Band:	Karmic Link
Album:	No Light But Rather Darkness Visible
Style:	Gothic metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	2008
A review by:	Jeff

01. Over You
02. Sickness
03. Destination
04. Still Here
05. Hide These Words
06. Devil's Dance
07. Paralized
08. Weak Being
09. Foreign Land
10. No Light But Rather Darkness Visible

It's been a while that we didn't have any new band with a female vocalist... The name of our new winner this time is Karmic Link. Created by Stathis Kassios (ex Nightfall) and composed of different musicians plus the female singer Mina G. (ex Kinetic, The Rain I Bleed), this "project" will try to become famous. I will try to let you know how their music sounds but I can already tell you that despite some good ideas, they will have to work a lot again if they want to succeed in their project.

"No Light But Rather Darkness Visible" is able to give the best like the worst, really this album is "weird". On a side, Stathis Kassios has created a real original universe and the music of Karmic Link is a good technical dark Power Metal. The keyboards (which suffer of a terrible sound, but we will talk about it later) and guitars soli are really good and technical and some songs like the instrumental "Devil's Dance" are pure progressive tracks. They're not fantastic but well done and if you like technical Power I'm sure that you'll love them. On the other hand, the songs with the vocalist are a lot more average? Just imagine some kind of really cheesy electronic keyboards sounds (sorry but I cannot stand this 90's "euro-dance" sound) which lead a melody where Mina G. tries to sings with a good voice but is not really able to do it? It's hard to explain it but even if there are some good ideas and even if the electronic and modern aspect that we can find on the songs is not so bad, the general atmosphere of the CD looks too old. We don't really know if Karmic Link plays Power, Gothic music or Progressive Metal, this is too messy and since that we don't have any real catchy songs on the album, I'm afraid that the band will not find a lot of listeners.

Bob Katsionis plays all the guitars on the album and Jani Liimatainen plays one guitars solo on one of the two instrumental songs and if of course they're really good, the main problem of the album when it comes to the musicians is the voice of Mina G. She could maybe be good but here, her performance is really bad. Out of tune a lot of time and with a voice which doesn't have any power, I'm sorry but I don't like how she sings Metal, this is simply boring and not really beautiful. Despite a correct recording, "No Light But Rather Darkness Visible" clearly misses of coherence. The songs are average with good things like the Progressive aspects that we can find sometime but the sound is too out-dated to be attractive.

Karmic Link is maybe a bit too young finally. The singer seriously needs to improve her voice and Stathis Kassios will have work a bit more on his compositions. The music of "No Light But Rather Darkness Visible" is not terrible but a bit messy and seriously the sound mode of the keyboards is just terrible and kills the album. Some good points can be found so it's not already dead for Karmic Link but you'll have to listen to the album before you buy it? At least Karmic Link doesn't copy Epica or Nightwish and they have their own personality but there is a lot of work to do so let's hope that they will manage to improve all these negative points in the future.