Serpent God: Finland’s Death-Doom Metal Apostates Sound the First Horn of ‘Denial’

From the small Finnish city of Iisalmi, a new and potent voice has emerged in the country’s world-renowned metal scene. Serpent God, a melodic death-doom metal trio, will release their debut album, ‘Denial,’ on October 10, 2025, via Inverse Records. The announcement follows the release of three singles in mid-2024—‘repent,’ ‘oblivion,’ and ‘sermon’—which have steadily built anticipation, showcasing a sound that is at once crushingly heavy and hauntingly atmospheric, steeped in the grand tradition of Finnish doom.

The album, with its nine lowercase-titled tracks, promises a structured narrative exploring themes of apocalypse, psychological collapse, and catharsis. The release is not just another debut; it represents a significant addition to a musical lineage that is deeply intertwined with the Finnish national identity. The band’s own formation speaks to the organic, almost fated nature of this tradition, an artistic force that demanded an outlet.

The Birth of Serpent God

In 2023, in the town of Iisalmi in Finland’s Northern Savonia region, three musicians were at work. Samu Männikkö (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Juho-Pekka Lappalainen (bass), and Jimi Myöhänen (drums) were writing material for their established band, Se, josta ei puhuta. But as the creative process unfolded, something unexpected began to surface. A collection of songs emerged that did not fit the sonic palette of their primary project. The band characterized the emerging material as markedly slower, darker, and more unconventional than their usual output, according to statements released with the album’s early promotional materials.

This was not a deliberate attempt to form a new band or chase a new sound. It was an organic, almost subconscious, outpouring. In an interview, Männikkö, the band’s founder, described the process as one of “creative chaos” and “writing without a roadmap.” The songs that arose from this uninhibited state were too compelling to be shelved or discarded. According to the band, the material stood apart with enough distinction and strength that shelving it was never a serious consideration. The music itself demanded an outlet, a new identity under which it could exist. And so, almost by accident, Serpent God was born.

Rather than forming with intent, Serpent God emerged organically—an unplanned consequence of seasoned musicians creating outside their established framework. Straying from their main project, the trio allowed their ideas to develop without constraint, resulting in a body of work rooted in Finnish extreme metal but shaped by the atmospheric textures of post-rock, the weight of doom, and the unpredictability of avant-garde structures.

This unfiltered creative process did not produce a side project but revealed a distinct artistic identity that felt both inevitable and grounded in the cultural lineage of Finnish death-doom. Their formation affirms not a break from tradition, but a continuation of it—authentic, unforced, and culturally embedded.

Heralds of ‘Denial’: The Sound of Judgment and Oblivion

The first full statement from this new entity is an album titled ‘Denial.’ The album consists of nine tracks, all bearing intentionally lowercase titles, a stylistic choice that suggests a rejection of pomp and a focus on the subdued, intimate, and perhaps inescapable nature of its themes.

The album comprises nine tracks, each presented in lowercase—a stylistic decision that reinforces the subdued and introspective nature of the work. The sequence—‘denial,’ ‘repent,’ ‘oblivion,’ ‘sermon,’ ‘hollow,’ ‘fracture,’ ‘veil,’ ‘drown,’ and ‘ashes’—traces a progression from confrontation to dissolution, suggesting a deliberate psychological and narrative arc that deepens the thematic structure of the record.

The initial singles released from the album act as two distinct heralds, one proclaiming an external apocalypse and the other mapping an internal collapse.

The first single, ‘repent,’ is a declaration of impending doom. The band’s own description evokes biblical finality: “The sound of hooves stomp the ground. The Apocalypse is coming.” The track merges the weight of traditional doom with melodic sensibilities, anchored by slow-building riffs, layered guitar harmonies, and an underlying tension that alternates between density and atmosphere. Classic rock phrasing surfaces subtly in the guitar leads, offering contrast to an otherwise austere arrangement, while the production recalls the raw texture characteristic of 1990s extreme metal.

The lyrics confirm this focus on an external, cataclysmic judgment. Snippets like “Rise of the serpent, endless forms of the beast” and the call to “walk into a lake of fire, sacrifice, divine pyre” paint a vivid picture of a world on the brink of a final, fiery reckoning. It is a call to action—to repent—in the face of an overwhelming and approaching force.

The second single, ‘oblivion,’ shifts from outward destruction to inward disintegration. Described by the band as “not your standard power ballad,” it contrasts violent blast beats and aggressive screams with moments that verge on the psychedelic.

Opening lines like “Sliding through paradox, slipping away, grasping for darkness, last breath of air” signal a collapse of the self rather than a vision of worldly ruin. Cryptic phrases such as “Chase eternal serpent, fly high above the stars” suggest a mystical dissolution, further reinforcing the album’s dual focus on judgment and introspection.

A third single, ‘sermon,’ was released on July 23, 2025, with an accompanying lyric video created by bassist Juho-Pekka Lappalainen, further solidifies the album’s thematic architecture. The title itself implies a proclamation, the delivery of a core doctrine or truth. When placed alongside the apocalyptic judgment of ‘repent’ and the internal void of ‘oblivion,’ it suggests that the album is constructing a coherent, quasi-theological narrative. The use of a lyric video deliberately focuses the listener’s attention on the words, emphasizing their central role in the track’s structure and intent.

The relationship between these singles reveals the central dialectic of the album. ‘repent’ speaks of an external threat, while ‘oblivion’ describes an internal state of collapse. The album’s title, ‘Denial,’ thus operates on two levels: it can be read as the denial of a coming, external apocalypse, but also as the denial of one’s own psychological disintegration.

With the title track, ‘denial,’ opening the album, it is likely that this fundamental conflict—between facing the harshness of external reality and confronting the terrifying truth of the inner self—is the central struggle the record seeks to explore. This is not merely a collection of dark songs; it is a structured psychological drama, a narrative that magnifies a core human conflict through the powerful, melancholic lens of the Finnish artistic tradition.

Conclusion

Serpent God’s emergence reflects more than a creative accident—it underscores how deeply embedded extreme metal is within Finland’s cultural psyche. Their debut, ‘Denial,’ navigates apocalyptic motifs and psychological rupture not as genre affectations but as instruments of structured introspection. Engaging with death-doom as both a musical language and a method for processing inner and outer crises, the band contributes to a lineage where heaviness functions as a vehicle for clarity rather than chaos.

What sets Serpent God apart is not novelty, but precision—an unforced articulation of national mood, personal disintegration, and existential reckoning. Whether they expand this vision beyond the studio remains uncertain, but the coherence of their first offering suggests a project with the potential to influence how Finnish metal is interpreted and evolved in the coming years.