KEKAL

Kekal have been around for two decades, but this may be their best album yet. The band's signature sound of complex black metal, catchy pop sensibilities, and wonky electronics comes together in a way more balanced than anything else I've previously heard from them. This is a huge improvement over their last release, 2015's Multilateral, which was an uneven effort. Throughout much of this band's discography, they've often had a hard time getting the black metal and electronic influences to meld effectively.

Here, however, Kekal have dialed back the electronic elements of their sound. Bloops and bleeps are saved for interludes and building texture and atmosphere. It's rare for synthesizers to take the spotlight for any extended period of time. This isn't some purely black metal shredfest, either. Yes, a lot of the metal here is extreme, but the band also mixes in gentler sounds, ample interludes, and surprisingly accessible moments.

The lyrics are highly political, as they always are with Kekal. The band addresses topics such as wealth inequality, religious hypocrisy, environmentalism, and anticapitalism. They're unsubtle as hell, so Kekal won't win any awards for wordsmanship, but that just means there's less room for ambiguity. If the point is for the listener to hear what they're saying, they've accomplished that goal.

The opening track, "Root of All Evil", is one of the best songs on the album. It starts with thunderous drums and crushing walls of guitar before transitioning to a slower, jazzier verse with heavily-phased vocals. The chorus is massive and ominous, an excellent choice for a song addressing the social ills of capitalism. The electronic interlude starts off awkwardly, but it recovers quickly. Warbling synths eventually give way to a twisting guitar solo before closing with a reprise of the heaviest part of the song's opening.

"Sanity Away from Sanity", the second track, is a better example of how Kekal fuse black metal with electronics. The song opens with synth loops, and the harsh, blastbeat-laden verses are supported with synthesizers that effortlessly glide over the chaos.

"The Many Faces of Your Face" offers perhaps the fullest integration of the two genres. The first two minutes see slashing guitar lines atop a drum loop with pulsing synths. The song's conclusion reverses this formula, with the metal elements coming to the fore and keys taking on a supporting role.

This wouldn't be a Kekal album with a seemingly out-of-place pop song. "Revealment" features a wave of distorted guitars throughout the song, and the middle eight is undeniably black metal. But this is not a metal song. It's a damn good pop song with a black metal interlude. This piece is an absolute earworm.

"Triple Evil", the album's penultimate track, is the weakest one here. It's a moody, atmospheric interlude. It's material like this which has frequently bogged down past Kekal records. It's a necessary palette cleanser, but it could have been shortened or given more focus.

"End of Hegemony" is a fantastic closer and in some ways acts as an encapsulation of the album as a whole. It careens from tremolo-picked riffs underpinned with honking synthesizers to polyrhythmic electronic breaks and back to metallic shredding at a moment's notice.

If you're a fan of weird, experimental, extreme metal; political music; or both, I cannot recommend this album enough. This was my personal favorite metal album of 2018.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/01/14/album-review-kekal-deeper-underground/

Kekal's 2012 release Autonomy is a mixture of post-metal and modern avant-gardeish electronic music, a concept I can't say I'm too familiar with. The tracks are mostly enjoyable, especially when they stick to the heavier side of things like on the opening "Rare Earth Elements" and on "Disposable Man". Sometimes the focus is lost for a while, mainly on more electronic oriented interlude parts such as "iComa". When it returns, the band shows themselves being capable of constructing strong riffs and compositions with enough experimental attitude to keep things interesting. Those who like their metal served with some less generic influences may find Autonomy quite worth checking out. So, not exactly my cup of tea but a good album nevertheless.

This EP might not exactly be the best introduction to the Indonesian band/project Kekal, but as it's their latest one I decided to tackle it first. The first song "Dividend In Division" is from the new album that is scheduled for release in 2015, and it is a solid track with interesting riffs and nice lyrical output. The next three tracks are best not mentioned much, as they don't seem to be much more than boring, even irritating electronic noodling. In the last song "The God Particle" Kekal gets back on track, and there are some quite nice bubbling motions and experimental sounds which create an interesting atmosphere. 2 stars seems quite fitting for this release.

It is quite evident from a first listen what the case is here: a "single"-type release with one track from Kekal's forthcoming release and four electronic-music tracks that only serve as fillers in order to give this release some existence.

