The Tempest of Thoughts

Do you people reading these reviews have any respect for the sheer number of terrible fucking Crash releases I've suffered through? Do you know how much it sucks to go through mediocre fucking album after mediocre fucking album in pursuit of gold! Here's the twist in this story: THIS ALBUM IS NOT THE GOLD. IT'S BASICALLY AS BAD AS THE REST OF THEM. I NEVER LEARN.

I am now under the impression that the Finns can only make incredible music or fucking awful music. Admittedly, Kaliban isn't QUITE as bad as some of the goofy fucking Finnish albums I own, but it's really close. Kaliban played some sort of melodic death/power/folk mixture- the kind of thing you could only get away with in Finland- and managed to accumulate zero fans during their time as a band. There's a lot of kind of power metal riffs (Euro school, of course) but the vocals are more of a Gothenburg raspy growl, and then there's the little hints of folk flittering every which way, tucked in the obnoxious riffs and little acoustic guitar sections. Also, there's face-melting solos. What feels like twenty a song. They never seem to stop soloing or harmonizing unless there's an acoustic passage going on.

It's hard to HATE hate this because honestly it's just so fucking perky I feel like a total curmudgeon for not liking it. Basically it's the underground equivalent of Dragonforce: total candy music with zero content but a lot of superficial entertainment value. The problem is it's just so fucking SILLY; who can listen to this album and not laugh their asses off at the absurd shouted clean vocals and ridiculously over-adorned riffs. I don't think there's a note on this album which isn't harmonized fifty different ways. When Kaliban wants to slow things down and make it a little simpler there's only twenty guitars all playing the same lead at different registers. There's some entertainment to music this ridiculous but mostly it gives me a headache. There's even female vocals, for god's sake! Did they just try to combine as many Euro power metal stereotypes as they possibly could on this record?

Dumb as this music may be, I can't really smash it because it does provide a lot of entertainment despite how stupid and garbage it is. I highly recommend this to fans of the subgenre of stupid power metal. If you unironically listen to Kaledon like me, I think you'll like it. That being said I think I've made it through the whole album in one sitting exactly once, so take from that what you will.