LACUNA

I know KÆLLING as a Danish denotation, however the band resides around Marinha Grande, which actually is in Portugal. Don't want to speculate how this came together, the special ligature strikes in any case, printed on this amazing red coloured cover including the living ghost himself. Band means a duo on this occasion, although it overall sounds like recorded by a full-fledged outfit. Knowing each other for a long time, André Oliveira and João Rodrigues came together at the beginning of 2017 to compose, record and produce their debut album for this project. You can distinctly hear it, both are highly influenced by progressive rock which is tending to the melodic metal style.

Couldn't find out exactly who is responsible for playing the particular instruments. What seems to be clear is that both are experienced in slicing and soaring guitars, where João is also focussed on the vocals and André on diverse keyboards. So let it be, the rest is team effort then most likely. First of all, technically this leaves nothing to be disired. And there is a concept behind that too, revolving around the life of two characters, who are an empath, and a sociopath either way. A strong passion for the vocal parts is to state, mostly worked out in a very sentimental manner, a bit overdone on rare occasions unfortunately, though this is not really downgrading the whole impression in the end.

There is a lot of empathy around here for sure. The song couple Circle and Heritage makes my day especially, both are flawless compositions. Nice piano licks here, sensitive and expressive guitars there, top vocals, atmosphere, a suspense packed flow - everything seems to fit together perfectly. Besides Haken and Tool some Italian bands bordering the metal and heavy progressive style are coming into my mind, when considering stylistically related crews. The tricky longrunner Departure finally makes this issue to a rounded one. Well done, guys!