Counting Hours

Emerging Melodic Doom Metal Ensemble

Counting Hours is a melodic doom metal band from Helsinki, Finland, founded in 2015 by guitarist Jarno Salomaa (Shape Of Despair, ex-Rapture) and vocalist Ilpo Paasela (The Chant), and later completed by Tomi Ullgren (Shape of Despair, Impaled Nazarene) on guitars, Sameli Köykkä (ex-Colosseum) on drums and Markus Forsström (The Chant) on bass. The debut album (The Will, released by The Vinyl Division in 2020) from this Finnish five-piece not only links their sound to game-changing acts such as Katatonia, Paradise Lost and October Tide but succeeds on evoking the lost feeling of the 90s dark and gothic music scene, mainly because part of what you get to hear on their fresh and intriguing 2018 demo was written during that era, embodying the original atmosphere and vulnerability only a band from those times could materialize. Salomaa comments on the debut full-length: «When we first started with Counting Hours, I basically went to our rehearsal room with Ilpo and had some beers along to record some vocals on the demo stuff I had made. Basically, nothing else besides creating music from the grounds I had made for Rapture back in early 2000. But anyway... Beer, good ideas (or damn bad ones) with a touch of Finnish-sweet melancholy combined with depressive music did hit us at last. After a while rehearsing and just a couple of shows, there was this very clear vision of continuing this path.»