(Spinefarm Records) Total Time : 42:57
Finland is great and very beautiful country. Extreme cold conditions and some of the best black/death metal bands begun their career from there. In our case, KALMAH with a slight change in their lineup and style, have gained a full decade in their existence. They are one of the few bands that don’t take too much long to release an album... This time in 2010 it’s the milestone for their 6th official release!!!
Taking in mind their first two albums “Swamplord” & “They will return”, KALMAH were on the top of the best melodic black/death bands those days. Unfortunately, as the time was passing through the hourglass, with every new release, their unique ideas started to fade out and repetition was one of their main disadvantages. This goes up until now, as “12 Gauge” is something like a bad copy/paste of their latest 2 releases, making the fans to feel annoyed. The only thing that might slightly change here is the background sounds and melody, which again cannot be compared with the feeling of their first albums. There is also a Thin Lizzy cover song, which sounds disappointingly funny and I think that even Philip Lynott (RIP) would feel embarrassed from that!
All in all, KALMAH is a band with great skills, but needs new ideas and needs to focus in more “raw” material, in order to do something really great in this decade. I think that if they don’t release so many albums and keep calm a little more, they may do it sometime…
