Sammal premiere Ylistys ja kumarrus video with Prog

Sammal released their third album Suuliekki earlier this month, and it’s a swirling, rustic homage to Finnish 70s prog – it’s no wonder that their band name translates to ‘moss’ to English.

They’ve just released their first music video from the album, for the track Ylistys ja kumarrus, that takes the viewer on an eerie, dark yet mesmerising trip. Guitarist Jura Salmi says of the video: “We wanted to make a video that was connected to the lyrics and the music, not just a bunch of Nordic hippies running through a field hugging each other wearing flowers in their head, and following the director’s vision.”

Director Arrturi Rosten adds: “Together with the band and with help of metaphor-fiction we wanted to create a story video, that would mirror the ‘metamorphism’ the band is going through as they try to sculpt their image from a slightly naive hippyish style towards more dark style. We decided that the best way to tell this story on a smaller scale would be a symbolic story video with subliminal elements, in which the group is trying to create images of themselves while trapped inside the dungeons of their own mind. The main inspiration for this was the case of Kaspar Hauser and sleep paralysis.”

Intrigued? Watch it for yourself below…

Hannah May Kilroy has been writing about music professionally for over a decade, covering everything from extreme metal to country. She was deputy editor at Prog magazine for over five years, and previously worked on the editorial teams at Terrorizer and Kerrang!. She currently works as the production editor for The Art Newspaper, and also writes for the Guardian, Classic Rock and Metal Hammer.