February has Been an Epic Month

Eluveitie, Rotting Christ, Borknagar, Finntroll, Dark Tranquillity, Martriden, Burzum, Kawir, Whispered, Embryo, Shaolin Death Squad, De Profundis, Scythia, Daysend, Throes of Dawn, Jack Slater, Ov Hell, Nydvind, and Immolation have all released CD’s.

I’ll try to give you a one or two sentense preview of each one: Read more

2010 – Best of the New Year (So Far)

2010 is getting off to one hell of a start. January was pure insanity. Here are the ones to look for (IMO):

Ihsahn – After

Mother of God. This album is amazing. Vegard Sverre Tveitan keeps getting better. Now he is on an eight string guitar and the music is just madness.

Ihsahn is Read more

Foscor – Groans to the Guilty (2009) Review 8.5/10

Foscor is a black metal band from Catalonia, Spain.  According to their website, they exclusively play dark black metal. I fact, Fosor is a Catalan word meaning “darkness”.

A combination of melody and dissonance come together to create the eerie sounds of Foscor. The music is mostly mid-tempo and somewhat depressive sounding black metal. Dark black metal is a good way to describe it; I found that I actually enjoyed the album more at night. This it not the heaviest black metal out there. Think of a slightly more aggressive and darker version of Janvs. They also share some similarities with the depressive black metal band, Shining, from Sweden.

The music has a flow to it. The tempo changes really take the listener on a journey. At one point the band will be blasting and suddenly it will slow down to almost doom metal tempo. The vocals are standard black metal fare (and they sound perfect). They have added some spoken words and whispers during the softer moments to add dynamics.

The production is top notch. Everything is clean and clear. The bass and treble are perfectly balanced.

Some of the songs do get a little boring here and there but all in all this is a great dark black metal cd.

Check out their website for some sample songs: http://foscor.com

Verdict: 8.5/10

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

Lifelover – Dekadens EP (2009) Audio Review: 8/10

8/10

These guys sound like a messy rock version of Sweden’s own depressive black metal band, Shining. Check out the audio review:

[podcast]http://keepitmetal.com/audio/0002_lifelover_dekadens_review.mp3[/podcast]