Kalmankantaja / Iku-Turso: Ikuinen tuli (Album Review)

Kalmankantaja / Iku-Turso: Ikuinen tuli

Release date: 30. April 2018

Label: Wolfspell Records

By Xenia Kromann

Kalmankantaja and Iku-Turso are the two black metal bands behind this new split-album "Ikuinen tuli" that just got released by Wolfspell Records.

The first three songs on this album, are by Kalmankantaja. At first, it starts out with some grim hoarse black metal screams and insane catchy melodic guitar riffs that just makes you move your head all the way through the first song. Moving on to "Tuonelan enkeli" the second song, it just breaks out with some energetic riffs and hateful vocals. The same riff from the first song is played continuously in this song, and it gives you a sense of coherence, which makes it feel as if the song never ended, but that you are listening to one long song. On the other hand, the last song "Uhriveri" is a song with traditionally black metal screams and was, all in all not what I expected after hearing the first two songs.

This side of the album has some powerful instruments. And the fact that the songs are long, misty and catchy, I think this is strong recording from Kalmankantaja.

Favourite track: Valonkantajan nousu

Now the album gets turned around.

Iku-Turso starts out with "An Organism in an Azoric Era", which is the first track on their side. It breaks out with slow black metal riffs as an intro then it builds itself up with more instruments, with dim vocals and groomy screams in the back. A couple of minutes in, the song starts to go faster and faster with the dim vocals and the screams going back and forth.

The pace is rapid and extremely raw on this side. You even hear some keyboards mixed in with a lot of spoken words and even some kind of meoldy in the background of almost every song, that makes them sound enormous and gives a great feel to the songs. Compared to the other side, this sound is more old-school black metal.

Favourite track: Challenging the Chalice of Essence

We give this album