By The Intrepid in Sounds — 14 Apr 2025

Into the Steam: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Finnish Saunametal

An apocryphal entry from the forthcoming edition of Lords of Chaos.

“Norway had the fjords. Sweden had the hair. But Finland? Finland had the heat.”
— Jukka “Kivikuumu” Miettinen, Saunna O))) guitarist, 1999

While Norway burned its churches and Sweden polished its solos, Finland did something stranger—it lit the sauna. In the smoke-thick heat of rural Kainuu, bands like Saunna O))) and Löylyhenget weren’t just playing music; they were conducting rituals, sweating distortion through wood-paneled walls as ladles hissed against sacred stone. Saunametal wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t clean. It was slow, damp, and hallucinatory—less performance than endurance. Tracks stretched into hours. Vocals emerged like ghosts rising from steam. And if black metal sought to freeze the world, saunametal wanted to melt it slowly, scarf by cosmic scarf, until the moon itself radiated warmth.

Where the Steam First Rose

By the early 1990s, the cold orthodoxy of black metal was beginning to chafe in certain corners of the Finnish underground. In rural Kainuu, where the forest loomed larger than any stage, metalheads disillusioned by Norway’s corpsepainted puritanism began to seek warmth—literally. After gigs, they would gather not in basements or bars, but in off-grid saunas, secluded and silent except for the crackle of wood and the occasional guttural laugh. What began as post-show recovery sessions slowly turned ritualistic: guitars brought in “just to noodle” stayed longer, distortion pedals were tested on sauna benches, and screams were loosed not for performance, but for catharsis. The wood-paneled walls did not judge. The steam muffled everything.

The first known saunametal release emerged from this haze: Hiilinen (The Coal One), a one-man tape project helmed by Kari “Hiili” Peltola, a forestry student and part-time sauna heater with a penchant for low-end frequencies. His 1992 demo, Kiuas Musta (The Stove is Black), was recorded entirely within a lakeside smoke sauna. Peltola placed a boombox beside the water bucket, draped a wet towel over the mic, and let a detuned baritone guitar drone across both sides of the cassette. Each track was 22 minutes of uninterrupted fuzz, occasionally punctuated by the hiss of ladled water and a low moan of satisfaction—or sorrow.

Though largely unknown outside a small circle of tape traders and sauna cultists, Kiuas Musta established the basic contours of what would become known as saunametal: longform doom riffs thickened by humidity, vocals buried in hiss and wood resonance, and a rejection of icy precision in favor of ritual warmth. The genre’s sonic palette drew from Sleep, if their amps had been submerged in bog water; from Skepticism, but without the funerary chill; from the tempo of humppa, drained of joy but retaining its lurching momentum; and most crucially, from the steady rhythm of water hitting stones—the original Finnish backbeat.

From this humid, moss-laced crucible, a new kind of heaviness was born. One that didn’t burn churches—but steamed souls.

Sauna as Sacred Space: The Philosophy of Heat

Where other extreme metal movements reached for fire and brimstone, saunametal turned inward—toward heat, yes, but also toward silence, repetition, and the slow unraveling of self. While Norway’s scene set churches alight in the name of annihilation, the emerging Finnish sound lit the sauna stove in search of purification. In the world of saunametal, the sauna was not a venue—it was a portal. One entered it not to perform, but to transform.

The guiding philosophy of the movement was not codified in manifestos, but emerged through repetition and sweat. Heat was truth, stripping flesh of ego as efficiently as it opened pores. Steam was the whisper of ancestors, rising from water to stone to roofbeam and then, presumably, back to the gods. The elk, ever-present in liner notes and lyrics, became a cosmological constant—a shamanic figure endlessly knitting against entropy beneath the moon, its scarf growing longer with each listen. In this way, knitting became resistance, a meditative act of defiance against the void’s encroaching chill. Scarves—first worn ironically, then reverently—evolved into metaphysical artifacts, often traded at shows or dipped in sauna water before recording sessions. Some claimed they held tone.

By the mid 1990s, interviews with key figures in the scene revealed a marked shift from traditional metal iconography toward geothermal mysticism. Words like löyly (the spirit of the steam) and kiuas (the stove) began appearing in place of inferno and abyss. One particularly influential 1995 zine article, printed in brown ink on damp newsprint, declared:

“In the sauna, all men are equal—and equally doomed.”

The phrase stuck. It was carved into wooden ladles, etched into bootleg cassette shells, and eventually became the unofficial motto of the movement. For a brief, humid window in Finnish metal history, to play loud was not enough—you had to sweat for your sound.

