The dark shores of the Baltic Sea are home to sombre melancholy and a place where many sad stories have met their inevitable end. Yet in rare cases, new life emerges from the sea. More precisely, from the southeast, a compass point where the cave of Marianas Rest is located. The band invites listeners on a journey to a dark and disturbing, yet beautiful place that feels warm and inviting, but also haunting and hopeless. With Marianas Rest, it’s all about the mood.
Marianas Rest is a death metal band from the Finnish coastal city of Kotka. Their music is heavy and unhurried. Doom and post-metal influence their sound, but overall, Marianas Rest is a melting pot of all melancholic elements. Founded in 2013, the six-piece band has cast some serious dark clouds over the unsuspecting music world with their four studio albums released to date.
The despondent sextet has dealt intensively with the horrors of real life, much in the style of the grand masters of decaying misery Paradise Lost, Swallow The Sun, Ghost Brigade and Sentenced, to name but a few.
The band’s history is unique in terms of its message: ‘Fata Morgana’ from 2021 was the final instalment in a trilogy about deep-seated isolation, released in the midst of the pandemic, while the conflict album ‘Auer’, which came out two years later, saw the light of day at around the same time as well-known military unrest began. In both cases, the stories had been written long in advance. You can’t plan or invent something like that in advance.
In January 2026, the band returns with their fifth album, ‘The Bereaved,’ and a brand new record deal with the German label Noble Demon. It is a very personal story about death and the many forms in which the end can appear. We encounter these Finnish guitarists in the midst of a memorial service, tormented by the dos and don’ts of the bereaved, even though some actually feel pity for the living and envy the dead. Who is more blessed in such times, the deceased or the bereaved?
Although the entire band manages to surpass itself – from Jaakko Mäntymaa‘s agonising growls and screams to Aapo Koivisto‘s ever-haunting keyboards and Niko Lindman‘s destructive low end, Harri Sunila’s infallible right hand and Nico Heininen’s indestructible backbone – the most disarming element is undoubtedly lead guitarist Nico Mänttäri. He is not a guitar hero, but a true team player who masters his instrument with an emotionality that is impossible to describe without doing him an injustice. You can feel the heart.
As on their previous albums, the melodies are the key to a unique soundtrack for the ongoing battle against the dark clouds that seem to gather over us all from time to time.
Nico Heininen • Drums
The music of Marianas Rest, sometimes slow, deep and hard, sometimes a little faster and more aggressive, undoubtedly contains that X factor of Finnish DNA that combines melancholy and beauty on a level that makes your hair stand on end every time.
The band will celebrate the new album in winter and spring 2026 with a tour of Finland and Europe.
Marianas Rest return with their fifth studio album ,The Bereaved”! The LP will be released on 16 January 2026 via the new label Noble Demon. The album is now available for pre-order on CD and vinyl. Also available for pre-order are a T-shirt and a zipped hoodie to match the release. The album tells a…
Finnish death-doom metal band Marianas Rest has officially announced the release of their highly anticipated fifth studio album, The Bereaved, which will be released on 16 January, 2026, via their new label, Noble Demon. At the same time, the band has released the first single and a music video for ‘The Colour of You’ -…
