Band:	Karelia
Album:	Raise
Style:	Industrial metal
Release date:	May 2005

01. Raise
02. Child Has Gone
03. Breakdown
04. The Hermit
05. Disharmonic Dogmas
06. Cross & Crescent
07. Tearful Clown
08. Unbreakable Cordon
09. Coming Turn
10. High Hopes [Pink Floyd cover]
11. Let Me Tell You [Japanese bonus]

Sophomore effort of Karelia, if you were around for their first album I bet you were surprised by the high quality and originality of the songwriting in there, "The Usual Tragedy" was an amazing album from every side.
Now I got "Raise" the new album of the band, and from the get-go I can tell you that the artwork is not impressive at all, but the inlay and band photos are very well done.

Basically Karelia returns with the same formula than before, but this time they count with much more mature compositions, lyrically and in terms of songwriting.
The band relies on mid-paced songs and grand choirs to add a dramatic element to their music, please note that the use of the choirs is very scarce and you won't find choirs every damn chorus like Rhapsody or any other Hollywood Metal outfit.

Karelia seems to be more political now, the album starts with a speech of nazi clown Adolf Hitler, or something like that, the album also contain some middle eastern influences (awesome interlude track "Disharmonic Dogmas").
You won't find happy-go-wonder Metal in here, Karelia makes music for a much mature audience, they don't rely on the Power Metal clichés like every other single band in the planet, to name one, they didn't opened the album with a one minute intro and a fast-paced-double-bass song, like, every other single Power Metal band in the planet!

The only downpoint in the album could be the terrible English pronunciation of the vocalist. To be honest that is an issue that doesn't bother me that much, since I'm not a native English speaker is hard to tell all the differences between one language and other, but native English speakers might find a little hard to swallow the bad English of Mr. Kleiber, but like I said before, isn't an issue to me.

Ina nutshell, this is a good follow-up to their debut album, a mature album, cliché free and with some great songs like "Cross And Descent" , "Unbreakable Cordon" and don't forget the nicely done cover of Pink Floyd's "High Hopes".

Doesn't surpass their debut, but served to prove this band is truly something.