Weekly album: Kalmankantaja - Waldeinsamkeit

Kalmankantaja - Waldeinsamkeit

2016 / Atmospheric black metal, black metal

1. Hautamaa

2. Maailmankaski

3. Kalman kivinen kohtu

4. Vaeltaja

5. Waldeinsamkeit

btcarey:  I just recently found out about Kalmankantaja when I was checking if Wyrd (one of my Finnish favorites) had released anything recently. To my surprise, I came across a split from a couple months ago that I had completely missed. Kalmankantaja did an excellent job on it and I figured if the guys from Wyrd thought highly enough of the band to do a split release, then they must be worth checking out. As I dug a bit deeper I quickly found out that these guys were powerhouses! Over the course of about 5 years, Kalmankantaja had already released 9 studio albums and a slew of EPs and splits. As they say, “quantity isn’t necessarily quality” but in Kalmankantaja’s case I am thoroughly impressed by what I’ve heard.

“Waldeinsamkeit” has stood out to me the most so far and since it’s one of their more recent releases (early 2016, already a full length album, EP, and split old) I figured it would be a good choice to talk about. First off the band delves deeply into the atmospheric side of black metal. The guitar parts are mostly repetitive tremolo riffs (with plenty of echo), but do a good job of providing nice melodies to accompany the raspy vocals. One of my favorite aspects of the instrumentation was the synth. Mostly composed of two tones, one of which, very thin and bright, reminding me of wind chimes on a blustery fall day. The other tone was a much more ghostly, dark, background noise that just enveloped the music. Together, these two phrasings made an incredibly vivid atmosphere.

I would easily recommend Kalmankantaja to any fan of atmospheric or even pagan black metal. Fans of bands like Wyrd or Urfaust should also check these guys out.

Favorite Tracks: “Vaeltaja”, “Kalman Kivinen Kohtu”

Orostider: Kalmankantaja wasn't familiar to me even by their name before they were added to Steelfest 2017 line-up. While browsing through their Metallum page, I noticed their tendency to do splits quite frequently and it isn't common to release more than one album in a year so I had to dig into their info a bit more. 'Waldeinsamkeit' is the first Kalmankantaja album released in 2016 and they've already released another one this year. In 2014 Kalmankantaja released four albums which is a lot. This made me think of a chance that they are compensating quality with quantity, but we'll see about it. 

Kalmankantaja's black metal leans towards the more atmospheric and moody side of the scene. The positive side is that they are executing their style quite well and the quantity compensation I feared is inaudible. The problem is, however, the lack of creativity. The album itself is quite decent slab of black metal and there isn't really enough atmospheric black metal written in Finnish, but the music itself doesn't stand out from the rest of the scene. It might be just me, but in my opinion the amount of mediocre black metal has been growing a lot past ten years and it's really hard for a black metal band to offer anything new. So the imperfections of Kalmankantaja aren't actually theirs only, but the whole scene's.

The songs follow the common guidelines of atmospheric black metal. Simple repetitive riffs combined to slow beats and adding echo and reverb to the stack. I'm not saying that the combination is faulty or anything, but I'm hoping for something more even though 'Waldeinsamkeit' could be above average quality overall. The hollow synths used in 'Kalman kivinen kohtu' were a fine addition but I was disappointed of their overall scarcity. The synths are heavily present in the last instrumental track 'Waldeinsamkeit', but the track just proves that the cold and eerie synths should've been used more. 

Even though 'Waldeinsamkeit' doesn't really bring anything new to the table I can easily recommend it to people who are into black metal. The album is probably the most enjoyable if this kind of black metal isn't too familiar already. 

Favourite tracks: 'Kalman kivinen kohtu', 'Waldeinsamkeit'

tp5170: Waldeinsamkeit is what I'd call a pretty competent atmospheric black metal album. It's really entertaining stuff, even if it felt to me like they seriously should have pressed harder with the black metal elements on the instrumental side. It's not a major issue really, but the cleanness of it just hinders my enjoyment a bit.

Another thing about the album is that it gets maybe a bit repetitive at some points, and this is something I thought I'd never say about a atmospheric black metal album because we are probably talking about one if not the most repetitive sub genres of black metal, but they just kept using some of the same tricks throughout the album annoyingly often.

Minor complaints aside, the album sounded surprisingly good and the vocals are absolutely spot on for the album's atmosphere. Even if it's a lot cleaner sounding, Waldeinsamkeit reminds quite bit of Wyrd which is not a bad thing at all in this case.

I don't really know how this compares to other albums of Kalmankantaja, but I wouldn't find it surprising if this was one of their better albums.

Favourite track: 'Hautamaa'