Entry 416 - Keep of Kalessin - Epistemology

 

I had pretty much lost all interest in this band after Reptilian. The Divine Land and Reptilian Majesty were both excellent songs but the other six songs were just not up to the standards that had been set by Armada.

A few years down the road I heard that Thebon left the band. While his vocals were sometimes good, they were often in a kind of hardcore shout that I felt clashed with the music. Obsidian Claw taking over the vocal duties was also another wrinkle I didn't know how it would end up. It was enough to get me to check out the new album Epistemology when it dropped.

Whatever I was expecting, it was not this. After a brief 1 minute intro The Spiritual Relief comes blasting in. Whatever energy was lost from the previous album was instantly regained on this track alone. Then the second surprise came in: clean vocals.

The Spiritual Relief is quite simply put one of the best songs that Keep of Kalessin have ever written. Its ten minutes long, has an urgency about it (mostly through Vyl's amazing performance on drums) that the band rarely has since the early days. The melodies are infectious, and the vocals... oh wow the vocals. This is a fully fledged high production black metal song with excellent clean vocals. They soar when they need to, get gritty when they need to, they fit the music perfectly.

Prior to Epistemology Keep of Kalessin had been losing urgency with every album since Armada. There were moments where the epic riffing would come in, but it was less and less as time went on. Epistemology brought that back. The album is filled with soaring melodies and large than life moments that make me stop what I'm doing and go "wow."

Every song on Epistemology has at least a moment where I feel the band is firing on all cylinders. Not every song is fantastic front to back, but there is more than enough here to definitively say: welcome back boys.