Kardashev “Alunea”
Alunea will be released April 25th on Metal Blade Records
Shoegaze has begun to influence a lot of extreme metal in recent years. Becoming prevalent in the black metal scene with acts like Alcest, Deafheaven and So Hideous. Death metal & deathcore is starting to become influenced as well. With Arizona’s Kardashev becoming one of the torchbearers of the rising deathgaze scene. With their debut Peripety in 2015, the band began to gain a name for themselves with the fusion of shoegaze, deathcore and progressive death metal. The band broke through in popularity with their second album Liminal Rite. Fine tuning their sound to perfect precision and truly making a splash in the extreme metal scene with their interpretation and definition of deathgaze. Now, three years later, the band has returned with their new album Alunea. With such critical praise and fan adornment of Liminal Rite, how is the band going to top themselves with Alunea?
Album opener “A Precipice. A Door.” opens with a cinematic build of distant vocals and rising drones. Creating that ethereal, optimistic and hopefulness with clean vocals by Mark Garrett. Reverb-soaked drums by Sean Lang punch through the heavens as Nico Mirolla’s guitars instantly create that post-metal/shoegaze sound amongst the double bass by Lang. Garrett’s snarling, phlegmy shrieking comes in hard and fast as Lang blast beats through the opening verses. The sharp transition from pummeling guitars and drums to clean, atmospheric guitars is akin to how Devin Townsend does his transitions with his music. And Kardashev has done it consistently well through their albums. Garrett’s vocal gymnastics is a true talent. With angelic cleans and beautifully harmonized, before switching to his unhinged and darker growls, truly does highlight his unique talent in vocal management and control. Great opening track and sets the tone for the band’s vision and motif for the album.
“Reunion” opens with ringing bass by Alex Rieth amongst heavenly clean guitars and a mellow drum beat. Before mutating into an almost progressive/technical death metal opening guitar and drum combo. Deep gutturals and sniveling shrieks by Garrett can draw comparisons to Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation. I love the clean vocals lower in the mix, underneath the deep guttural deliveries, before rising from the depths and becoming front and center. Great production on the track, especially with a great pair of headphones, the bass just thumps and rings through the piercing clean guitars. The band goes back into high gear, with the bombastic, high-intensity playing. Bringing the listener back down from the heavens with a powerful thud. The contrasting sound of guttural death metal into beautiful, angelic post-rock/metal is done to perfection on the track. With the somber and hopeful clean guitars, contrasting with the double bass as the band drops out for Garrett’s clean vocals to shine was a beautiful end to the song. Especially soaked with cavernous reverb on it. Definitely my favorite track on the album.
“Seed of The Night” opens with the same bass presence as the previous track. I love the chugging, downtuned opening guitars. Though heavy and dark, somehow harmonized with the wailing clean vocals of Garrett before the darker growls come in. Complex in the performance and production, the song is an audio voyage into so many emotional depths that you could get lost in it. Garrett delivers a gritty, unhinged breakdown verse, before the blasting drums of Lang and the haunting guitars of Mirolla create this beautiful marriage of melancholy, longing and dread. Emotionally heavy lyrically and a blitzkrieg of so much musically, it is a heavy song in not only the metal nature, but just creativity and density in the music.
“Speak Silence” is up next and features Erin Dawson of Genital Shame on vocals. Driving drums and beautifully soaring guitars continue the deathgaze sound the band has perfected. Vocals are mixed perfectly on the track, with the cleans being higher in the mix when clean, but have so much bass in the growls. Creating that vocal contrasting with the heavenly highs and darker lows. Definitely reminiscent of the “Wall of Sound” production style, especially after the halfway mark. With the vocal feature of Dawson, it adds to the cinematic presence of the music and the dynamics of the instrumentation of the piece. I would love to hear this piece with some strings behind it, which I think would add not only so much more weight and power to the music, but also creates more emotion that I think Kardashev would definitely use extremely well in their music.
