Karnataka are
survivors. Since their inception at the tail end of the 1990s, they
have most definitely had their ups and downs: they found some success
fairly rapidly, helped in no small part by a scorched earth gigging
mentality and some fairly prestigious support slots with the likes of
progressive rock favourites Porcupine Tree and the much-loved,
oft-lamented All About Eve. By 2004, it seemed nothing could prevent
the band’s ascent to progressive rock favourites, and larger venues
started to beckon.
Sadly,
their upward trajectory ran abruptly aground when internal
relationships fractured and the band went their separate ways. One of
the chief songwriters, founder member Ian Jones, decided to keep the
Karnataka flame burning, however, and assembled a new-look band. Critics
and fans were divided about the reborn band, but Karnataka forged
ahead, delivering several well-received tours and their most successful
album to date, 2010’s The Gathering Light –
but just as the album finally appeared, the band found itself
short-staffed once more as various members elected to pursue other
interests.
The Gathering Light possessed
more of a progressive rock influence than any of the band’s previous
albums: opening with two instrumentals, and possessed of three further
tracks that all clocked in at over ten minutes in length, its
sprawling atmospherics housed a haunting, soulful but introspective
record which felt like a side-step from the Karnataka of old. Life had
thrown many obstacles at chief writer Jones, and the album reflected
them all, as Jones and the band overcame adversity to deliver a bruised
but unbowed album of survivor anthems. The band’s new album, Secrets Of Angels, however, overflows with confidence: it’s not so much bruised as bruising.
Here the band sound truly re-energised, thrumming with barely
suppressed vitality. The progressive rock influence has for the most
part been dialled back substantially, only really
surfacing significantly on the epic, closing title track; the result is a
much more immediate and focused album with more immediately hooky and
memorable songs.
Secrets Of Angels is
the band’s first studio album with a new line-up, and it’s a testament
to Jones’ deep understanding of the music he’s making that the new
look Karnataka are so evidently a force to be reckoned with. The renewed
emergy and sense of purposes within the band is exemplified by opener
‘Road To Cairo’, which fuses Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ with Jones’ fine ear
for an anthemic chorus. Powered along by a relentless, powerful rhythm,
it fair leaps out of the speakers, a sharp contrast with previous albums
that tended to open far more gently. Incredibly, this energy level is
maintained throughout the next four tracks with barely any let-up:
‘Because Of You’ opens as if it will be a gothic ballad, but soon
delivers huge power chords, a dynamite vocal from vocalist Hayley
Griffiths, making her first appearance – hopefully the first of many –
on one of the band’s studio albums, and one of guitarist Enrico Pinna’s
most outré solos to date, a cascading wail of rage and frustration that
will pin you to the nearest wall. ‘Poison Ivy’ goes straight for the
jugular, its chanted verses and soaring chorus underpinned by a
crunching riff and elaborate orchestrations, a pattern followed by the
instantly addictive ‘Forbidden Dreams’, a sprightly rocker with a hugely
memorable chorus that is certain to become a sing-along favourite for
fans.
The
album continues with ‘Borderline’, a track with two faces: after
opening with another suitably gothic flourish, all wind and a tolling
church bell, it reveals itself as a chugging riff-based rocker, with a
grimly accusatory lyric; however, the mood is utterly transformed by the
distinctly pop chorus. Catharsis and hope in the face of adversity is
perhaps Karnataka’s bread and butter, and ‘Borderline’ is an almost
perfect distillation of that duality. It’s followed by the highly
dramatic ‘Fairytale Lies’, which is reminiscent of Within Temptation at
their most balefully reflective, a glorious concoction of tumbling keys
and a striking string arrangement, topped off by a lyric that is superb
in its cynical acceptance of reality and Griffiths’ astonishing vocal, a
masterclass in mood and atmosphere. Yet the mood lifts once again with
the penultimate track, ‘Feels Like Home’, a pretty, touching ballad
about discovering “the one” that happily avoids the trap many ballads
fall into – the cardinal sin of over-sentimentality. The way it develops
is compellingly cinematic: as the song goes on, more and more layers
are added to the music and the vocal, as if the virtual camera is
pulling slowly back to reveal more and more of the stage. It ends in a
cascade of harmony vocals, like embers from a firework display drifting
back down to earth, and is possibly one of the best ballads the band
have ever delivered.
