Karma Violens
Serpent God
Released 13th April 2018
Black Metal/Extreme Metal
Released via Growl Records
Serpent God’ is the third album from the Greek extreme metal band Karma Violens. These guys have been around since 2002 and they have toured with bands such as Judas Priest and Arch Enemy. They initially started out playing metalcore but this album marks a shift in style towards black metal direction with a “gloomy and dark atmosphere” and it is recommended for fans of Emperor, Behemoth, Mayhem and Batushka. That description looks promising, let’s see how it sounds…
This is one of those cases when it’s fairly easy to detect where these guys are from even if I hadn’t read the information about them. Greek black metal has a rather distinctive sound – it tends to be fairly atmospheric and usually has at least some melodic parts. Rotting Christ, Astarte and Naer Mataron are good examples of this style. So Karma Violens are in good company.
There’s more than just a hint of black metal. There’s the slower, gloomy, atmospheric tracks like Serpent God which reminded me of early Mayhem due to the raspy vocal style. Then they occasionally pick up the pace with more aggressive-sounding, faster songs such as The Constractors where the guitars and the pummeling drums really take the reins. A Letter to the Worthless Chamber caught my attention as one of the more memorable songs on here, it’s got this “still creepy but almost catchy” black metal feel to it that made me think of the later works of Immortal mixed with some elements of Naer Mataron.
Overall, I am relieved that this wasn’t metalcore. Karma Violens were clearly aiming to create an atmospheric black metal album, and in that they have succeeded. ‘Serpent God’ isn’t a ‘flawless album’ but it definitely has its moments.
4/5
Iza Raittila
What I didn’t like to be wrong about was the duration of Tribulation’s gig. Sure, I knew this wasn’t a co-headlining tour, but since there was no other band on the bill, I was hoping for a little more than 45 minutes – especially when they have a new album to promote as well. “Down Below” was released in January and only a third of its fantastic tracks were performed – “Lady Death”, “Nightbound” and “The Lament”. Of course we wanted to hear everything else they’ve played, from their previous works, but we wanted more – hence the 45-minute slot not being enough. I remember the first time Insomnium played here, eight years ago, asking us to buy something at the merch stand in order to “help the little guys”. Here they were this night, not so little anymore, so let’s cross fingers that next time Tribulation come here they’ll be headlining their own show. And that it won’t take that long – even if there’s only 5 years left to complete the 8 since the first time they’ve played in Porto.
The darkness came back in full when the Police Academy theme echoed – Insomnium’s intro – but then went on. And on and on. There were only glimpses of a weak light during the whole performance of “Winter’s Gate” (in case you don’t know, the new album has just one 40-minute-long track, divided in 6 parts, although the second, “The Golden Wolf”, is subdivided in two). If the idea was to illustrate the long winter nights they have in Finland, congratulations, you’ve made it! Wasn’t the spirited vibrancy of their performance – and the matching feedback from the crowd – and it would’ve been pretty depressing.
Valkyrian Music 