Customer Reviews

Armada

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The brilliance of Keep of Kalessin is not their brutal riffing, blast beats, or their lyrics; at least not to me. I think this band is brilliant because not only can they play a variety of styles, but they can play them well! Whether it be black metal, death metal, blackened thrash or folk inspired acoustic segments with clean sung vocals, Keep of Kalessin perform like professionals of the highest caliber.

'Armada' is an epic album, with epic lyrics put to epic music. Though classified as black metal the music is much too grand to be constrained by one genre alone. 'Armada' is not one continuous blast beat induced, tremolo riffing, raspy vocals affair; rather its one staggering album that takes you on a journey through various emotions, war-like anthems, acoustic serenity, and back again. Make no mistake however, Keep of Kalessin are no Opeth clone, the acoustic parts are more folk-y, and kept to a minimum, but when they appear they are glorious and well executed. The vocals are predominantly blackened death metal, akin to Dimmu Borgir-esque, but there are also some rare moments of raspy vocals, though they are presented in a growl-like fashion. The guitars change swiftly from tremolo picking to death metal passages to black n roll like pieces; yet always remaining engaging and very technical. These guys are no mere third rate black metal band; their playing is both precise and highly technical. Guitar solos appear often throughout the album, and they are always necessary and never meandering. The bass guitar, though still muffled at times seems to shine during breakdowns and slower parts, with some pretty impressive bass lines. The drums are as you'd expect: fast, technical, amazing. The ultimate brilliance of Keep of Kalessin is that they never sacrifice melody for sheer brutality or an overly technical approach, and this is what makes them so viable and enjoyable.

No matter how technical and amazing a band is, it would all be for naught if the production wasn't up to snuff, which thankfully it is. Crystal clean, with each instrument clearly audible; even the vocals. Everything is mixed to its proper proportion, giving the album a true epic feel.

Highly recommended.

This album is a real monster. Their last EP showed signs of something of a scary magnitude that was building up. Now here it is, Armada in all its glory and rightfully deserved critical acclaim. This is the definition of a band revolutionizing their sound within extreme black metal and succeeding in keeping it pure. This is some of the fastest riffing you'll ever get to hear, it works for the sake of completing a song rather than make it sound fast for the sake of being fast. The same goes for the drumming, which is precisely insane, and right on the spot. The real accomplishment here is the songwriting which is epic, yet brutal and majestic, yet uncompromising. This is true black metal for the new age. 4.5/5

Yes, I'm well aware this review is very long overdue! I, more than anyone, am aware of that. That being said, you will see that I didn't feel the need to review this immediately upon its arrival because it was so good. Rather I was slightly disappointed in what came across my desk this time. However, this disappointment is actually rather minimal in the grand scheme, but it was enough to push it out of the top ten of the year (this was a strong year for metal). I know this is a fairly sad statement for what should have been amazing.

I think my incredibly high expectations for this release may have done it in on some levels, but in conversations with others I don't appear to be the only one who has come to this conclusion. Don't mistake me, Keep of Kalessin is rife with phenomenal musicians and if excellent musicianship is one of your major parameters for enjoying a metal album, then I simply can't recommend this release enough to you. Be that as it may, I will say the songwriting felt a little inconsistent on an overall scale.

The basic premise for this release was supposed to give listeners an epic movie feel. I have read interviews with Obsidian C and he commented that the albums primary influences are the epic movies like Gladiator, Troy, or Kingdom of Heaven. Even the album layout and booklet have a very cinematic feel. The band members look like they're going to perform in an excellent movie. If these were movie posters, I would want to go see that film. I would actually be pretty excited about it! So with that movie concept at the forefront he wanted to put together an album that gave an audio feel to those kinds of films, especially in the sense of their battle sequences. For the most part Obsidian succeeded and wrote songs that would fit this criterion quite well. So where's the inconsistency you may ask?

Strangely it's in the track length that gives it a very inconsistent feel. When you're listening to this album you'll notice that the songs that sound the most complete exceed six minutes. You'll also notice that the longest tracks are on the outside of this, which gives the middle section a rather unwanted feel. The compositional elements in some of the middle tracks also weakened the epic feeling the initial tracks presented us with. Frankly, I just plain didn't enjoy the song "Many are We". It has an excellent lyrical concept, but the opening verse vocally sounded far too much like a Pantera vocal influence. This simply has no place in a Keep of Kalessin album, it just doesn't fit musically, if I thought it did, I would say so. It clearly shows Thebon's vocal range and he's doing quite a bit better in this band than he did in his previous, but still, it gave the song an out of place feel.

