The Amorphis sound is cinematic in scope and grand in scale. Their trademark is a stirring, folkish layering of gothic melodies across bestial death metal riffs (and the accompanying grunts and growls in their early days), creating progressive suites of stately songs that never lose their melodic purpose, even at their most brutal. There are choirs, banks of epic strings and occasional folk instruments—sitar, pennywhistle—to add further light and shade to their stories, most notably in the concept albums devoted to the Finnish epic poem The Kalevala.