Keep of Kalessin

I once attended a Black Metal show featuring the fearsome Behemoth, the sacrilegious headliners Dimmu Borgir, and a relatively unknown band: Keep of Kalessin. Before the show, we had watched a music video of KoK’s because we had no idea who they were, and we all agreed that they sucked in comparison to the other two. And thus we went to this concert being only fans of Dimmu Borgir (probably because their music is most accessible), and Behemoth, because of their highly questionable morals and awesome technique, but for me that would soon change forever.
We arrived a little late into KoK’s set, and we were completely surprised by what we saw. Normally, the first band up was highly nervous, their music/technique still undeveloped, and thus no one watched and instead sat back and beveraged or stood awkwardly listening away from the stage. Instead, big mosh pits, the room was packed, and the band on stage was completely comfortable wearing black leathers and serious spikes. Being a band with a dedicated singer is growing less common in Black Metal, as several of the hugely popular black metal bands out there, including Behemoth and the infamous corpse paint wearing Immortal, have their singers playing tremolo picking solos simultaneously. And thus, I immediately was going to be critical of the singer’s technique until I heard the vocals. Complicated with wide range and the ability to switch effortlessly impressed me tremendously, the guitar riffs overlapping at weird intervals, and constant blast beats, by the time they were done, I was duly impressed. Needless to say, Behemoth and Dimmu were awesome, but they already have tremendous followings for their expertise, but for me KoK stuck in my head.
Many months later, actually a year later, I decided to go out and purchase an album by Keep of Kalessin because I needed something new, and I haven’t stopped to listening to that album since. The audiotech mastery is perfectly audible, and thinking about that live performance, I realize that its really impressive they were able to play as well as they did given the hugely complex layers, acoustic switches and different vocal gain parts. The album theme is very well written, Kollosus is sung from the viewpoint of a Sauron (from Lord of the Rings obviously) like character, and I had never thought that Spanish guitar would have worked in Metal until I heard this album. If you are interested in Black metal, I’d suggest starting with some traditional bands, like Immortal and Gorgoroth, but I that’s too simple/brutal for your tastes (too much tremolo picking, blast beats, black metal vocals that sound like a man is getting raped in the ass), the new wave of black metal bands like Behemoth and Keep of Kalessin are changing the face of metal. They have developed the genre from the one mic in a closet sound of ages past to something that uses classical music and opposes its theories with every chord and note.
Alex Hura