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

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.

Ensiferum – From Afar (2009) Audio Review: 8.9/10

8.9/10

If you haven’t heard Ensiferum you have probably been listening to too much American radio metal. These guys are the real deal from Finland. Their forth and latest studio album, From Afar, is one hell of a piece of music.

Ensiferum plays epic viking metal with folk elements. I really like the dynamics these guys put into their music. One minute the guitars are soaring and the vocals are in full assault, the next we are treated to an acoustic assortment filled with mandolins, guitars, and even a piano.

There are both harsh and clean vocals on this (and the other) album. The harsh vocals are now performed by Norther front-man, Petri Lindroos. I always preferred Jari Mäenpää. He who did the on the first two albums before moving to his new project, Wintersun. He sounds more like a viking to me. Lindroos has an amazing scream. It’s clean and full, just not as savage as Mäenpää.

I highly recommend this for any fans of epic metal, viking metel, and folk metal. It also works for fans of Wintersun, Norther, and Turisas.

Check out the audio review for a little more info and some music samples.

[podcast]http://keepitmetal.com/audio/0001_ensiferum-from afar-KeepItMetalRevlew.mp3[/podcast]

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.