Karelian Warcry - Kylmä Rautainen FLAC

Why does Finland produce so many good metal bands? Finland has a low crime rate and a good social system. They do consume a lot of alcohol, but so does their neighbor Russia, and I can't name any good Russian metal bands. Whatever the reasons, I am thankful Finland keeps producing quality music to fill my CD collection. Karelian Warcry is another example.

After some line-up changes, they recorded some new tracks and re-recorded some tracks off their demo and made this amazing CD. Though they started out as a black metal band, this CD is a blend of death and black metal. The singing still retains the black metal rasp. Grontti is a solid drummer and doesn't just blast - he varies the groove within each song. And unlike typical black metal, I can actually hear the bass guitar. The guitars are not tuned down into the mud, but still retain the heaviness that I crave. There are some solid riffs on this disc as well as some good melodies. The recording sounds great, even though this was originally just a second demo. The instruments have clear separation in the mix, but still retain a nice heavy sound.

Lyrically, the band seems to deal with topics of war and death. It's hard for me to tell, since the lyrics are in Finnish and I only understand a little of their language. The digipak contains images of tanks and bombers and some photos from the Winter War of 1939-1940. Like a lot of other metal bands from Finland, this conflict was an inspiration to their music. Along with Impaled Nazarene, Karelian Warcry would be the perfect soundtrack to a rematch between Finland and Russia.

This disc is a few years old and the band hasn't produced any more new music. According to their website, they haven't played a show for a few years. That's a shame, really, because there's just not enough Finnish death metal bands around. If you haven't had a taste of good Finnish death metal, this would be a good band to start with.