After
all this drama, it would take something very special indeed not to be
anticlimactic, but the title track itself – all twenty minutes of it –
is certainly not that. Karnataka have shown themselves to be masters of
longer pieces before, never falling into the self-conscious prog trap of
simply pasting together a bunch of disparate pieces of music and hoping
for the best. Although this magnum opus is comprised of seven
separately numbered and titled parts – count ‘em! – it somehow manages
to feel organically grown rather than stitched together in a lab. In
many ways, it’s the ultimate distillation of what the new-look Karnataka
are all about: we have folky, Celtic sections featuring guest
appearances from Nightwish’s Troy Donockley; delicate balladry; a
pounding symphonic metal interlude, and some outright prog courtesy
of penultimate section ‘In The Name Of God’, which opens like Marillion
in their pomp and steadily dials up the intensity. The effect is almost
total sensory overload, and it will likely take many listens to unlock
all the detail, musically and lyrically. Any piece of this length has to
end strongly, and happily Karnataka have saved their ace in the hole
for the dying moments of the album, as everyone pulls out all the stops
for the grand finale. Pinna delivers one of his most devastating solos;
Donockley serves up a Uillean pipe solo to die for, and the rhythm
section get stuck in as Cagri and the assembled string section provide a
backdrop of dizzying beauty for Griffiths to deliver possibly her
finest vocal to date. It’s unspeakably moving, a beautiful lament for
the losers on the battlefields of life and love that will quite likely
require more than one handkerchief.
It
feels wrong to call current vocalist Hayley Griffiths the “new
vocalist”, since she’s been touring with the band since very early in
2012. With a background in large musical productions (Irish
dance spectaculars Riverdance and Lord Of The Danceboth
feature in her quite extensive CV), fronting a rock band was something
completely new for Griffiths, and it isn’t perhaps surprising that the
first batch of dates she undertook with the band – where the
live release New Light was
recorded – saw her nailing the demanding vocal parts without breaking a
sweat, but looking slightly self-conscious on stage. As anyone who has
seen the band recently will attest, any inhibitions that Griffiths may
once have had on stage are long since gone, and that confidence has
found its way onto the album, where she delivers a flawless, powerful
performance. From fiery rock vocals to the lofty, operatic extreme of
her range, Griffiths is perfectly on point throughout, as at home with
riff-based rockers like ‘Road to Cairo’ and ‘Poison Ivy’ as she is with
the gothic balladry of ‘Fairytale Lies’. It’s a bravura showcase for a
highly gifted performer, and it’s practically impossible to come away
from hearing her in action here not having reached the conclusion
that she is the perfect foil for the band. Powerfully charismatic,
hugely versatile and technically magnificent, her vocals on the closing
title track in particular shame many better known female rock vocalists.
Çağrı
Tozluoğlu, on keys, is a similarly impressive recruit. Eschewing the
more traditional progressive rock influences of previous keysman Gonzalo
Carrera, Tozluoğlu brings a welcome modernity to the band. His soloing
is sparsely used, but when it does appear (as on ‘Poison Ivy’), it’s
wonderfully fluid. Where Tozluoğlu excels is in his shaping of mood and
his orchestrations: his epic approach to arrangement means that this is
the biggest-sounding Karnataka album to date. The danger of dialling up
the drama is that sonically the music is weighed down until it sounds
overwrought, but Tozluoğlu knows exactly when a bit more is too much.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the expansive title track, where
the gradual crescendoes and sudden juddering launches into explosive
instrumental sections are handled with a very fine hand. Even as the
song builds more and more layers upon Tozluoğlu’s musical architecture,
it never feels like drama for the sake of drama; it all feels
natural, logical.
Last
of the new arrivals is the most recent one, French drummer Jimmy
Pallagrosi, whose performance here is frankly the stuff of future
legend. With all the energy of progressive legends like Mike Portnoy,
Pallagrosi’s explosive playing lends the material added potency and
urgency whilst anchoring it to earth, playing a key role in giving it
real weight and momentum. His Bonham-esque voyages around his kit during
‘Road to Cairo’ are a joy to hear; at the same time, his restraint on
some of the quieter pieces – such as ‘Fairytale Lies’ – demonstrates a
keen musicality and a knowledge of where to leave space for the music
to breathe. In a world seemingly filled with drummers who appear to
treat every song as a drum solo, Pallagrosi’s keen sense of dynamics is
both refreshing and exactly what the material needs. He is, in short,
the right drummer at the right time.
Secrets Of Angels is
a triumph. Wonderfully melodic, hugely dramatic without being in
any way corny, varied in feel yet somehow effortlessly cohesive,
beautifully recorded and mixed, and very sympathetically mastered, it is
fairly easily the best-sounding album the band have made. The material
is fabulously strong, and managed to both tread new ground and sound
like ‘classic’ Karnataka at the same time – no mean feat, especially
with all the new blood involved in its writing. As the epic title track
draws to a breathless close, the listener may find themselves exhausted –
drained by an album that runs the full gamut of emotions and leaves no
stone unturned in its quest to powerfully move anyone who takes the time
to sit down with it and listen. Hands down, the band’s finest hour, and
a validation of the belief and skills of the new-look band. The only
difficulty Karnataka now face is how to top it.
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I confess I do not know what to make of this"Anthology" . Let us be clear. I'm quite a fan of theAtkins May Project and I feel enormous respect for the contribution of Al Atkins to the history of Heavy Metal (NDR : remember, this young fellow of 67 years was the first singer of Judas Priest ) . However, I do not see what I could write more than what has already been said in the chronicles of the albums " 
