Karjalan Sissit – Karjalasta Kajahtaa

The third album of the Swedish bombastic industrial project Karjalan Sissit, after the self-titled debut on Cold Spring and the follow-up “Miserere” on Cold Meat. This time the album is first released on vinyl by the German label Eternal Soul Records. The record on thick vinyl comes in a nice fold-out black cover. A cd version will be released later by the Canadian label Cylic Law.

The cover image, of a hand holding a knife, directly creates an aggressive impression. The first song is an old cheerful pre-war ballroom song though, of the same type as Karjalan Sissit used in the past. The next song is a dense piece of power electronics, with thick walls of noise, hammering percussion and nasty shouted vocals. It’s brutal, but also boring after a while. The third track ‘Requiem: Out From This World’ is more to my liking, a powerful bombastic orchestral piece with classical choirs, in the vein of Sophia and Predella Avant. Peter Bjargö of Sophia engineered and produced this album by the way. It is followed by a more restrained classical/ambient piece.

The rest of the record also has a balanced mixture of industrial, orchestral and soundscape-like pieces. The mood remains apocalyptic throughout, sometimes warlike, sometimes depressed. As before the songs are firmly rooted in history. A solid album, which contains in general the same elements as the previous Karjalan Sissit albums.

artist: Karjalan Sissit
label: Eternal Soul Records
details: lp [ES LP01]