Sans Parade (Finland) – On war (now) and On war (then) (dual single release)

I’ve been waiting for something epic to turn up in the email inbox for a while. I had a premonition it was coming.

After all, Don and Vlad are getting ready to meet in Somewheresville (why not Reykjavik, where Reagan met Gorbachev in 1986, surely the logical choice and it is halfway between Washington and Moscow?) to talk about the end of the Ukraine war and we know nothing is going to come of that.

Meanwhile, Bibi reckons he’ll take all of Gaza thank you very much and then hand it over to ‘friendly Arabs’.

And in the UK we’re heading for a little war of our own as pro- and anti-immigrant groups clash the length and breadth of the land.

War is here to stay for all the efforts of all the counterculture Beatniks the world has ever known. The Peace & Love, Man winds of change have long since fizzled out (you could argue they did at Altamont) and that seems to be the conclusion offered by Helsinki’s Sans Parade with the dual single release, ‘On war (now)’ and ‘On war (then’).

There is exactly the same degree of powerlessness and hopelessness on both the tracks as there is Orwell’s opening page of 1984 as the clock strikes 13. Or that Joseph K. felt with the first knock on the door in The Trial. A similar level of absurdity to that Meursault experienced at his mother’s funeral before he fled home to make passionate love to his girlfriend in L’Etranger.

The world’s spinning out of control and there’s nothing we can do about it.

‘On war (now)’ is bombastic to put it mildly with huge synthesiser chords booming out a six note tune like the giant spaceship did (with five) in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only these aliens are of the evil kind. Meanwhile Markus Perttula makes Richard Burton’s ‘War of the Worlds’ narration sound like he’s a choirboy.

It is six and a half minutes (there is a shorter radio edit) of evocation, if I might borrow from Anna von Hausswolff, and what is being evoked is the malevolent spirit of all pervading war.

In contrast, ‘On War (then)’ turns its attention to the subtler forms of warfare, signified by the synthesiser’s in your face melody’s replacement by an acoustic guitar while that synthesised sound becomes more ethereal, suggesting something bad lurking around a corner, like an IED.

Or the irritating buzz of the drone that will suddenly swoop out of the sky like an eagle and blow your head off.

The instrumentation floats like 1970s soft prog and the hidden menace that often lay within it. Think of psy-ops. Of false flags. Of cyber threats. Of huge electromagnetic pulses. Of Novichok. Of Treadstone and Blackbriar. Of breaching The Fourth Protocol. The whole treasure chest of war is here.

The two parts are musically contrasted but ultimately both are in the here and now, where we can’t shake them off.

The 11 minutes of ‘Now’ and ‘Then’ collectively make up an impressive body of work and Markus Perttula has the convincing vocal to enhance their veracity even further.

Sans Parade consists of Markus Perttula, complemented by the poignant songwriting of visionary producers Jani Lehto and Pekka Tuppurainen.

Towards the end I found myself wondering what he/they could do to top this. A full blown album extension of the concept here would go down a treat.

Or they could put words to Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony No.3 Finale. Then I remembered Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley had already done that. Oops.

‘On War’ is released today, 8^th August 2025, two days after the 80^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and one day before the 80^th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing.

Find Sans Parade on:

Website: https://sansparade.com/