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Venturing further into the vast sea of Sputnik songwriters, a one-man show of metal arises. Kars Landman’s combination of black, heavy, and even alternative metal, with a hint of jazz and atmospheric influence, makes for an album of diversity and uniqueness. Mixing hard-hitting distortion with contrasting ambiance is what creates Everlasting, Ever-Fleeting, an album of genuine talent and potential.
Exploring more of a metal foundation, Kars Landman takes a new approach, one of aggression and chaotic riffing as opposed to his previous atmospheric, ambient metal tonality, and it works out for the better. “Follow the Wolves” and “Aimless” display a more alternative metal tinge compared to his previous work, showing the increased focus on technicality of riffs laid over top of supporting guitar harmonies. However, although riffing is much more prevalent, several songs still hold true to the atmospheric roots of the past as “Renovate” and “In Between” emphasize the importance of ambiance in the tone to create a track of absolute fullness. Although it’s quite obvious the guitars are the stars of the show here, one cannot deny the compliments of the supporting instruments. As the guitars chug and scale away, the bass surprisingly holds its ground, utilizing slapping and picking to provide its own melodies, rather than simply following along with the melodies the strings provide. Remaining full and brooding in tone, the bass fills each second with intensity and ferocity without overpowering the music. Despite being programmed, the drums sound surprisingly authentic. Laying down the groove, the drums are often what drive the songs forward, picking up speed when needed and supplying a complex fill when necessary. Because it is programmed, however, they do occasionally slip up, such as the double bass rhythms in “Flying,” where the bass sounds more like a thud than a punch, overpowering much of the music, yet not in a drastic way.
As this is Kars Landman’s first record with attempted vocals, there isn’t much confidence to be found here. With a strong voice that shows great potential is hindered by the quietness of the performance. Promising cleans open up the album with even better harsh vocals that progress the album, however, they are just too quiet to reach their full potential. For a first attempt, the vocals are quite impressive and really stand out and fit very well, yet there is much room for improvement in the future.
Now, of course, one could look at the album and simply analyze each instrumental aspect of the album, but the true talent lies in the big picture. Balance is a huge takeaway here. Each musical facet performs its duties to the fullest, but what really enunciates this performance is the ability for each instrument to only enhance and improve each other to reach the fullest of potential possible. Riffing guitars, chugging bass, pummeling drums, and intense vocals all make up the essence of this album, yet they all come together in perfect balance and harmony, none overpowering yet all empowering. Everlasting, Ever-Fleeting shows immense potential for the future of Kars Landman and a bright career in the making. One record, one man, infinite potential.
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Album Rating: 3.5
So I guess I'm the Sputnik artist reviewer now? haha
anyway, congrats Beardog, this album is absolutely amazing, I always keep coming back to it and enjoy it more and more. If you haven't yet, spin this if you are a fan of black/alternative metal, you won't regret it.
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wow this is great, thanks so much!
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
for sure man, was a lot of fun to jam
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"With a strong voice that shows great potential is hindered by the quietness of the performance."
This is a bit of a wierd sentence though.
Curious as well what you mean with quiet. You mean the power of the performance or the way that they are mixed? They are a bit lower in the mix compared to most metal records but that's just my personal preference I guess.
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Link please!
Edit: j/k just googled it, jamming now
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Dude this is awesome, expect some feedback when I'm done.
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Nice, glad to see you are enjoying it!
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Ok Beardog, my dude, here it goes:
Good stuff man, fairly impressed with the music, some real good jams in here. I didn't expect the full black metal burst in the last track, gotta say, that style really suits your music. If you could add more of those glorious blasts and mix it with some of your proggy stuff you could have smth special there.
I was about to pull the plug in Renovate. Opening the album with a track like that I think is a bit misleading for the listener (remember most people jam the first track and bolt). The clean vocals leave much to be desired there, they are very low in the mix, true, but is also clear this is your very first shot at them. Personally? I would ditch them all and focus on your screaming which otherwise is much, much better. Not all cleans sound bad though, sometimes I think they sound too dry, maybe a bit of reverb would have helped there? Anyway, after the opener, when Flying started it blew my fucking wig off. If the album started like that I think it would be much more engaging.
And that's about it man, Flying, In Between and the closer are probably my favorite tracks. Keep it up!
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Yeah starting the record with Renovate might be misleading and is kind of weird, but I think that was the best place for the song on this record. I really wanted it included, especially to give the record more of a story. If you are not familiar with the rest of the album I see why you wouldn't wanna hear more of it. That's the reason why I put Flying as a featured track.
I'm currently working on more rock-focused concept-record mostly to experiment with doing more clean vocals. It might horrendously fail, and if so I'll probably go back to making blackprog haha
Glad you enjoyed it though, thanks for the feedback!
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I see, yeah Flying is a banger. Maybe Renovate as a closer would have worked too. But anyway, good job dude, your guitar skills are impressive to say the least.
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I think putting Renovate as a closer would pull all energy out of the record in the end, I wanted it to finish really cathartic
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
yea, keep progressing with those guitar riffs and you’ll make some amazing records in the future.
Follow the Wolves is still a personal favorite off of this
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Cool to hear. I hope I can improve my singing and vocal-mixing on the next record. Won't really have the riffs and black metal influences but I'm trying to still make the songs engaging and surprising without the heavy metal.
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Will czech. m/
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thank men,,
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So I've been working on new music. Long ago I started working on a more rock-oriented concept record, which I abandoned later because I couldn't get the theme right. I made instrumentals for a different, heavier record which turned out really well imo. Now I've came back to the concept-record, which is close to being finished. I also made a single for my student association, more in the vain of this record. Expect more music soon! Here you can find the single:
karslandman.bandcamp.com/album/manu-armata-single
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The new single for my upcoming album is released today! Check it out on Bandcamp! (the rest of my discography and this single will be coming to streaming services in a few days!)
https://karslandman.bandcamp.com/track/dreams
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
New album is out on Spotify now! Go give it a spin! Hopefully gonna get a review for this thing out in the next couple of days if time permits
https://open.spotify.com/album/16xzmdbozFh0Ea7IHfhyaw?si=8HEoaHecQcaDRGRPyZREdw
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