Review: loadown.blogspot.com

The new album from Norway’s Keep of Kalessin, Reptilian, is a compelling example of melodic black metal at its finest, and it easily surpasses their previous effort, Kolussus. Truth be told, I had been greatly anticipating this album after I first heard tell that they were working on a new album. However, after reading quite a few extremely negative reviews of the advance single “The Dragontower,” I started to fret that mayhap the new album would not deliver on the band’s precedent for high quality black metal. One particular reviewer made the following claim about the single: “No feeling, no atmosphere, no uniqueness, no originality, no true artistic merit whatsoever….another pure, defining example of a black metal band selling out in the most blatant sense feared…whatever you do, avoid this plastic-wrapped, candy-coated, all-purpose ‘Rated G,’ subhuman flotsam rock radio single as much as possible.” The sloppiness of the run-on sentences aside—which undercuts the review’s rhetorical efficacy, I might add—I could not disagree more with his negative thesis, as well as the implication that the band was mainstreaming (maturity should never be confused with mainstreaming) for greater commerciality. The song, as well as the album as a whole, integrates power metal elements that do, I will accede, enable Keep of Kalessin to be more commercially accessible than they would otherwise be, but fortunately most of the album's songs powerfully adhere to the symphonic blast-beat black metal template (as opposed to using only key elements from the genre, as many of the core-type bands do), such as "The Divine Land,” “Dragon Iconography” (great song title), “Judgment,” “The Awakening,” and “Leaving the Mortal Flesh.” The album does not so much as damningly deviate from the dominant symphonic black metal template as it employs power metal flourishes that add compositional variety to the album without dislodging the band's purchase from the genre, as “Dark as Moonless Night” and “The Dragontower” (love the chorus) creatively illustrate. But if the listener is still not convinced of the band's sincerity to the genre, the final song on the album, "Reptilian Majesty" (another great song title) should be the track that unequivocally convinces the listener of the band's sincerity, as it powerfully closes the album with perhaps its best song, as it is an epic fourteen-minute long song that has the creative endurance to avoid being tedious, which is often the case with longer-than-usual black metal songs. In what is so far a stellar year for high quality metal from multiple acts, such as Exodus (even better than Exhibit A), Nevermore (The Obsidian Conspiracy could very well be their best album to date—or at least one of their very best), Rotting Christ, 1349 (not their best but still compelling black metal), Cathedral, Negură Bunget, Abigor, and Carach Angren, Keep of Kallesin’s Reptilian not only joins this illustrious list but tops it. Reptilian is absolutely mandatory for fans of the band and genre.

File Contents:
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* Genre: Melodic Black/Death Metal
* Label & Catalog#: Indie Records INDIE033CDL
* Format: Original recordings
* Release Date: 2010
* Extractor: EAC 0.99 prebeta5/DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0
* Codec: WavPack/ISO
* Source: Original CD+DVD
* File Size: 469.38 MB, 1.79 GB, 4.31 KB
* Covers: All Scans
jpeg 300-dpi

01. Dragon Iconography
02. The Awakening
03. Judgement
04. The Dragontower
05. Leaving The Mortal Flesh
06. Dark As Moonless Night
07. The Divine Land
08. Reptilian Majesty

BONUS DVD: Making of documentary and live footage.
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