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