The Golden Steam: The Rise of Saunna O)))

By the end of the 1990s, the foundations laid by early sauna acts like Hiilinen had heated to a slow boil. What emerged was not merely a band, but a ritual movement disguised as doom: Saunna O))). Formed in secrecy by two former theology students and a part-time sauna inspector in the Kuhmo region, the trio eschewed traditional interviews, live shows, and even surnames. They claimed their music was not composed, but “sweated into being.”

Their 1998 debut, Saunnasmoker, was a seismic shift in the Finnish underground. Recorded live in a lakeside smoke sauna during a lunar eclipse, the album consisted of a single 88-minute instrumental—a slow, droning meditation on heat, loss, and cosmic insulation. The only interruptions were the hiss of ladled water and the distant baying of an elk. It was released on vinyl in a limited run of 111 copies, each packaged in hand-cut birch bark and hand-signed in sweat using a blend of bog water and charcoal. Side A was a 22 minute excerpt of the full track. Side B was blank. Listeners were instructed to sit in silence and reflect on moisture.

Despite (or because of) its scarcity, Saunnasmoker spread quickly—bootlegged by German doom forums, passed among tape traders in Oslo, and reviewed in hushed tones by Japanese zines that described it as “like bathing in sadness, but warmly.” A global cult following emerged almost overnight, drawn not only to the sound, but to the ritual architecture surrounding it.

The band’s defining live performance took place in 2001, at the now-legendary Sauna Inferno—a secret woodland festival deep in the Päijänne-Tavastia region. There, Saunna O))) performed inside a functioning mobile sauna built from reclaimed church pews and modified with subwoofer-heated stones. Over the course of a three-hour set, they slow-roasted an audience of 30 humans and one moose in what fans describe as “a transcendental sweat.” The event has never been repeated. One attendee still claims to smell feedback whenever they sit in a sauna.

While Saunna O))) was the centerstone of the movement, the löylydoom landscape was rich with other acts that pushed the form in bizarre and glorious directions:

Löylyhenget – an all-female drone choir who claimed to “sing steam into being.” Their sets were performed entirely in pitch blackness, guided only by the rising heat and a shared key of E-flat.
Turvepiiri – a turf-doom collective who buried their amplifiers in peat bogs, using deep earth resonance to produce sub-bass frequencies felt more than heard. Live shows were often mistaken for seismic activity.
Kivi ja Kuu – a reclusive duo who performed exclusively in candlelit ice saunas, blending ambient noise, throat singing, and the gradual drip of melting ceilings into performances that often outlasted their venues.

For a brief, glistening moment at the turn of the millennium, saunametal was not just a genre—it was a temperature. And Saunna O))) was the kiuas at its core.

The Crack in the Stones: The Kylmäwave Schism

By 2004, the saunametal movement had reached a level of metaphysical heat some began to call löyly decadence. The longform riffs, the scarf rituals, the reverent silence after each hiss of water—what had once been sacred began, to some, to feel ceremonial to the point of stagnation. That year, a new act emerged from the far north—Ei Löyly, a three-piece ambient collective hailing from Lapland, who declared their mission with frigid clarity: “Heat is a lie.”

Ei Löyly rejected the entire premise of saunametal. To them, the sauna was not a portal—it was a trap. Comfort, they argued, was complicity. Steam obscured truth. Heat dulled the blade of sound. Their debut album, Jää Ei Sula (The Ice Does Not Melt), featured no guitars, no vocals in any traditional sense—only glacial synths, broken cassette loops, and field recordings of ice cracking beneath migrating reindeer. It was cold, unrelenting, and in their eyes, honest.

The feud ignited quickly.

Ei Löyly’s diss track, released on an unlabeled MiniDisc and left anonymously on the windowsill of a sauna supply shop in Oulu, was titled Hirvi Jäätyy Kuun Alle (The Elk Freezes Beneath the Moon). It was a direct attack on Saunna O)))’s core mythos. Where Saunnasmoker had envisioned the Elk as a cosmic weaver, endlessly knitting warmth into the void, Hirvi Jäätyy portrayed that same Elk frozen in failure, scarf unraveling into a dead silence.

Saunna O)))’s response came just weeks later: a limited-run cassette titled “Warmth Will Outlive You”, wrapped in a real half-knit scarf soaked in birch oil. The tape consisted of a single 33-minute track featuring one chord, repeated endlessly over a rising wall of hiss, punctuated only by the slow, deliberate breathing of Löylyhenki. Fans claimed that if you played it in a cold sauna, the stove would spark itself to life.

