Whispered – Thousand Swords review

Very few times have I seen a folk band that hasn’t included the now generic viking theme… slaughtering people through the Scandinavian area, traveling on boats to hidden lands, surviving the cold, we’ve all heard it before. But here is something new… a samurai folk band. Whispered is a melodic death metal/folk metal band from Finland, however, unlike most Finnish melodic death bands, they have an extremely innovative theme behind their music.

Thousand swords starts off with an atmospheric Asian intro in hajimari, it is quite an epic track, definitely something different. This preps the listener up for the following track, titled after the album, and also called Thousand Swords.  Thousand swords starts off with a very epic feel, chorus vocals and very fast guitar riffing behind it. The song lasts 7 minutes, and kept chills down my spine the whole time. The intermittent use of oriental instruments is fantastic on this track, definitely one of the best parts about this song, and the entire album.

Through most of the rest of the album, they actually kept an almost Power Metal feel in the instrumentals, however with extremely harsh vocals. These vocals are also about asian history, and samurai history, especially their fights, and honor. The instrumentals are incredibly fast, with power metal style solos, all based around the Asian oriented pentatonic scales.

Perhaps my favorite track on this album is  Blade in the Snow. It starts off with a 3 minute instrumental intro, moving onto an incredibly heart pounding and fast paced melodic death feel.This keeps up intil the last about 4 minutes of the song… let me put it this way – The last 4 minutes of this song is some of the best melodic death i have heard in the past 3 years.

I’ve listened to this album through about 3 times, and I honestly cannot find an uninventive or non-innovative track. This is my favorite folk/melodic death release of 2010, easily.

9.5/10

FUCKING ELUVEITIE!!!!!

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=101305868

Go here now, or… lots of pain… LOTS of PAIN!

In case you are f***ing dumb and don’t know who the greatest Folk Metal band in the world is, this is them Eluveitie. This is their new single and video from their upcoming 2010 album “Everything remains (As It Never Was)”

Sylosis – After Lifeless Years

This is Sylosis’ new video for their single After Lifeless Years this Music video is truly EPIC and metal as all hell! Check it out and leave your thoughts in the comment section, I may do a audio review on the album these guys put out last year later on this week.

Skyfire – Esoteric Review 8.6/10

Skyfire is a Melodic Death Metal band that incorporate elements from Power metal and Neo-Classical into their music. To this date they have four studio albums, Esoteric being their latest.

I have been following the progress of the band for quite a while now and have been waiting for this record quite anxiously. The album starts with a dark symphonic opener followed by the title track which is a more traditional Skyfire song. The first thing I noticed when it kicked in is the production, it improved a lot over their earlier work. While they keep the core Skyfire sound, Esoteric is home to quite a few changes sound wise. The synths are more subtle than you would expect of these guys but they are still very present and a very important part of the album.  They seem to have focused more on the guitars than on their earlier efforts as well, the riffs are solid, the solos are tasteful and the guitar melodies are really quite something throughout the whole album (I.E: the track “Esoteric”), one of the strong points of the album. The drumming is nothing ground breaking but does it’s job more than enough, same goes for the bass work on here. Esoteric also introduces the new vocalist for the band, Joakim Karlsson, he’s a great addition to the band. His vocals are more fitting for the music the band puts out than their former vocalist, Henrik Wenngren.

Overall, Esoteric is a great piece of music. While it may get a bit repetitive, the more than epic sounding guitar work perfectly harmonizing with the synths  makes up for it. If you’re into any type of melodic metal, make sure to check this one out.

8.6/10

Personal favorites and recommendations:

Side note: That cover artwork is wicked awesome.

Karlahan – A Portrait of Life (2009) Review: 10/10

Has anyone ever came up to you and said “Hey, wanna listen to some epicly symphonic thrashing melodic blackened orchestral folk-ish death metal?”. Well, with Karlahan, that is indeed the band that was used in the scenario mentioned.

