Kalmah – ‘Seventh Swamphony’ (2013)
Rating: 6.5/10
Release: 14 June 2013
Label: Spinefarm Records
Kalmah, a Finnish melodic deathmetal band that has a game in telling you everything about swamps. After spending years at the venues of Europe and bringing out several albums, it’s time for the seventh record of these swamp-men, so it’s their Seventh Swamphony. Turn up your volume to the max.
With a lot of guitar noise and melodic keyboards the new Kalmah works kick off. Soon we hear the melodic guitars too. A pretty common, though a catchy melodic deathmetal song. Over five minutes this title song will go on, Kalmah is back.
Smoking abruptly it’s over, but I didn’t turn on Children of Bodom didn’t I?
Deadfall actually sounds like an oldschool Children song… unless it’s very catchy and it really sticks in your head, it’s not really what I wanted to hear from them.
The third song is Pikemaster, and it kind of gives me the same feeling. Kalmah used to be about balanced guitar riffs next to super violent deathmetal, I miss the violence in this album a little. Pikemaster is quite a slow song as well, I just don’t like it as much as the previous album.
Hollo again sounds more like folk-metal with slower pieces and “heroic cleanvocals”, it’s not really what I wanted to hear from Kalmah.
With Windlake Tale Kalmah strikes back, great song, but the albums as whole isn’t as good as the once they’ve made before.
Black Marten’s Trace than is an amazing song, but the rest of the record just goes on, without much highlights.
Tracklist
- Seventh Swamphony 05:10
- Deadfall 03:52
- Pikemaster 05:04
- Hollo 07:20
- Windlake Tale 04:28
- Wolves on the Throne 04:36
- Black Marten’s Trace 04:45
- The Trapper 06:02