Mikseri.net

This here is the most depressive and hopeless music ever recorded. No “suicidal Black Metal” or whatnot can ever hope to reach the spheres that Mana Mana did during the brief period that the original band existed, their existence ending with the death of vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Jouni Mömmö in 1991 (guitarist Otra Romppainen later re-formed the band with different vocalists). Musically, I find it hard to place Mana Mana into any niche or genre, but I suppose they are best described as some kind of Heavy Rock.

The guitars weave a wall of dense, thick hopeless noise; the bass being the heartbeat void of hope or will to live. Upon these, Jouni Mömmö’s unpolished, raw voice commands the full attention of the listener with powerful lyrics expressed with soul, emotion and dedication. The lyrics range from songs about love to dark, sombre ponderings of life and death, always with a slightly twisted and deranged approach. Take as an example “Maria Magdalena”, one of Mana Mana’s most famous songs, a love song which begins with the lines “My girl was put into an asylum…” (translated from Finnish; apart from the four last tracks on this CD, everything is in Finnish), proceeding to tell how the “I”-person of the song will join here there and take an overdose of some drug. It is a hopeless, bleak and pessimistic world that Mana Mana evoke in their songs… a world into which the listener will be sucked for the duration of this CD, and will be marked forever. As the liner notes of this CD say, Mana Mana is one of those bands that religions are built upon… and, at the very least, Mana Mana is a band that will alter the world and reality of those who experience, not just hear, this CD.

This CD includes everything that Mana Mana recorded before Jouni Mömmö’s suicide, including a couple of 7”’s, their only full-length album “Totuus Palaa”, one unreleased track from the same sessions, and four English versions of some songs, that remained unreleased up until they appeared on this CD. Apart from those four English tracks (on which Jouni Mömmö’s vocals are very strange and “absent”, because, as the liner notes say, Jouni Mömmö was already too deep in his own world), this is one of the most outstanding CD’s ever released. From the beginning until the end, it grips the listener tight into its bleak world, and doesn’t give a moment of peace until the last track fades. And even then, it doesn’t let go completely. Something rubs off. The listener will no longer be the same person he was before hearing this CD… the world will be a little darker by the edges, a little colder to live in, and hold a little less hope in it.