Between the Buried and Me – The Great Misdirect (2009) Review 8/10

Here is a band I have a love hate relationship with. Between the Buried and Me is (musically) one of the best progressive death metal bands out there. The Great Misdirect is their sixth studio release and they have reached new heights on this album.

The music that flows out of this band is just insane. This is what Bach and Beethoven would have written if they had distortion. One guitar will start a line and the other will compliment with a different line. Soon we have multiple voices Read more

Kalmah – 12 Gauge (2010) Review 8.8/10

Something new just arrived from the swamp.  Kalmah’s sixth studio album, 12 Gauge, is here. The melodies are instantly catchy, the aggression is there, the guitars sound thick, and the singing is just as intense as ever. If there is one thing Kalmah is it’s consistent.

If you are new to Kalmah (where have you been?), these Finnish swamp lords play a technical breed of melodic death metal.  You can also hear a little black metal influence here and there, particularly in some of the vocals from Pekka Kokko and some of the more aggressive guitar lines.

I have this friend who doesn’t really listen to metal (he is still stuck on grunge) and the last few times he has stopped by I’ve been listening to Kalmah. Each time he asked, “What is this, some kind of video game death metal?”

The hooks are so strong and catchy that they sometimes do sound like something that would work in a video game. Mario would be so much cooler if he rocked out to Kalmah.

Let’s analyze for a moment: On their first few albums the sound was epic and aggressive. It was slightly raw despite the prominent keyboards. The songs were catchy but the hooks weren’t as defined as they were on their last album, For the Revolution. To me, 12 Gauge brings back some of the older Kalmah style and mixes it with the new sound. It’s epic and aggressive while featuring amazing riffing and catchy melodies. I also like that this music does not insulting the listener by being predictable or watered down. It’s Kalmah all the way through.

They do love to use the keyboard (as usual). Their keyboarding is always there to add depth and thicken the already catchy melodies. One of the beauties of it is that it never overpowers the guitars or weakens the sound. This is one of the few melodic death metal bands that can tear your head off.

I don’t think this is their best work to date. There are better songs on just about every Kalmah album to date. We do have some amazing songs here and an album worthy of the “Kalmah” name. I believe someone mentioned that they knew about Kalmah but never really looked into them. This is a good place to start and after you “get it”, go back and explore their older material. Thank me later.

8.8/10

In Mourning – Monolith (2010) Review 6.5/10

In Mourning plays very modern sounding progressive melodic death metal. Some of their more progressive moments bring to mind Opeth. This is about as good as they get on this album.

I really want to like this music more. There is a lot going on here and the subtly is there as well. That is something that really sets one band apart from another. The nuances. The atmosphere that builds. The layers of intrigue. Sadly, most of the material on this album is more monotonous than interesting.

I guess the biggest let down is knowing that the band is extremely talented. They know how to create atmosphere. I’m mostly passive about what is going on but here and there something will catch my ear. This when I know they can do better. They created something interesting and beautiful for 30 seconds and then it disappeared back into a fog of nothingness.

The Smoke is a great song. If you pick up the disc, start there. Again, I hear a lot of Opeth here.

I also want to note that the cover art was designed by our friend Travis Smith (he created the flaming earth logo for RazeTheWorld). He also does the cover art for Opeth… See where I’m going here.

Let’s hope that they get a bit more creative and dynamic with their songs next time. I know this band can be amazing, but here it is only slightly amazing.  I’d check out the new work from bands like In Vain, Be’lakor, or even Martriden if you are looking for something in this style.

6.5/10

New Kalmah Album Released Today in Japan (Europe on March 3)

Kalmah has a new album out today in Japan.  It will be released in Europe on March 3rd. I hate when they stagger the release dates. It makes no sense. The album will be online today.

The album is called 12 Gauge and it is filled with close to 43 minutes of their of blackened melodic death metal!

Here is a random video from their studio:

Enfold Darkness – Our Cursed Rapture (2009) Review 8.8/10

Enfold Darkness released their first studio album last year. Take somewhat technical death metal, add some great melodies, thrashy chord progressions, amazing guitar lines, and just a touch of black metal and you get Our Cursed Rapture. This music is a hell of a ride.

I am almost shocked to hear this kind of music come out of Tennessee. I know some hillbillies like to rock (I’m from Kentucky), but Tennessee is where most country and Christian contemporary music comes from. This is about as far as you can get from that rubbish.

When compared to similar bands, this album has clocked more playtime in foobar than the latest Arsis or The Faceless album. That is not to say that it is better, just more solid from start to finish. That is really my favorite thing about it. I can put this on and leave it. The only time I have to run back to the computer is during the track, “Exaltations (Part II: The Epitome of Grief)”. I always need to crank it up for that one. I should buy a damn remote.

Some of the guitar lines and intense energy sometimes remind me of Mors Principium Est (just not as epic or melodic). These guys shred. Fans of modern sounding technical death, thrash, or melodic death metal should pick this one up.

8.8/10

1. The Rise of the Greatest Fornicator 00:58
2. In the Galleries of the Utmost Evil 03:01
3. The Benefits of Your Demise 03:45
4. Our Cursed Rapture 05:48
5. Dead in the Brine 05:41
6. Exaltations (Part I: The Entrance of Hecate) 03:57
7. Exaltations (Part II: The Epitome of Grief) 03:16
8. Altars of Perdition (Instrumental Interlude) 01:59
9. The Sanctuaries 08:30
Total playing time 36:55

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

Eluveitie – Everything Remains As It Never Was (2010) Review 9.8/10

Everything Remains As It Never Was is here! Eluveitie is playing some of their heaviest and most melodic music. After one listen I have placed this beside Spirit as my favorite Eluveitie album.

I’ll get my complaining out of the way Read more

Martriden – Encounter The Monolith (2010) Review 9.8/10

Martriden came out of nowhere (Montana) in 2006 with a self produced album that sounded about as clean as any death metal album I’d heard before. The album will filled with awesome riffing and the tracks rocked. Some of my old “Logan’s Inbox” videos used their riffs as intro music (I sent them a Read more

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

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

Arsis – Starve for the Devil (2010) Review 8.7/10

In the name of Satan, we are forced to rock! – That pretty much sums it up. This album rocks. Every track rocks. The guitars rock. The vocals rock. The drums are insane. Arsis rocks and this is their most rocking music to date. You can headbang through the entire album.

Arsis plays technical death metal driven by their insane riffing (some of the best in the business). Here and there, the riffs sound like something Slash would do on a G’n'R album. It’s like the guitar has a voice of it’s own. This is, obviously, a lot heaver and way better than anything G’n'R has ever done. Slash would die if he tried to play something this insane.

Starve for the Devil might be the most rocking Arsis album but it’s not their best in my opinion. It’s really hard to pick a favorite Arsis Album. This is the one I will put on when I just want to headbang for a while. If I need melody I migt go with A Diamond for Disease or their last album, We are the Nightmare.

All in all, this is a must have for fans of death metal, technical death metal, thrash, melodic death metal, and anyone who wants an album that will rock the paint off of their walls. Get it now.

8.7/10

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

Rev 16:8 – Grand Tidal Rave (2009) Audio Review

8.4/10

Rev 16:8 – Grand Tidal Rave audio review:
[podcast]http://keepitmetal.com/audio/0006_rev_16_8_review.mp3[/podcast]

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