Karmian – Horror Vacui
Karmian – Horror Vacui
Rockshots Records
Release Date: 20/03/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8.5/10
There’s a point, sometime after the second shot of espresso and prior to the third appalling headline, where you just find yourself thinking,“the whole thing’s just being kept together with kindling and the prayers of those not wriggling too hard.” And Horror Vacui kicks open the door of despair with, “Not all right with the emptiness.”
I’m no ghoul with a knack for death metal and a podcast playlist filled to the brim with true crime stories, for the Devil below knows why (perhaps as a way to exorcise the guilt of enjoying the former while listening to the latter). But the thing about “Horror Vacui” by Karmian is that it does not want you to feel comfortable about your fixation on melodic death metal as a soundtrack to your fantasies of escaping into a realm of dragon-scaled myths and legends. This Italian group has had two decades—two decades that are approximately equivalent to geological eras—in cultivating its brand of psychological punches to the collective throat with “Horror Vacui”, and now they’ve released an album about serial killers that’s no soulless trash or dry academic theses.
The idea reeks of being dodgy on paper. Nine songs, nine Italian murders, forty-something minutes dissections into the holes inside which humans are reduced to headlines. This could have been disaster. Could have been torture pornography to thumping rhythms, the sort that makes you illicitly squeamish just to possess it. It’s actually far more chilling, and far more fascinating—a treatise on emptiness itself, this hollow that empathy should reside inside but, instead, remains, where all edges of all meanings are reduced to sugar exposed to too much rainfall. This, Andrea Bertolazzi’s lyrics, Nicholas Badiali, and Andrea Baraldi have made.
‘One Thousand Shining Bubbles’ launches with six-and-a-half minutes of pure melodious ferocity, which is the combined result of At The Gates influence and actual innovativeness. The production quality courtesy of Cocconi, Simone, and the team at the Audiocore Studio provides this sparkle in the music, an audibility of the riffs slicing the mix like hot knives through butter. If there’s one bit of the album that actually tells a story, it’s this, as opposed to the purely technical prowess of the piece.
‘Beastmaster of the Void’ is simply three minutes of adrenaline-filled violence until “Gott Mit Uns Nicht” shows up with its scandalously blasphemous title and chugging mid-tempo riff. The bass work of Luca Marmi in the body of the record is worth noting—fat, dirty, locking in the infectious melodic mayhem with real heavy bones. More melodeath acts forget that the death side of things is where the heavy has to be.
But by the time ‘The Call of the Abyssal Bell’ , the sixth six-minute epic, comes around, you’ll be well down Karmian’s rabbit hole. Now you’ll be receptive to the underlying thesis of this album: it’s not the monsters on which we want to dwell, it’s the absence that spawns those monsters. “Horror Vacui” indeed. Nature doesn’t like a vacuum, and human nature doesn’t like its own psychological vacuums, it seems, so it fills them with horrors. Just what I want to think about on the way home from work.
‘Black Magical Soap Opera’ could be the best titled of the album, a gloriously dark and comedic statement that recognizes that such real-life horrors are, in fact, entertainment, narrative, and opera. The song itself is ruthlessly catchy, the sort of song that will worm its way into your brain pan and stay there, refusing to leave. ‘Temple of the Fleshless Goddess’ and ‘Libido et Mors’ press on with the conceptual work, from outright vocal growls to pleasant mid-range screams.
‘Beyond the Dream Gate of Fear’ is a passable palate-cleanser before the closer ‘Maker of Angels’ brings on the finishing blows. The drumming throughout by Nicholas Badiali is worthy of note – proficient without being showy, in service to the songs and not a validation of his personal skills. Concepts like this one are revolutionary.
Here’s what Karmian knows that others don’t: extreme music is most effective when it’s actually about something other than just aggression on the surface level. The comparisons to other groups, such as The Haunted, are valid, as well as the admiration shown to Kataklysm, but this band also reaches deep enough to look into some dark places without turning away from them either. The artwork, done by Sheila Franco, sums this all up perfectly—you can bet that whatever hell she’s depicted on the cover is represented conceptually on this CD as well.
Does “Horror Vacui” reinvent Melodic Death Metal? No, and it’s not trying to. What it is doing is reminding us of why Melodic Death Metal was so important to begin with – because there are times when the only adequate way to deal with human darkness is to scream it back in louder, faster, sharper ways.
Twenty years in, Karmian have made their definitive statement. Whether this statement is ‘people are terrible’, ‘emptiness breeds monstrosity’, or merely ‘listen to these riffs, you coward’ is down to your tolerance for the lifting of the heavy load of meaning, as well as the melodeath beatdowns being dished out.
Whether it’s one thing or another, the abyss stares back at us in turn. Well, at least it can have its own worthy soundtrack
This record is philosophically bleak, aurally ferocious, and curiously relevant. Absolutely crucial listening for anyone who wants their death metal to contain a modicum of substance.
TRACKLISTING:
01. One Thousand Shining Bubbles
02. Beastmaster of the Void
03. Gott Mit Uns Nicht
04. The Call of the Abyssal Bell
05. Black Magical Soap Opera
06. Temple of the Fleshless Goddess
07. Libido et Mors
08. Beyond the Dream Gate of Fear
09. Maker of Angels
LINKS:
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