Horizon of Aeons have released Yksi Ainoa Ikkuna, a tribute to Agents, the Finnish rautalanka band whose version of the song most people know.
Rautalanka is the twangy instrumental guitar pop Finland took from the Shadows in the early sixties and kept long after the rest of Europe moved on. It is about as far from blackened gothic metal as a Finnish band can get without leaving the country, which is the point of doing it.
The band are candid about why. A few of them have what they call a guilty pleasure for this kind of music, and they rate the Agents reading of the song as one of the most unforgettable moments the genre produced. Their own version is offered as a way of honouring that sound and a piece of Finnish musical heritage that quietly shaped them.
There is a detail in the credits worth keeping: the composition is listed as traditional. The song is older than Agents, older than rautalanka, and what the band are covering is one group's arrangement of something nobody owns. For a band from Turku two years old, with one album out on Inverse Records, borrowing that deep is a confident move.