Insomnium release Netherworlds on Friday through Century Media. Ten songs, two of them already out as singles, and a separate high resolution edition on the same day.
The shape is familiar and still works. "The Cold Song" runs two minutes twenty and is clearly an opening rather than a song, and "The Hour Grows Late" runs past eight, which is where this band actually live: the long one in the middle of the record that takes four minutes to arrive at the melody it has been circling.
Thirty years in, Insomnium remain the most reliable band in Finnish melodic death metal, and reliability is the whole proposition. Nobody puts one of their records on expecting to be surprised; they put it on expecting the specific grey weather these four produce and nobody else gets right.
"Gleam in the Black" and "Arch of the Sky" were the advance songs. Both suggested a record slightly heavier than the last one, which would be the first movement in either direction for a while.