Secondly, and by far the largest disappointment for me, is the song called "Winged Watcher". This track clocks in at just under four minutes, but the last minute is practically just an outro! If you're outro is seriously three fourths of your song, you need to write more! The riffs used in this song are spectacular. It could have been the greatest song Keep of Kalessin has ever written, but no, they had to fit it into a radio friendly time frame, so they cut it short. (They won't play songs over a certain track length on the radio, for those who don't know.) What would have been a smart decision was to delete "Many are We" altogether, take the time used for that and add it into "Winged Watcher" making it an eight minute epic of absolute glory! This epic track right in the middle of the album would've kept us buying into the epic movie concept Obsidian C had started with. Alas, this did not happen for us and we were met with disappointment at the lack of epic tracks in the middle of the album.

Okay, those are the major points I had against the album. Sorry to start with the negative, but you have no idea how much I was waiting for this release! With "Armada" we see the addition of Thebon on vocals. This was a smart move, because while I did enjoy "Reclaim", I have to say Attila didn't really fit this band's music. Thebon is a much better fit, but sometimes it feels like he's trying to be a diverse vocalist for just the sheer fact to be a diverse vocalist, not because it fits with the song. I will say that I think Ghash is a better vocalist for Keep of Kalessin. I don't know why, there's just something about the quality of his vocal tone that just fits perfectly with Obsidian C's songwriting and guitar style. It just works. Thebon is clearly the more skilled vocalist, but Ghash had a special quality to the vocal performance that Thebon just hasn't been able to emulate.

On that note there is clearly a huge divide between Obsidian and Ghash. This is more of a "fun fact" part of the review for those who care. They apparently did not part ways as friends because if you pick up the release by Aptorian Demon, Gash's new band, you will see how it's very anti-Keep of Kalessin. So clearly this guy hates where things went. I will say that Obsidian is being the more professional in this case and doesn't seem to pit the fans against the two bands. There's nothing on "Armada" that discredits Ghash or his new project. If there is a dispute between two musicians it's not up for the fans to reconcile it, it's between them. Frankly, leave me out of this; I'm not going to stop listening to Keep of Kalessin because Ghash feels wronged. I will enjoy both bands music in their own right.

Strangely we also see the return of Vyl on drums for this release. Yet he played drums on both "Armada" and Aptorian Demon's "Angst, Jammer og Fortvilelse". Apparently this did him in with Ghash and he is now out of Aptorian Demon... go figure. When you compare Vyl's drumming on the original albums against "Armada" there is simply no contest. This guy has seriously elevated himself into the realm of being a phenomenal drummer. I thought the drumming on the original albums was spectacular, but the performance on "Armada" is simply astounding to listen to! I have to say this truly is a musician's album all around.

Since I talked about the other musicians, I may as well mention something about the guitar work. Everyone is already well aware that I hold Obsidian in rather high regards as a guitarist. He's been writing spectacular Black Metal for quite some time now, but he really upped the technical writing on this particular album. This album is easily the fastest Keep of Kalessin yet, especially from a guitar work perspective. It's also incredibly technical, showing the skill with which Obsidian has the ability to play! He's definitely not being challenged in Satyricon when he's playing live, I'll say that much. Some of the guitar arrangements do border on Thrash based techniques, but just picture them ramped up to be even faster. It's pretty interesting to hear it blended with some of the very epic passages. Anyway, in terms of guitar arrangements this is a phenomenal album to listen to and you really can't go wrong with it in that regard.

Having epic music means you undoubtedly have to enter the realm of epic lyrics! I will point out that they definitely take on more of a fantasy air than keeping up with the spirit of the epic movie element. This is fine, because at least you don't feel like it's written like a rehashed movie. Its clear Obsidian enjoys the Fantasy novels and concepts, I would suspect, to the point where a man named Torstein Parelius wrote the lyrics because this album is primarily about dragons and wars between armies etc. I actually rather enjoyed the lyrics, being a big fan of Fantasy novels myself, so that was just an added element that really pulled me in. Oh and for those wondering where the sample from the song "Armada" is from, you know where it says "get my armada off the ground", it's from "The Chronicles of Riddick" movie. This is a very appropriate quote from a fairly appropriate movie that meshes with the album if you ask me, at least on the point of war.

Overall it's still a very successful album, but the middle seriously killed it for me. "Winged Watcher" was one of the single greatest disappointments on this album. The album opens very strong and "Crown of the Kings" is probably one of the best songs on this album! The middle brings us down, but at least we are rewarded with a very strong close. So a great portion of this album is very well written and keeps us wanting more. I don't know what's next for Keep of Kalessin, but I can only hope they harness the power of their writing a little more for even more refinement in their writing. I do recommend this album, it's definitely worth picking up in the end, it just could have been so much more in my opinion.