Band:	Ikuinen Kaamos
Album:	Closure
Style:	Progressive death metal, Death doom metal
Release date:	December 13, 2008
Guest review by:	qlacs

01. Closure
02. Your Gallows
03. The Absence

Eternal Twilight. That's roughly what the name Ikuinen Kaamos translates to. It resides in your heart. As soon as you learn that you're deeply attached to your feelings of sadness and misery, you are immediately hooked on (almost) anything this band produced so far. Their most original effort however could not manifest in its intended form; Epilogue never got to be released. Instead, we got three songs as the "official" package, and if you were/are among the lucky and watchful ones you got to hear or have 2 more songs which were supposed to be included. With that in mind, I'd like to view this record to its wider extent, counting the songs "For I Fell" and "The Art of Letting Go" as if they were here, just hidden somewhere.

A long time ago, I put all these 5 songs together under the name Epilogue, out of respect of what the band envisioned. Since then, many times have I lay down on my bed, putting on my headphones and listening over and over again. In short, it's simply beautiful. There is this feeling of sorrow flowing through the songs, throughout the entire record, nicely wrapped in some sort of shiny and glowing feeling of hope. You may not notice this at the first spin, maybe not even on the second, but there are some clues. This is the kind of "gloomy metal" that is coming from the heart, and it feels it was made for me, and, maybe you. It gets me to just sit calm and listening in wonder. Melodies, tied together, and are weaved through each of the songs, accompanied by vocals that usually are the end of the range between powerful growls and cleans. The emphasis is clearly on the composition, nobody shows off or breaks the stream of music.

The songwriting abilities the band show on these songs are beyond of what most bands are capable of, even though there is the least a similarity between the classic Opeth albums and this one (compared to the other IK releases), the quality of the material they bring to the ears here is about the same. We have a number of similar bands floating around these days but to me none of them hits the spot this high and resonates on a personal level. I don't really have anything to say about the production; I don't get to hear the record in its full glory, but based on the 3 songs they officially let out, the sound just perfectly fits the atmosphere. It's clean, cold and layered. I could wish to hear more of the bass, but that may not be as congruent with the feelings that emanate out of Epilogue as it could be.

To me it's a masterpiece nevertheless.

Favourites: "Closure," "The Abscence," "The Art of Letting Go"