metal overall has songs that clock in at ten minutes a pop, so that is always a danger, but in the doom metal I’ve heard, this feeling was never as strong as with Terhen. They try to cover the lack of guitar inspiration up with clever synth and violin-sounds here and there, but it only partly works. More riffs, people!
As emphasised earlier, this album is very slow. In fact, every song is (seemingly) played at the very same pace. That can give you the idea you’re listening to one, 54 minute song. A little more variation would’ve been appreciated. I know doom has to be slow, of course it has to be; who thinks of death, despair, loneliness and futility with high-paced, happy music as a backdrop, but still: in slow, there is also variation.
From song three, ‘Last Moments’, onwards, Terhen mix up the vocals. The grunts of Jyri (unspellable last name) are now at times replaced by the clean singing voice of a woman called Elisa. Again, this takes some getting used to, but she has quite a good voice and it does fit the music well: a nice idea.

All-in-all we must conclude that while ‘Eyes Unfolded’ has its moments, it is too monotonous and can grow tedious at times. The lack of variation of pace and riffs are the biggest factor in me not awarding this album an 8 out of 10, but a mere 7.