Karlahan is a fairly new band being formed in 2006, and their debut album “A Portrait of Life” came to my eyes over at the Northern Warriors blog, and I decided to look into their music a little further. I had only seen a few comments saying that this album was perfect and great and so on, so I decided to see what made this so great… After hearing it, I decided it needed a proper review, ASAP.

The first line on the CD for the opening symphonic track was “The sounds you are about to experience were designed specifically to create a feeling of euphoria.” Now of course my first thought was that it would probably be a sort of lackluster slow paced opening intro… I was wrong. I closed my eyes about thirty seconds of the way in and just felt plain relaxed and limp in my chair, it was possibly one of the greatest symphonic pieces I have ever heard in my entire life. It made me wonder why this band had never come to my attention long before I found out about this album.

As the opening closed and it came on to the second track, all that energy I built up from relaxing turned into a big ass grin at the sound this band had. It wasn’t exactly pure black metal, thrash, symphonic, or anything of the sort. They incorporated a whole array of different styles in this CD. Not just the CD, but just a SONG. From trippy haunting solos that at the same time blend into the atmosphere and mix with everything else perfectly. Throughout the entire CD, Karlahan show true versatility working with different styles and sounds and bringing them together to create possibly some of the greatest metal ever made. (Purely opinion on that one, but DAMN it’s good.)

The men behind all of this great music is full of names you may not know now, but certainly enough in time you will. The line up right now consists of :

Toni Gonzalez – Vocals
Guillem Rejon – Guitar and Vocals
Jordi Bolibar – Guitar and Backing Vocals
Sergi Nuez – Bass
Aleix Valverde – Drums and Backing Vocals

I would say this album is probably one of the greatest listens I’ve had in a long while and I will be looking forward to their next album, and I wish the best to the band, hoping they get all the credit they deserve for this wonderful album. Normally I don’t really take people seriously when something is rated like this, but I really am seriously about to give this album a 10/10. This is a great show of talent and musicianship from a new band.

10/10

THUNDRA – Ignored By Fear (2009) Review 9.1/10

Well, where to begin…

Thundra, if you’ve never heard of them before, they are a mix of a few genres possibly, Most predominantly Black metal with great viking metal influence, and at times even a little death metal thrown in. The way they manage to mix all of this and make it sound like all of them but not like any of them is the amazing part about this band.
As for this new CD, “Ignored by Fear”, they don’t change much from their previous sound or style (This is actually a good thing, they are right where they want to be.).
Now for those who have listened before I will give a quick little thought of their sound, This album sounds a little more aggressive than their previous albums, and have a big step up in the production values, but still holds true to everything you know and love about them. As for new listeners, this is probably the first CD I would recommend picking up from these guys.
Unlike most of the other great Thundra albums, this one starts out generally slow and gaining gradually, instead of their normal way of being heavy from the start to the middle then slowing down for a fast end. Personally I think with their sound in particular this is a good thing. The new things they’ve incorporated in this CD is a few parts that resemble old death metal, and parts that have more melodic, even more epic parts that make you want to close your eyes and daydream you are a viking. There is even parts that make you want to start playing air guitar and rock out while listening.
I would say out of the other Thundra albums, this is probably the pinnacle of their career thusfar, and that I hope they keep heading in this direction, Rune himself really did a great job this time around with the guitar work, it is a great mix of atmosphere mixing with Nils’ great synthing and Haralds varied drum playing. Stevens clean vocals this time around sound a lot smoother while still retaining the same sound and his shrieks and growls have only gotten better.

I would say the standout tracks in this album are “Inner Struggle”, the album opener, and “Storm Within”, the second track and arguably one of the bands most aggressive sounding songs to date.
Overall I would give this album a 9.1/10 and say that it is a very good release in the right derection that I hope the band stays on.

“Augury – Fragmentary Evidence” review

Augury is a Technical Death Metal band from Quebec, Canada. In 2004, they put out their first album named “Concealed”. The lack of promotion for their debut album is quite saddening for they didn’t get the recognition they deserved for it; however, it drew just enough attention for Nuclear Blast to see the potential in the band, and to sign them. This is not the subject of this review though, so let’s get to it.

