Stam1na is another little-known (in my home country of America, at least) Finnish band introduced to me by my Finnish-metal-loving friend. They play a particularly melodic brand of thrash metal sung in their mother tongue; unlike more straightforward and technical thrash bands, Stam1na's self-title album is more heavy in its use of tempo and mood changes than riff changes. This is especially true in the first half, wherein the first change of mood usually comes a quarter of the way into a song.

The opening track, Ristiriita, starts off with a tumbling, crunchy riff and staccato vocal line that gives way to a longer, more drawn-out melody and a brief back-and-forth between the guitar and the bass, before the whole thing is repeated and the clean, triumphant solo cuts across the top. The rhythm of the riffs is paralleled in the vocal line; during the shorter, more stop-and-start riffing that tends to back the verses, vocalist Antti "Hyrde" Hyyrynen delivers his lines in a staccato, hoarse bark that smooths out when the riffs loose their crunchiness and the notes enlongate. The changes are usually repeated in patterns, although not always in a verse/chorus structure as might be expected. Even in those instances, the changes are executed smoothly enough that the overall sound of the song remains very cohesive.

The second half of the album sees an overall slowing down and smoothing out of the riffing, although the rougher tone is still there. Koirapoika especially has a more mournful tone to it (perhaps appropriate, considering the pathos of the title; "Dog Boy" in English), and Hyyrynen's voice achieves an almost sobbing tone at the beginning. The closer, Paha Arkkitehti, has both a return to the aggression of the beginning of the album and the most drawn-out passages.

Perhaps using the relative simplicity of their riffs and melodies as a canvas, Stam1na also plays with incidental effects in their drumming and vocals. Drum fills are allowed their own moments of silence from the guitar and bass, and several songs (Sananen Lihasta, Koirapoika) feature a vocal crescendo building from a very calm, almost spoken-word beginning to a frenetic, barely-controlled scream. Together with the tempo and mood changes, these incidentals create some engaging musical effects, making the relative simplicity of the riffs a help rather than a hindrance.