### Kiuas: The new dark age

#### 10/04/09 || GardensTale

These guys are Finnish and they play power metal. Yes, let’s hear the groans and moans. Fact of the matter is, this comes closer to tasteful folk-y melodic death metal without any harsh vocals. Their debut, Spirit of Ukko, was the shit, not shit, THE shit, as in ‘it was fucking penis’. The blastbeat-riddled title track from there left me flabbergasted at first listen. Who knew power metal could actually pound your balls straight into your throat?

So what happened? The score at the bottom here doesn’t quite indicate a power metal masterpiece, does it? No, of course it doesn’t, cockjugglers. That’s because while Kiuas basically kept on playing that folk-y blasting power metal, each of their next albums started to sound like the discarded songs of the previous ones. Like they made 3 albums at once, filled the first with the best ones, then the next one with the ones they didn’t like that much, and the final one with the songs they wrote drunk out of their asses. And apparently, their drunk-out-of-their-asses songs all sound very alike, because good variation is pretty much absent and by the 4th or 5th song the mind just starts to wander.

The main irk is the songwriting. There’s just very little to draw you in here. Most of the riffs are pretty start-stop, the ones that aren’t lack the hooks this stuff needs to survive, to conquer, to fucking SHINE. Some parts are still like that, the intro of “To Excel and Ascend” is pretty badass for instance, but it’s far from the norm.

And to ruin what’s left, there’s “After the Storm”. Now, generally, ballads on power metal records are atrocious enough as it is. This is atrocious plus terrible songwriting plus they deemed it necessary to grab a random crappily singing chick to do background vocals. So this track has successfully surpassed atrocious and gone into the realm of traumatizingly horrendous.

The musicians are all competent enough, the production is crisp and clear and the singer is a very welcome change from power metal’s inclination to ball-less falsettos, but when that doesn’t result in an album that’s worth listening to more than twice (once to try it out and once to make sure it’s as weak as you thought, both time skipping the ballad my god please skip it for the hate of all that is unholy) it’s in the end just an incredibly mediocre album from a band who once started out with immense promise. My advice: just pick up Spirit of Ukko and pretend they split up after that album.

5 retracted points for that god-awful ballad out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Spinefarm
- Website: www.kiuas.net
- Band
- Ilja Jalkanen: vocals
- Mikko Salovaara: guitar, vocals
- Teemu Tuominen: bass
- Atte Tanskanen: keyboards
- Markku Näreneva: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The decaying doctrine
- 02. Conqueror
- 03. Kiuas war anthem
- 04. The new dark age
- 05. To excel and ascend
- 06. Black rose withered
- 07. After the storm
- 08. Of sacrifice, loss and reward
- 09. The summoning
- 010. The wanderer’s lamentation