2026 Anniversary Series 094: Insomnium – Above the Weeping World

Scribed by Sandre the Giant Released: 9th August 2006 I’ll be honest, if it hadn’t been for one of the more evocative album titles of 2006, I may have skipped over Finnish melodeath icons Insomnium on ‘Above the Weeping World’, because frankly the genre was starting to creak under the number of bands coming out of everywhere. But I’m glad I didn’t, because this was an album that I really took to heart and a band that I’ve followed fondly to this day. Insomnium were never just another Gothenburg copycat which really helped, instead giving the record an almost cliche Finnish misery and gloom in its execution, but that is what left me hooked after all this time. Let me tell you just how that works, and why ‘Above the Weeping World’ has stayed a favourite for twenty years. When you thought of Scandinavian melodeath in the mid 2000s, your mind went to justifiably obvious places; In Flames, At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity. But Insomnium didn’t really go for that kind of sound, even if the…