Kahrmalia Project - Official Website
Misanthropic Euphoric Essentia |
Italy
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Review by Adam M on April 2, 2023.
This album has a gothic flavor that is bolstered by strong production values and slight dependency on a Katatonia-based approach. This leads to a very atmospheric type of album that has a strong reliance on the mood created and the band brings their sound to even a higher plane when they add female vocals to the mix. The overall sound concocted is one that has homage to gothic type of bands, but forges forward with an alternative approach that is refreshing to hear. This is all very dreary in nature and has a downtrodden feel to it.
The musical performances are interesting in that they pull off the gothic flavor nicely. The guitars are powerful and manage to set the mood of the album and the drumming provides proper character to the tracks. The vocals alternate between male and female ones and have a certain flavor to them that adds charisma to the tracks. All in all, the musical performances are good, thus could have been made greater, but fit the theme of the music quite nicely nonetheless.
The problem with the disc lies in its standard nature and inability to become something more which leads to a standard sound that never really reaches into the next dimension. It has plenty of gothic flavor, but never delves far enough into doom or other genres. Still, this is a solid attempt at infusing alternative influences into a gothic sound and even though it could still be more compelling than it is, it manages to remain interesting enough regardless. If they bring their influences out more, they could be even more successful than they are. Still, this does a pretty good job emulating Katatonia in a unique manner.
Rating: 7.1 out of 10
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