Artist: Riena
Country: Finland
Label: Signal Rex
Formats: Cassette EP / CD EP
Year: 2026
‘Miekka Ja Varjo’ is the first sign of battle of Finland’s Riena. The band harbors the talents of Draghn and Woewerb, the latter who you might also know from Iätön, Hatespirit and Serpentfyre. In particular in Iätön, Woewerb already expressed a passion raw sounding Black Metal, though in Riena that has taken quite the different direction than his other band.
While Iätön mostly employed a midpaced sound with strong keyboard contribution to dictate the atmosphere, Riena’s music is more dominated by the snarling and reverbed vocals. This is not in the least because they claim the most prominent place in the mix, more so than the guitars and drums. Obviously, the raw guitar riffs and sound add to the old school spirit, but the drums are rather distant in the mix. It gives the music this undeniable spirit of the 90’s, where the harsh sound of Darkthrone, the spirit of Les Légions Noires and the spawning grounds of later 90’s Finnish Black Metal bands meet. Whether it is coincidence that Riena is also the title of a Musta Surma EP remains to be seen, but certainly overlap with that band as well as the earliest works of Satanic Warmaster and Horna can be heard in the 28 or so minutes that comprise this debut EP.
Gritty Black Metal, often pulsating in pace with serious drive are interspersed with more melancholic riffing. While I wouldn’t necessarily call the band as riff-driven as Finnish Black Metal often is, they certainly have a knack for writing strong hooks and catchy rhythm changes. Add to that a sense of atmosphere that only very sparsely uses keyboards, and the end product is something that honors the unpolished spirit of those late 90’s. It puts it firmly in a place where Finnish Black Metal had taken its first footsteps on behalf of Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Barathrum and Archgoat, where Horna had about released their first albums and Satanic Warmaster had just formed out of the ashes of Pest. Raw punchy Black Metal with the sound of the Finnish underground is what you get with ‘Miekka Ja Varjo’, and needless to say, it’s an impressive start to the band’s career.
