Band: Keep Of Kalessin
Title: Reptilian
Label: Indie Recordings
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: May 10th 2010
Review: CD

The history of Keep Of Kalessin isn’t the most regular one. Originally, this band started about fifteen years ago and during the late nineties, Keep Of Kalessin released two sublime full lengths through Avantgarde Music. Together with some line-up changes (and even a short break – founding member joined the live-crew of Satyricon for quite a while), their musical direction changed too. Both first releases were rather straight-forward Black Metal pieces, yet as from this millennium on, the blackened Metal evolved into a more accessible and modernised approach. Armada (Tabu, 2006) and Kolossus (Indie, 2008) did reach a wider audience.
Also their many live performances, among which an international tour with Dimmu Borgir, Enslaved, Satyricon and Behemoth, as well as playing on huge festivals like Inferno, Graspop or Metalcamp, made their worldwide status more and more important. And what to think about they being nominated for two critically acclaimed contests, Spellemannsprisen and Alarm, what about the extremely successful video on You-f*ckin’-tube (Ascendant, with more than 1.5 million views), and their live performance on national television with about 1.2 million viewers?

And then, suddenly, in January this year… Keep Of Kalessin took part of the Eurovision pre-selections. Yes, Lordi did start something a few years ago, and this is the dirty result: Black Metal goes popular, goes mainstream, goes cheap…
All right, my personal opinion isn’t of any importance, and yes, it was remarkable, but Keep Of Kalessin reached the final round, unexpectedly. And more… they finally finished third, with over 250,000 votes, with the track The Dragontower, a song that also appears on their newest full length.

Reptilian, recorded again at the Trondheim-based studio Morningstar, was, and that’s a new elements too, mixed by Daniel Bergstrand (think Degradead, Behemoth, In Flames, Defleshed, Angtoria and many, many others), which explains the powerful organic sound on Reptilian. And the album continues the path of progression the band underwent since the start of the new millennium.
Every track is powerful and intense at the one hand, yet at the other the continuous evolution into catchiness and wide-audience-ness is a (sad) fact too. Don’t get me wrong: Reptilian hasn’t turned into a poppy collection of mistakes; the former releases weren’t bad at all either, in spite of the ‘new’ approach, and this path seems to be endless. But it can’t be compared with the early years at all, anymore.
Anyway, the variation is one of the positive details, along with, of course, the excellent skills by Obsidian C (g) and his comrades Thebon (v), Vyl (d) and Wizziac (b) (a steady line-up since four years, by the way). Most songs do combine aggression with melody, and intensity with non-complexity. The tempo is pretty varying too. Sometimes the band slows down, then again they terrorise with lightning-speed. And the subtle, atmospheric keyboards are another important surplus. More than before, the whole sounds rather epic and enormously universal, leaving the early ‘Nordic’-oriented elements (think the band’s nineties-efforts) in total solitude and ignorance.
The sound of this album is direct and uncompromising and gasps a deadly, venomous air. And from time to time it even exhales a semi-gothic breath – think about certain orchestral parts with bombastic synths and classical choirs.
And what about that Eurovision song? Well, The Dragontower is a catchy song, shamelessly opening the gate to the surface, and in spite of its accessibility, it isn’t a pathetic Pop-song at all. Yes, it does contain a technical and melodic guitar solo, harmonious vocals, catchy mid-tempo riffs and an energetic rhythm section, but it doesn’t make me nauseous at all.

85/100

Ivan Tibos.