Customer Reviews

For the Revolution

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

 

 

Another Classic Melodic album at its best! This album features more of a variety in vocals. Kalmah uses their old high pitched vocals and their new but intense low vocals as heard on their previous release "The Black Waltz". The guitars and bass are just phenomenal in terms of how they incorporate melodies and heavyness. Solos are just great as well. The drums of course as always are brutal and so so creative. The keyboard is what suprised me the most(in a great way). I thought Kalmah was going for a more symphonic death way(as in the black waltz) but they actually mixed alot of their old elements, with new. They go back to using synths, but still use strings. A new element of the keys is a bell sound.(this is just one new element!) So this album is pretty much perfect. Old and New fans will definitely love this album!! Buy two!!

Not wanting to get too long winded I'll keep this short and sweet. First off, I keep hearing people say that Kalmah sounds like this band or that band. The fact of the matter is that I enjoy Kalmah much more than any of them. Amazing drumming, solos that don't sound like the ones in every other song, and impecable musicianship all around. While I really enjoyed "For the Revolution" on the first listen I still liked "Black Waltz" and "Swampsong" a little better. After owning the album for two weeks I've listened to it through about a dozen times and it gets better every time. So if you enjoy speed/thrash/death/melodic metal bands with killer chops and technicality without sacrificing musicality who stay true to themselves without getting boring then you will definitely enjoy For the Revolution and Kalmah's other offerings. Highly recomended.

Kalmah as been on a roll the past few years putting out great albums one after another all with something new and fresh about it. This new album "for the revolution" continues the roll of greatness. Its pretty much a mix of their last 2 albums. the vocals continue to have more of a focus on the deep growls like their previous album "the black waltz" but this time they add more of the higher scream screeches from their earlyer work in the mix too, but its still pretty much dominated by the growls (which i think is a good thing). the music this time is more riff orientated than their last 2 albums. less epic, but it still has its melodic epic parts just not as many as usual. the guitar playing is still great. many great solos on this album! same can be said about the keyboards! great keyboard playing. the drummer is like a damn machine very tight rhythem section in general! overall is is a amazing melodic death metal album with very talented musicians in it. i give it 4 starts simply cause its not up to the level of "the black waltz" that album was a masterpeice. this album still is great though give it a listen!

Ok, Kalmah has always been sweet. My first Kalmah record was "Swamplord" and I've been a fan since. This record is even better than their previous stuff (besides "Black Waltz") because of the guttural vocals being added. It adds a whole other dimension of brutality to Kalmah. So, solid release. But let's talk about these confusing a** lyrics. For starters, they compare Charles Darwin to Adolf Hitler. Uhhh, what? I don't know which Vladimir they slam in their songs but I'm pretty sure it's against some sort of silly communist/socialist ideology, which is cool considering I hate communists. But seriously, why would you compare Darwin to Hitler? I had no idea Kalmah was so religious. There's a lot of references to God creating the world and about how God's way is the only way. Their is also a song called "Outremer" which as you could guess, glorifies the Christian Crusades. I mean, the Crusades were pretty brutal and awesome, but it's just kind of weird coming from Kalmah. There's also a lot of environmentalist garbage thrown in. I mean, the lyrics just don't make any sense unless Kalmah are some sort of tree-huggin' Christians. Did I miss something from their previous releases? Did they find Jesus? I'm not some sort of anti-Christian by any means and I don't care what their beliefs are, just strange. Half of the environmentalist songs have lyrics that would seem to be written by some liberal college freshman after his first class with his pony-tailed, liberal, flip-flop wearing environmental studies professor. A little bit douchey considering there's no scientific evidence that industry is causing a climate change and most of the global warming fanatics have already crawled back under their rocks, defeated. Yet there is a ton of proof that man did, in fact, evolve from apes. But hey, whatever, this Kalmah release is awesome as usual, buy it from Amazon. Five stars. I love these weirdos.

Kalmah seems to be one of those bands that doesn't like to change their sound like some of those other 'lilly pad jumper' bands out there. Instead they just rely on progressing their music, as in just getting better with playing, song composition, timing, and instrumental blending. Alas if you lay out Kalmah's discography and listen to each one in order of release (probably with the exception of Black Waltz), you will notice that not only does the latter of each released album just sound more cool, but it is actually better than the one before it.