Online, the debate turned molten. Heated threads erupted across Finnish metal forums and Usenet remnants. One infamous thread, titled “Is Löyly False?”, ran for 4,200 posts before moderators stepped in and banned the word “steam” entirely. In its place, posters used euphemisms like “the moist concept”, “heat fog,” and “what rises when water meets rock.”

The Kylmäwave Schism had split the scene—Saunna O))) and the defenders of löyly on one side, Ei Löyly and the apostles of freeze on the other. The line was no longer just musical—it was thermodynamic, spiritual, and deeply personal.

The stones had cracked. And in the silence between hiss and hum, a new rift was born.

The Decline: Ashes in the Kiuas

By 2010, the once-radiant core of saunametal had grown cold. What began as a sacred ritual of sound and steam had, like so many subcultural tempests, burned too hot—and then flickered out. Across Finland, safety regulations began catching up with the scene’s esoteric infrastructure: venues quietly banned sauna heaters, citing repeated fire code violations, condensation-related amp failures, and one unfortunate incident involving a ladle-induced electrocution at a Turvepiiri show in Savonlinna.

Meanwhile, the broader doom landscape was shifting. Ambient metal had entered a new phase of nihilist minimalism, championed by acts who viewed distortion as passé and volume as bourgeois. Saunametal, with its scarved rituals and steamy exuberance, was increasingly seen as an anachronism—too mystical for the cynics, too weird for the purists.

The moment that sealed the scene’s fate, at least symbolically, came without warning: Kivikuumu, Saunna O)))’s elusive guitarist and spiritual compass, disappeared into Lapland in early 2010. According to unconfirmed reports, he was last seen loading a van filled with elk bones, birch bundles, and unreleased vinyl test pressings onto a ferry crossing Lake Inari. He never arrived. Rumors range from self-imposed exile in a reindeer-herding collective to ascension into pure steam form. No one knows for sure. The remaining members issued a one-sentence statement:

“The stove is empty. The scarf is long enough.”

Decibel Finland wasted no time publishing a chilly obituary titled “The Last Löyly”, in which they officially declared saunametal extinct. They described the genre as “a warm fog that briefly obscured the landscape, then vanished without cooling the ground.”

Salt was added to the wound by the rise of Vastapari, a parody project formed by former blackened crust punks from Tampere. Their debut EP, Boil Me Gently, featured tracks like “Steamageddon”, “Birchslap Breakdown,” and “Drop C in 110°C.” The satire was pointed, but not entirely undeserved—some in the scene admitted the genre had “gotten a little too damp.” Even a reissued Saunnasmoker bootleg, pressed on wood grained vinyl, failed to reignite the stones.

By 2012, few dared to utter “löylydoom” in public. The scarves were folded. The kiuas stood cold. The scene, it seemed, had evaporated.

But as any sauna-goer knows—just because the steam is gone doesn’t mean the stones have stopped glowing.

The Resurgence: Löyly Never Dies

By the early 2020s, saunametal had become the stuff of whispered legend—its artifacts traded like relics, its lore half-forgotten in the fog of forums long since archived. But in 2022, the steam began to stir again. The spark? A viral TikTok: a grainy 57-second clip of a bearded man knitting a scarf in a smoke sauna while screaming in subharmonics. No context, no caption—just a low drone, steam rising, and a scarf inching toward the floor. Within hours, the hashtag #KnittingDoom was trending. The comments spoke in awe: “What is this?” “Why is this so heavy?” and “Where do I buy the scarf??”

Soon after, Bandcamp sales of bootlegged Saunnasmoker rips exploded, and original vinyl pressings began fetching €900 or more on Discogs, often wrapped in improvised birch-twine packaging. A new generation of listeners, raised on digital distortion and algorithmic ambience, discovered something elemental in the genre’s primal repetition and humid gravity. They didn’t just hear the music—they felt it behind their eyes.

In 2023, the long-dormant Bog Riff Zine—once the unofficial publication of the löyly underground—relaunched with a special resurrection issue:

“The Scarves Return”

Featuring interviews with remaining members of Kivi ja Kuu, a retrospective on Vastapari (now ironically embraced by Gen Z fans), and an exclusive photo of the van Kivikuumu allegedly disappeared in, now half-submerged in a Lapland marsh.