The last riff of the album kicks in along with a fantastic guitar solo, the sound starts to fade until there’s no sound coming from my headphones and I’m just left standing there…”WOW!” is all I can think of.

Fragmentary Evidence is an extremely impressive work of technicality, the musicians in Augury are all masterful at their instruments and it shows. The album starts off with the sound of thunder and rain, setting just the right mood for what is coming your way. The first riff kicks in along with the sound of the double bass drums, and then you hear it, the biggest highlight of the album: the bass. About 30 seconds in; the first vocals are heard. Brutal. Thirty seconds, that’s how long it took me to know that I was in for a ride.

The song structure on the album is really complex and unpredictable. It is filled with crazy rhythms and time changes. It can go from some of the most brutal music to beautiful acoustic guitar melodies in a split of a second. The guitars are extremely well executed, the riffs are heavy, brutal and relentless; the solos are beautiful, and technical. Yes these two words can go together, in this case. The drumming is tight, with some blazing fast blast beats as you would expect from a tech death album. My hats off to the drummer for the great fills and playing on the slower parts, lots of diversity with him. Now to my favorite part of the album: the bassist. Through the whole album the bass playing is simply amazing. Unlike on a lot of metal records, the bass doesn’t only supports the guitars, but in fact leads it on more than few occasions. The bass solo’s are also really refreshing in a world where only guitar players seems to have the rights to show off. The vocals are an other unforgettable aspect on the album, they are undescriptible (is that even a word?) , really unique.  One thing is sure tho; they are brutal as f***. Aside from the official Augury vocalist, there are also a few guests appearance, most notably Aborted’s Sven de Caluwé, Youri Raymond from Cryptopsy and Syriak and Leilindel  from Unexpect. The lyrical side of thing has not been put aside by the guys of Augury, they are intelligent and well thought. Definitively worth mentioning.

Now to the weakness off the album. The guest appearance, while a nice touch, seems inappropriate. They seem to just appear at the wrong moment and just leave you there wondering what you just heard. Don’t get me wrong, these are all talented vocalists, just maybe not fitting.

Bottom line, Fragmentary Evidence is as technical and brutal as it can get, it is diverse and won’t let you bored after a few songs thinking you heard it all in the first few minutes. However, the guests appearances on the vocals may feel a bit out of place.

9/10

EDIT: This is my first review, please post what you think about it and what could be improved.

Keep it Metal User Manual

Here is how this place works (I am tired so this is gonna be messy).

Most of the site is controlled through he black bar across the top. You can register, edit your profile, and compose blogs here. Be sure to fill our your profile, upload an avatar, and click around a bit.

If you want to write a blog, review, article, etc. there are rules.

• If it’s not about metal it doesn’t go on the main page. You can discuss it in the forum.
• Use tags!
• Users are not allowed to use the “Keep it Metal” categories (“Official News/ Blog” and Official Review”). Those categories are not for the community.
• Use any other categories that apply.
• If you want your article to show on the main page be sure to select the “Community” category.

Comments and blogs are synced to the forum. If you like the forum better you can just live there.

Rules:

• No trolling. This is not gameriot. I will ban. If you want to be funny, play the pic war.
• No porn, no illegal stuff (links to torrents, etc.)
• If you don’t have anything to say, don’t. We don’t needs posts that say, “stfu,” and nothing else.
• No alternate accounts.
• No threats.
• Sig may be 800px x 120px, no larger.
• Keep It Metal

If you want your avatar to show up in the forum you have to actually go into the forum and edit your profile. You will need to copy the image location from your avatar on the wordpress site and paste it into your profile on the forum. It’s kinda stupid and we will fix this soon.

If you want to create a wiki article you need to write a normal blog article and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. You will see options to turn your post into a wiki page. If your post is a wiki page the h2 tags will be headers in the table of contents and the h3 will be sub-headers.

Now… let me know if there are bugs.