It is actually quite impressive how far this band has come. FTR is very instrumental, well composed, progressively thrashy melodic death metal at its core. And the vocalist has backed off some of the death vocals and threw in some more of higher thrash vocals like older Kalmah did. So with that said, I'll leave to you to imagine how outstanding For the Revolution sounds compared to its predecessors.

For The Revolution is definitely a nominee for album of the year but the reason I give only 4 stars is simple: ITS NO BLACK WALTZ. And if every album Kalmah put out sounded like The Black Waltz then it woundn't be that great of an album, now would it?

Yet another solid release by the dependable quintet. Not that I was expecting anything else.

I'll try to keep this short and not repeat what the last reviewer said. In this album, the lyrics are less abstract and more about war (or anti-war, I should say) and revolution. The title of the review is a line from "Holy Symphony of War", and the title track is an unrelenting brutal-yet-melodic call to rise and revolt. Some lyrics are cheesy/eyebrow-raising (e.g., Wings of Blackening), but I'm not holding that against them... it's melodeath after all :)

The drumming is exceptional as usual. The keys are used in wonderful cohesion with the guitar lines, such as in the track Outremer. One "downside" of the album is that there aren't really any slow tracks (with the exception of perhaps Ready for Salvation), so it's a somewhat energy-sapping 44 minutes.

If you're new to Kalmah, this may not be the best album to start at; Kalmah's high-speed melodic style is exemplified best (in my opinion) in Swampsong where the vocalist uses a (really awesome) lower pitch growl throughout (he switched to traditional death vox in The Black Waltz). For people who (like me) love melodeath but don't much like plain old death metal, start at one of the earlier albums and work your way forward.

Recommended tracks: For the Revolution, Dead Man's Shadow, Wings of Blackening, Outremer, Like a Slave.

Kalmah is a relatively unknown melodic death metal band. Their first three albums were amazing but suffered from the "Children of Bodom Clone" syndrome; that is a lot of people accused them of sounding like CoB. The Children only wish they were as good as Kalmah. To me, while there were similarities; Kalmah went for broke to get the "catchy" effect with the first note of every song.

Understandably, Kalmah tried to break free of the "clone" tag on their fourth album, The Black Waltz. With the album Kalmah successfully ended the Children of Bodom accusations completely while still managing to push their own sound forward. Gone were the shrieking vocals, replaced by growls. They managed to beef up the "epic" factor of their music even more. And the album was even catchier, in part due to even more atmosphere. Altogether, The Black Waltz was their best work yet.

So with their latest album Kalmah tries to change their sound again. Their fifth album is a compromise of the sounds of the first three albums and The Black Waltz. Does it work? Absolutely. The best thing about Kalmah has always been that their songs are able to grab your attention right away, and never let go. However, even though I gave the album a "5 star rating", I feel that is not their best work in part due to a somewhat "watered down" catchiness. With the exception of a few songs, the songs lack that "attention grabbing umph" that some of their prior songs like "Heroes to Us" or "Time Takes us All" had.

Certain songs like "Outremer" and "Dead Man's Shadow" manage to retain that classic Kalmah grandiosity. "Ready for Salvation" in particular deserves a mention... It is quite the beast, being simultaneously very slow, melodic, and heavy. If there was such a thing as a "death metal ballad" this would be it. It is certainly the most unique song on the album, and it may be the best as well. I hope that if Kalmah continues to try to evolve their sound, that this is the direction they push for.

All in all, the album was a let-down for me. It's hard to say that about a "5 star album", but then again its hard to beat high expectations. Kalmah stands alongside Nightwish and Iron Maiden as my favorite bands (strange company for a death metal band...), and like those two bands, even a mediocre album would be a crowning masterpiece by any other band. Fans of melodeath bands like Children of Bodom, Norther, Ensiferum, Graveworm, Skyfire, Eternal Tears of Sorrow, or even Arch Enemy should give these guys a shot.

A good album from the genera of Folk/Death etc. Catchy rhythm that sounds folky but keeps a death metal edge. The vocals are a bit week in my opinion with little range and zero clarity. This is the first Album from this band I have listened to.