By Record Store Day 2024, the heat had officially returned. In a moment few thought possible, Saunna O))) and Ei Löyly joined forces to release a split LP box set, titled Lämpö / Kylmä (Heat / Cold). The packaging alone sparked pilgrimages:

Saunna O)))’s side featured a remastered edition of Kivet Laulaa, mutta Vesi Ei Vastaa, now enhanced with actual sauna crackle recorded on cedarwood tape decks.
Ei Löyly’s side was a frigid counterpart: Hiljaisuus Ei Pala (Silence Does Not Burn)—19 minutes of wind, ice field ambience, and a single scream at the end, so buried in static it could only be heard by placing one’s ear against a frozen stone.

Critics declared it “the löyly reckoning”, a tonal reconciliation that redefined warmth not as comfort, but confrontation. One Savusauna & Feedback columnist wrote:

“Heat without complacency. Cold without cruelty. The scarf and the silence, at last, entwined.”

The rebirth was sealed with the advent of Sauna Shrine Sessions—invitation-only doom concerts held in restored 1800s smoke saunas, attended by crowds of no more than 15. Cell phones were banned. Scarves were required. Knitting was optional. Steam was guaranteed.

What began as a whisper in the stones had returned as a hymn of heat. And this time, the kiuas was burning slow—but steady.

The Last Heat

“Löyly is not a sound. Löyly is not a place. Löyly is what happens when silence meets the body and refuses to let go.”
— Pakkashenki, Ei Löyly, from a 2025 interview with Savusauna & Feedback

The scene remains small, weird, and warmly defiant. Some say it never truly died—it just sat in the steamroom, waiting for the next ladle of water.

Postscript: The Kiuas Accord

“All conflict melts in heat. Unless it freezes first.”
— Jussi Lehtisalo, Circle / Pharaoh Overlord / Thermal Diplomat

By the end of 2024, tensions between Saunna O))) and Sunn O))) had reached a quiet boil. The second “n” had become a point of metaphysical contention. Some saw it as homage; others, as heresy. Forums buzzed with waveform comparisons. Discogs sellers hesitated. An intervention was needed—not of law, but of vibe.

Enter Jussi Lehtisalo: shapeshifter, absurdist, low-frequency diplomat, and undisputed wizard of the Finnish underground. Founder of Circle, avatar of glamdoomglitchwave, and longtime believer in the spiritual conductivity of heat, Jussi proposed an unorthodox solution: a sauna summit. Neutral ground. High humidity.

The Kiuas Accord (2025)

A Sauna Summit Between Doom Titans

Setting: A smoke sauna on the outskirts of Pori, nestled among birch and bog.

Inside:

Jussi Lehtisalo, robed in silver, mirrored aviators fogged with intent.
Stephen O’Malley, wrapped in a black towel, sipping fermented bog tea from a carved reindeer horn.
Löylyhenki and Kivikuumu of Saunna O))), seated silently on the upper bench, glistening and trance-bound.
A kantele bard, nameless, strumming quietly by the stones.

Jussi leans forward, voice barely louder than the crackling kiuas:

“There are riffs… and there are temperatures. We seek only… harmonization.”

O’Malley considers this. He respects the weight of the drone. He has meditated beside glaciers and held chords long enough to outlast thoughts. But the second “n”—it hums strangely. Like a misaligned pickup, or a false note in a sacred chant.

Jussi, gently, with a smile:

“The second ‘n’ is not mimicry. It is mitosis. A cell dividing in heat. It is the echo of the first, steamed into being.”

Saunna O))) offers a scarf.

Handwoven from wool, fog, and spliced cassette tape, it bears no name, no sigil—only warmth. O’Malley touches it. The scarf is humming.

He speaks, at last:

“Let them drone. But let them drone slow.”

They ladle water onto the stones together. The hiss is immense. It does not end.

The Kiuas Accord is signed that night, on a sheet of birch bark, with pine tar thumbprints and a coil of yarn sealed inside a cassette shell. The terms:

Stephen O’Malley grants Saunna O))) the benediction of the hum—an official acknowledgment of tonal legitimacy.
Saunna O))) agrees never to perform within 666 meters of a Sunn O))) concert without prior ceremonial notification and a five-minute opening drone offering tuned to O’Malley’s amp rig hum frequency.
Both parties agree to release a collaborative drone EP recorded inside a defunct municipal bathhouse in Turku. (Still unreleased.)

Jussi? He simply smiles, exhales deeply, and vanishes into the fog, rumored to have left immediately for a new side project involving yaks, VHS players, and a Theremin tuned to goat frequencies.

Excerpt from Savusauna & Feedback (March 2025):

“Jussi didn’t so much negotiate as conduct the event—like a one-man waveform. The steam pulsed with understanding. By the end, O’Malley and Kivikuumu were humming in unison. A new riff was born that day. It lasted seven hours, and no one left before the final ladle.”