Surprises 2009: Karlahan - A Portrait of Life

Band: Karlahan
Album: A Portrait of Life (first album)
Genre: Sympho-Folk Melodic Death Metal
Country: Spain

Karlahan started in 2006, with a different drummer (Victor Marín) and a synth player (Ivó Castells). In 2008, Aleix Valverde took over the role as drummer and Ivo also left in 2008 due to the increasing complexity of the orchestrations.
Karlahan released a short demo called "Twilight" in 2007 with just two songs. After this release, they started playing gigs in Barcelona and surroundings and they even played at the Helion Festival in Munich, Germany. It wasn't until the 1rst of October of 2009 that they released their first album under the name of "A Portrait of Life". It was totally self-produced, and it recieved very good critics by the international audience.

In the last 20? years I could rarely say that I have found a nice surprise in relation with spanish music. This time, the band from Barcelona, Karlahan, have gained my favour with a not so common metal style in this land. They are playing a kind of Sympho-Folk Melodeath in the vein of Equilibrium. I'm sure with a better production and more support, they can make a great next album. The main bad point I find is in this "A Portrait of Life" is the lenght: 29 minutes included an intro of 3... the album finishes too fast.
Let's hope things can start changing in Spain because many of the spanish bands that are (and always were) known between metal public dont deserve that status at all under my point of view.
An interesting band to follow.

http://www.myspace.com/karlahan

1. A Portrait of Life / 03:28
2. Remnant / 05:38
3. The Harvest / 04:35
4. Involution / 06:49
5. Twilight / 04:53
6. Reverie / 04:51

Total playing time - 29:24

Here

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