Review by Maciek on March 24, 2013.

Finland is a great place to create metal. With bands like Waltari, Amorphis, ...And Oceans, Impaled Nazarene, Ajattara, Apocalyptica, Children of Bodom, Ensiferum, Finntroll, Nightwish or Swallow The Sun you can say that the scene is filled with legends in nearly every kind of metal. And it's definitely hard to create new band which would become as successful. But it seems that one band may have a chance to become famous female Thrash trio and this band's name is Kamala.

Vocalist/guitarist, bassist and drummer released their debut album "Kamala Akka" on 1st of March this year. It is a Thrash Metal album with quite heavy sounding, low-tuned guitars and melodic vocals. Listening to this album made me think of it more like a promise of something to come than a release of full potential within the band. The production on this album is excellent and there are many different effects used on guitar and distorted bass sounds really good. But the overall album sounds a little raw. There are great riffs here though, and each track presents something different, there are many interesting ideas on this album and the vocal melodies are quite interesting. And it seems that when vocalist wants, she can scream pretty good. I like the scream at the end of 'Pakko' as well as the chorus in 'Anteeksiantamatonta', my favourite track on this album by the way.

Very good performance for a first album and showing a lot of potential within the band. And very brave of releasing album with lyrics in Finnish (very hard to translate to English).

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 7
Atmosphere: 7
Production: 10
Originality: 8
Overall: 7

Rating: 7.8 out of 10

Review by Adam M on April 11, 2018.

Harakiri for the Sky performs a nice post metal groove that has black metal elements to it. The music here has a shoegaze vibe to it, but doesn’t completely venture into that genre, but instead merely sticks to the two aforementioned genres. It is very powerful music that has a strong potency. Though it is very post metal in nature, the screaming of the vocalist and a dark foreboding aspect bring it closer to black metal.

Regardless, this is a very nice release that has a ton of beauty buried beneath its cascading riffs. The songs here drip atmosphere and go on for a long period of time. In fact, this is a fairly long album, but it gets the point across of crafting songs with depth and emotion. The passionate side of the band never lets up and drags across these 8 tracks to the maximum potential. The music of the band is certainly full of power and grace and never lets its guard down throughout. Songs like You Are the Scars provide a very solid atmospheric element that is constantly upheld throughout the length of the album. The problem with the band lies in the fact that if you consider them post-metal, then you’ll end up comparing them to the best of the genre like Cult of Luna. While this band falls a little short of the masterpieces created by that act, they do their best to keep up with them and offer fairly stiff competition. If you more favorably compare them to post black metal, then this album stacks up more positively. They simply have the chops to surpass the likes of Fen for the best in the genre.

However, you label this album, it is a very strong piece of metal that has the right level of emotion to compete with just about anybody. Fans of post metal and atmospheric black metal need to check Arson out post-haste.

Rating: 7.7 out of 10