A gritty and nasty sounding guitar tone opens “Truth To Form”. The band is straight death metal with light shoegaze elements on this track. Though it does appear after the verse, the song almost is akin to melodic death metal. Especially with the vocal cadence and guitar riff. Which breaks up the formula in a way, showing the band doesn’t have to be sorrowful for every track. Garrett has so much phlegm and grit in his shrieking on the track. The slow down at the halfway mark has the band “bring the gaze” into the song. When it begins to almost duet with clean and growl vocals, it creates a nice juxtaposition and an inner duel with one’s self. Strings do show up near the closing moments of the song, but they are so buried in the mix that it makes it harder to notice them. it could have been louder to add more weight to the guitars. The song ends with rain falling in the background, echoing through a somber piano piece.
On “Edge of Forever”, we open with a thundering and heavy as all hell breakdown right out the gate. With Garrett at his lowest growl wise. With Mirolla adding the chugs, but also trying to rise above, while the bass and drums drag him back down to the darkest depths for the song’s somber and self-reflective piece. Rieth’s bass truly rings out throughout the section, with a dramatic drum build by Lang before the band turns straight black metal on the next piece. The vocal effects on Garrett’s voice is a unique choice (which I don’t think is needed since his voice is so good on its own), before he does his vocal gymnastics on the breakdown at the halfway mark. Lang’s cannon-like tom hits segue the next section into an amalgamation of the clean vocal sections in the middle, to a hybrid of the unhinged and demonic vocals from it’s opening. Creating an unholy union that wraps the track up in a nice, blood soaked bow.
“We Could Fold The Stars” and its opening cannon shot of a drum hit, hits the listener right in the face. With Rieth’s driving bass, accented by Mirolla’s chugs and soaring leads, the music becomes straight deathcore as the verse section begins. Garrett is a BEAST on the track, throwing every vocal technique in the book. From digitally-effected cleans, to black metal shrieking, to hardcore sounding callouts. Showing off his knowledge and vocal talent in full force. A very progressive death metal track in nature. Creative, dynamic, complex and intertwined with so many different genres throughout the five-minute runtime. Even the addition of Pawel JJ Przybysz on the duduk, a wind instrument, adds another unique layer to the band’s sound and instrumentation that shows the band trying to break the mold and fearless in what to incorporate into their sound.
The album closes with the track “Below Sun & Soil”. Building with an ominous and foreboding intro, the song’s instrumental opening creates an uneasy, anxious feeling as to “where are we going?” with this. Teasing the listener as to what is to come as they find their way through the mystery of the music. Then the commanding presence kicks in right before the two-minute mark. Drums lead the charge as the band goes balls to the wall for the album closer. High energy, distorted, demanding and unmitigated, Kardashev goes for the throat on this track. Growls are more dominant on the track, matching the blast beats and faster pacing. Before the track slows down so both growls and cleans can harmonize and combine into a beautiful marriage of good and evil.
Alunea is a great entry in Kardashev’s discography. Kardashev is a great band that is truly leading the charge on the deathgaze genre that the band is becoming associated with. I did like the record a lot, but I do think some of my critiques was some of the vocal effects on Garrett’s vocals. He has such a unique and creative voice in his clean vocals, but adding vocaloid or digital elements to his voice sorts of hurts the vocal performance. Potentially a production error, like putting Autotune on Aretha Franklin, it doesn’t add to the performance, more so dampers it. It is a solid record and if you are a fan of the band’s breakthrough record Liminal Rite, than you will definitely dig this record a lot and I can’t wait to see where the band takes their sound on the next record.
SCORE: 4 / 5
You can purchase Alunea on the band’s Bandcamp or you can pre-save it on Kardashev’s Spotify. Quick side note, you should definitely check out Garrett’s Youtube channel Kardavox Academy where he is a vocal coach and does vocal analysis on popular metal songs.
