Kira - Ancient Lies

KIRA - Ancient Lies (TALES FROM CREMATORIA - CD 2017)

This very interesting album is a first release from Polish band Kira. Band, which is completely unknown, but their impressive debut should certainly give them some attention, because the music is worth of that. Kira on "Ancient Lies" brings us explosive mixture of death and black, which sounds pretty modern, not only due to that powerful, clean production, but also with similarities to bands like Behemoth ("Funeral Now"!), Belphegor, Morbid Angel, a bit of that characteristic Polish death metal ingredients and so forth. If I also say that it can remind you Nomad – maybe because Kira is Nomad's members new band - then it won't be big miss, I hope... but I have point out that I like Kira music more than Nomad music! 

Anyway, I definitely enjoyed "Ancient Lies". There's a whole bunch of great songs here, which stick out from the masses, having splendid arrangements, great ideas and riffs, very good vocals – and everything on this album is varied and it's never one dimensional. You'll find here whole bunch of fast, blasting fragments, which will smash you into pieces, but the music is balanced with good dose of melody and slower, more catchy parts. It becomes quite atmospheric sometimes, especially in such "Hallow Soul", which I think is almost alike to Greek black metal – and that is a great compliment, especially because it's such a fine song. Technically the album is also top notch. You cannot say anything bad about it... 

But if I was going to point out anything what I don't like so much... then I would say that sometimes I feel like there's too much of everything here. We have 14 songs here. 42 minutes of music. It seems awfully a lot. And there're also 4 instrumental songs in between – and to be honest, I have no idea what their role is to play other than extinguish the duration of "Ancient Lies". They're quite progressive sounding, filled with kind of nostalgic guitar leads... Sure, they're very well played, but they kind of break the aggressive, furious manner of the rest of the album for me. The tension and intensity of the music too easily goes away with them and sorry, but it becomes quite dull for me. 

Despite that though, I still think that "Ancient Lies" is a solid album, which I can sincerely recommend. It has more strong points than weak ones and is just a good, easily listenable death / black metal album. Worth checking out for sure. 

Standout tracks: "Hallow Soul", "Ghost Kingdom" 

Verdict: 70/100