'Dividend in Division' opens the EP and is the only track worth of further analysis. It begins with a "techno" sounding keyboard but soon the heavy guitars take over on an experimental/punky riffology on a rather annoying drum-programming sound. However, the vocal melody is fairly decent and saves it from disaster. The techno vibes continue throughout even when a strong (but short) guitar solo kicks in and another proggier section leads it to its conclusion. Although not a complete composition, it entails a couple of interesting ideas.

Tracks 2 to 5 represent what I would call a pointless electronica experimentation with atonal passages and pure programming - even the addition of (any) keyboards would help give this some life. The only exception appears at a couple of minutes in the closing track where a layered guitar melody and a dreamy vocal section accompany the beat with some success. The joy lasts for about only 60 seconds or so...

With a single experimental/electronic-metal track there is not much here to recommend. Conclusion: Avoid or give it a go if you are a fan of such music as the EP is (still) free to download.

Indonesian Electronic Metal Mishmash

Kekal is an Indonesian Experimental Metal Band that has slowly hemorrhaged members since its beginnings in 1995 up to this 2008 album where the band consisted of two members, each contributing vocals, guitars, and programming. Programming should be emphasized for this album is primarily an experiment in the use of samplers and overdubs. While the band still injects metal elements into the music, the electronics often overwhelm the sound with mixed results. AUDIBLE MINORITY was available for free download, so I decided to give it a try. The album certainly has some interesting moments, but when I read that it was spawned from some "underground" I translate "basement." This is somewhat unfair, but there is a sense of amateurism to this collection of songs.

The music itself is pretty eclectic. There are sections that could be considered avant-garde, acid jazz, new wave, psychedelic, and even dance music, but most of it is electronic post- metal. Weighty guitars over looped beats create dark soundscapes a bit like the new Isis. But where Isis remains rooted, Kekal is all over the place. Armed with samplers and synthesizers, the two guitarists seem like two kids who just opened a neighbor's toy box for the first time. As a result, we definitely get some excitement, but the result is also quite rough around the edges.

Thankfully there are limited vocals for the two singers have quite limited skills. At their best, they sound like Midnight Oil or a poor man's Mars Volta, at their worst a distorted wash. The sampled sounds are sometimes interesting, sometimes annoying. The band succumbs to excessive repetition on more than one occasion, and loses the sense of interest they've generated at least in this listener.

Overall, this is completely non-essential, but the price was right. I got to hear a few interesting ideas, and as I don't have a lot of other records with a similar sound, I still pull it up once in a long while. Sample it first, you can decide if it deserves space in your player.

When my sister and I were children, our parents would take us for weekend walks in nearby woodland. We would stroll through dells lined with bluebells, around natural orchards of crab apple trees and across cuckoo haunted meadows. When we came to a fork or a crossroad in the path, my dad would flip a coin to help decide which way to go next. Eventually though, we would always come back along the same path without ever seeming to get lost. Listening to Kekal's album is a bit like my childhood memories of these walks. With Kekal we encounter a variety of light, bright jazzy areas, compelling soundscapes and surprising time signatures, but we know that we will usually return to the familiar section of thrash metal with repetitive guitar and Scott Travis-style drums.

Kekal use a combination of aggressive vocals with the aforementioned thrash metal devices and melodic voices with equally melodious rock guitar. In jazz mode they remind me of Black Sabbath on Planet Caravan and, at times, the vocals sound like Russell Mael of Sparks. On other occasions the group echo the more contemporary Cave-In. The drummer is no fool and is capable of interesting drum-parts. But, whereas Faith No More and Dream Theater hit the mark with this fusing of thrash and melody, Kekal on 1000 Thoughts of Violence do not quite succeed. The reason is because, to a traditional progressive rock fan like me, they fall uncomfortably between the two camps - erring too much on the thrash metal side which is disproportionately the larger and inferior. Taking into account the light and shade aspect, the thrash is still in need of severe editing, while the progressive, 'conventional' heavy rock and experimentation needs expanding.

Kekal are to be commended for their willingness to experiment and to merge a delicate jazz playing with heavy rock. Like my mother and father many years ago, they took me on a fascinating journey with many memorable experiences. Just one last thing though gentlemen ? May I suggest that you change the album title to 1000 Thoughts of Tranquillity.

