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

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

Megadeth – Endgame (2009) Audio Review

Sorry for the lame review!

[podcast]http://keepitmetal.com/audio/0005_Megadetth_endgame_review.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.
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• If you don’t have anything to say, don’t. We don’t needs posts that say, “stfu,” and nothing else.
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• 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.