It was with some amount of sadness that I discovered Juhani Palomäki of Yearning and funeral doom band Colosseum had passed away, and with him both bands. With his untimely death Yearning's 2007 album Merging Into Landscapes became their swansong. It's a shame as both fell into the catagory of "awesome" and "nobody knows who the hell they are", but there are many a band that have fallen into those traps. At the very least the band go out on a high. Well, as high as being miserable can get you, some people probably get their kicks that way but I digress...

After an intro track we're hit with "Kaleidoscopic Inscape", the longest track of the album. It begins in a way not too dissimilar to fellow Finns Sentenced before going its own way with more blastbeats, keyboards and harsh vocals. It's a big opener that works well, and really doesn't seem like it's eight and a half minutes long. Next track "Sphere of Disgust" demonstrates the more doomy side of Yearning but also is the first outing for the female backing vocals that are employed to mixed success over the course of the album. Sadly this track isn't one of them, but they're not around for long but compared to their usage in "Dead", with airy vocal harmonies filling out the verses wonderfully it's at least reassuring that the backing vocals are varied in their application.

While the balance between the backing vocals is a little off the mix between the clean and harsh lead vocal styles and the gothic and doom parts is well put. The clean vocals are strong and take center stage for the most part, but he harsh growls are deep and put a fair few death metal vocalist to shame. Juhani Palomäki does a fine job performing everything on the album excluding drums, with some excellent guitar and keyboard work being complemented with superb drumming, a prime example being on "October Rain".

Merging Into Landscapes does have a few flaws such as the occasionally dodgy backing vocals and the unneeded instrumental tracks that aren't bad, but don't really add a huge amount to the album. As far as swansongs go, the band could have done far, far worse and it is most unfortunate that they'll not be album to reach the fame of some of their peers.