Sometimes Swedish, often Finnish sounding, KARKADAN from Germany offer rather slow melodic Death Metal although they’re frequently crossing the boarders to the Black Metal genre, especially when blasting. Singer Robby Beyer delivers pretty strong, sometimes a little monotonous vocals. What I like quite a bit about KARKADAN is – apart from their skilled songwriting – that they don’t sound like IRON MAIDEN without a good singer at all and therefore manage to develop a character of their own. The band is most convincing when they let some melancholy shine through: especially in the record’s first half. There is a video of a non-album track included that unfortunately didn’t run on my ancient computer. “Utmost Schizophrenia” is actually one of the few promos I received this year that might find its way into my player after having written this review. www.karkadan.de