RSS Feed


DEATH KARMA
The History Of Death & Burial Rituals Part I

Iron Bonehead Productions (2015)
Rating: 8/10

I’m often let down by deathly black metal bands when it comes to dark atmospherics, because so many appear to – to me anyway – have a tendency to be either rather derivative, too polished and contemporary or obsessed with being remote to the point of tepid. Nevertheless, Death Karma has released a cracking debut platter that has all the qualities required in making a fleshy blackened death metal opus.

These guys are from the Czech Republic, and they caught my attention in 2013 when I heard snippets from their impressive EP A Life Not Worth Living. The sound suggested a band that could marry speed and atmosphere, while also boasting effective dry vocal hisses, a scathing guitar attack and a clinical drum battery. All this was somehow tinged with a degree of originality though, as the duo that is Tom Coroner (drums) and Infernal Vlad (vocal, guitar, bass) – both whom are members of Cult Of Fire – churned out a rather pitch-black void of foreboding sneers and mocking rhythms. I’m glad the two-piece didn’t leave it too long in spitting forth another bout of extremity.

The History Of Death & Burial Rituals Part I has such an air of the arrogant and the epic about it that this chosen field is going to have to wake up and realise that Death Karma are the new masters on the block. From maniacal cries and disturbing passages of play (‘Mexico – Chichѐn Itza’), the band also melts together a peculiar, almost avant-garde texture of doom with those slow, churning black waves of weirdness melted together with faster, more routine death / black metal scathing.

Throughout all is very slick and yet still primitive, and one cannot also look past the haunting nature of the whole affair with the somewhat simmering grey forces behind ‘Czech Republic – Úmrlcí Prkna’, which soon becomes a raging beast before taking an unexpected turn into melodic plateaus to create strange, icy stirrings and again that joining of the metallic elements.

To call this blackened death metal would probably be insulting to the artists behind this. As one witnesses with opener ‘Slovakia – Journey Of The Soul’, here is a combo very much out on its own and somehow spanning centuries of Gothic history via the channels of its own emotion, which in turn are funnelled out via cavernous percussion, a truly punishing and relentless guitar savagery and those maniacal hoarse vocal gnashes. Whether implementing thrashier techniques – as witnessed three minutes into ‘Slovakia – Journey Of The Soul’ – or injecting a niftier, yet melodic hastiness coupled with traditional metal prowess (‘India – Towers Of Silence’), one feels that this is a duo quite literally capable of anything within any field of sound. Death Karma are very much the rulers of their kingdom, carving out enormous chunks of inventive metal that always remains heavy and dark while exploring all manner of subtleties for each track to blossom like some slowly altering manifestation.

With ‘China – Hanging Coffins’ Death Karma step well outside of the deathly black metal box, adding swirls of ambience and chilly Gothic splendour where weird voices echo through marble halls and those trickling, tingling chords suggest the presence of some unknown entity, but it’s not long before the drums march in with militant prowess and the black guitars glimmer with foreboding melody until we reach that catchy riff which embeds itself immediately.

Yes, it is a sort of black metal experimentation, but with that strong air of mysticism The History Of Death & Burial Rituals Part I is only a mere hint at what these guys are capable of. My advice is to let this album grow on you, because each track stands on its own two feet as a very separate entity from the last, and with each spin the album feels like a historical exploration into places one could only dream of visiting.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share