If you want to hear the Prog side of Kekal, skip this album and listen to 1000 Thoughts of Violence, their 4th album. Their 2nd album, Embrace The Dead, isn't part of their later days avant prog outputs. While this album has all the 'proggy' elements like epic long songs who don't always follow verse-chorus-verse structure, tempo & key changes, sub-sections, etc. This is much comparable to the song structure made famous by Iron Maiden, mixed with symphonic gothic metal and melodic scandinavian-styled black metal. More metal than prog, but a solid album with traditional metal elements.

7.5/10

While The Painful Experience is probably not being considered among Kekal's best albums to date, it is interesting to see the band's brave maneuvers from their straight forward extreme metal of first 2 albums to the far more progressive and avantgarde of later efforts.

Recorded in late 2000 and early 2001 (and released later in October 2001), I've heard Kekal made their decision upon the change of millennium and change of century. The Painful Experience is the bridge into digital era of Kekal, their first album being fully composed and recorded to the hard disk using DAW, as opposed to analog tape of their previous 2 albums Beyond The Glimpse of Dreams (1998) and Embrace The Dead (1999). It turned out to be somewhat confusing for their longtime fans who already familiar with the band's first 2 albums. Kekal changed at that point and no one can stop the band from making such a brave decision, risking thousands of their old fans leaving the band just because of the drastic change alone.

While the approach of production and songwriting might be drastically changed, musically The Painful Experience still has the traces of Kekal. They still retain their own trademark Iron Maiden-sque guitar melody layers and the energy and the groove are still present. The major drawbacks are on the vocal department and the using of 'borrowed' riffs from Iron Maiden. There are over 10 different vocal styles on the album, from the death metal growls, black metal evil screams, operatic tenor, hardcore punk shouts and many more including the most irritating high-pitch vocals that the vocalist Jeff tried to mimic all the highs of King Diamond, Rob Halford (Judas Priest) and Geddy Lee (Rush) together without realizing that he went over his comfort zone, like he would lose his vocal cord at times. I wished that they gave these high lines to guest female vocalist like they used to do on their previous 2 albums, instead being sung by Jeff himself.

However, the songs are very strong and some of them like Mean Attraction and the title track are being considered as the best songs from Kekal ever, and remain classic to the fans.

7.2/10

When listening to Kekal, nothing else comes to mind except they always put lots of new things to every new album they made. The Habit of Fire is not the exception. Their sixth album delivers new ideas of what progressive metal should be: innovative.

Everyone knows that the progressive metal scene is getting stagnant nowadays, with no new and interesting things offered by the genre's most popular bands, and most of these bands just play highly-skilled instrumental-ability as a show-off factor, combined with boring songwriting and typical high-pitched vocals. But Kekal leaves lots of interesting things to be desired. They could make complex time-signature acrobats and fast technical guitar solos, but they chose to stick with the flowing songwriting, and focus on the genre cross-overs (jazz fusion, trip-hop, ambient, industrial, etc......) with a strong fixation towards electronic music.

There is a growing and demanding movement called 'avantgarde metal', to refer to metal bands that are progressive but not stagnant. Kekal may be fall under this new and hot movement, but Kekal will still be Kekal. Maybe in next couple albums they would become some sort of an electronic band rather than metal. It's a big question but I don't care, as long as they will still deliver high quality music. "The Habit of Fire" is an amazing album despite of its weirdness and eclecticism that made the band being tremendously underrated and overlooked everywhere. Essential to everyone that is looking for something fresh and unique.

Kekal has been around for a long time, over 10 years in fact. And they like to experiment and incorporate fresh new elements into their music. So when I first listened to "Habit of Fire", their debut release with Open Grave Records, I was not surprised to discover that they did not disappoint. The album incorporates many genres of music such as progressive metal, psychedelic rock, and even trip-hop. Starting out as more of a straightforward extreme metal band, they have taken something that might have grown stagnant and implemented a fresh new twist. Synthesizers and electronics are included liberally throughout the mix, but they don't overwhelm the songs, and the guitar sounds range from buzz-saw timbres to clean tones. The vocals are mainly clean, with just enough black metal style screaming to remind you that Kekal is a heavy band. And while being extremely experimental, the album stays accessible, with highlights like "Isolated I" and "The Gathering of Ants" being catchy enough for a wide range of audiences, but avant-garde enough to stop the most jaded of metal lovers in their tracks. In conclusion, Kekal is a band that is destined to stay fresh for a long time to come, if "Habit of Fire" is any example of the direction they are heading in.