Like an alternate soundtrack to the 2025 video game Cronos: The New Dawn, the new album by Onségen Ensemble feels like a cinematic world unfolding in real time. The band, originally a modest trio from Northern Finland, has evolved through shifting lineups and a rotating cast of contributors across their four studio albums (2016–2022). Now, with their fifth release, A Tale, they deliver a darker, more surreal vision that plays like an imaginative film projected directly into your mind.
The comparison to Cronos is more than stylistic. The album carries the same post‑apocalyptic storytelling energy, the kind of tales whispered around a campfire in the ruins of the Polish landscape. In a parallel universe, you can imagine Bloober Team giving the Ensemble carte blanche to craft their own score for the game’s world. And while there are unmistakable prog elements woven throughout, the album stretches far beyond that label.
You hear Spaghetti Western nods to Ennio Morricone, touches of acid folk, Crimson‑esque fingerwork, post‑rock atmospheres, and even the spectral electronic moods of Bowie’s Low on its second half. It’s a vast palette, yet the Ensemble binds it together with a sense of purpose and mythic weight.
‘Garden of Celestials’ opens with tolling bells and Vuorela’s harmonica crying out like a prayer to ancient gods. Mäkelä’s 60s‑tinged guitar textures drift into a cosmic Floyd‑like haze reminiscent of the Atom Heart Mother era. At the centre of it all, Vilma Pesola delivers a performance that feels ritualistic, a hypnotic initiation into the album’s unfolding narrative.
‘To Be Led by the Lost’ steps into territory that recalls Gazpacho, a respectful nod to the Norwegian group’s shadowy, atmospheric storytelling. Mellotron‑like vibrations hum beneath the surface as the track wanders into a ghost‑town stillness, setting up the introspective drift of ‘A Thought’.
Then the Western dust storms return. ‘The Word’ and ‘The First Causality’ gallop forward with martial drums, brass fanfares, and the unmistakable DNA of Bowie’s Low period. It’s as if the Ensemble picked up where A New Career in a New Town left off, only now the synths drone like distant sirens and the harmonica echoes through a night where something dangerous might be riding toward you.
A Tale feels like a collection of campfire horror stories, fables of revenge, survival, and the psychological toll of a world gone wrong. The album pushes into unsettling emotional territory, blurring the line between myth and memory. These are stories where consequences linger, where revenge schemes twist into moral reckoning, and where every shadow feels alive.
For Onségen Ensemble, it’s a bold undertaking. And what a challenging, mesmerising journey it becomes.
