Review Summary: The real Kauan has returned!
Kauan is a band that has opened many doors in my musical journey. Founder, and main songwriter, Anton Belov, created Kauan when he was only 15-16 years old and what has come of it is nothing short of magical, creating elegant, massively angelic post-rock atmospheres and blending it with peaceful yet eerie folk melodies, lush ambient soundscapes and the harsh tremolo picked riffage and gnarly shrieks and growls of black metal. The combination of the above sounds has always been a formula of success for me personally when done correctly, which Kauan has done for most of their career. Their last album,
Ice Fleet, was a bit of a mirage in their overall discography as they opted for more of a straight-up post-rock sound that just really never went anywhere and kind of made the band a shell of themselves. So, that brings us to their newest album,
Wayhome and the question of what version of Kauan we would get.
To me, the back-to-back of
Pirut and
Sorni Nai represents this band's best work and
Wayhome more or less goes back to those roots of mixing blackened doom sections with celestial buildups and moody folk atmospheres that leave you feeling like you're alone in a pitch black forest. Like most Kauan albums, this one is meant to be looked at as one 50-minute track broken up into 8 pieces.
Wayhome is a concept album about the journey of life and is mainly about fond memories and finding peace throughout your lifetime. After a nice three-minute instrumental intro with clean, folky guitars and a tribal-esque drum pattern mixed with some gorgeous ambient effects that wouldn't sound out of place on a dungeon synth album.
‘Outline / Pave’ is where
Wayhome really gets going. The soaring guitar leads continue and the overall vibe is unmistakably light and rejoicing. I could honestly see this album being perfect for the spring or summer, because despite its clear melancholy, it still has a natural airy feel about it at almost all times. The mixture of doomy rhythms and depressing croons should make for impending darkness, but the soothing riffs bring everything back to the bright side of things. Whereas an album like
Sorni Nai were shrouded in bleakness,
Wayhome contrasts that by being, not upbeat, but depressingly optimistic. ‘Depart / Dive’ delves deeper into ambient and post-rock with electro-inspired synth work and long, plodding atmospheric buildups with deep-pitched singing that sounds like Dracula serenading his lover to a romantic tune.
This transitions perfectly into ‘Leave / Let Go’, which is as sad-sounding as the name entails. From what I gather, it's a tearjerker about losing a loved one or anyone special to you. The keyboards sound so nostalgic and wistful they will make you drift into a much simpler time while also reminding the listener heavily of the melodic acts of the second wave of black metal. Incidentally, the song develops into sludgy doom riffage with violins whipping about and frigid shrieks making for one of the heaviest points on the entire album, and also harkening back to the early gothic death-doom scene. It's a fantastic mix of clean and harsh and reminds fans that these guys still have it.
‘Soothe / Sear’ keeps things heavy for a moment before whisking you away into a beautiful acoustic section that makes for a nice breather from the riffage just endured. Encompassing electronics subtly go off in the background, almost lulling you into a trance, before another wall of riffs, this time shinier and more peaceful, and chanting vocals transport you to dream land. The best track on the album, in my opinion, is ‘Haste / Ascend’, which is a blackened, gothic doom metal banger with hard-hitting riffs, gloomy violin work and dismal growls mixed with gliding keys that have you feeling like you're in a plane at 13,000 feet in the air.
This all contrasts perfectly with the next track, ‘Embrace / Repel’, which is a minimal ambient/post-rock bop that brings everything back to the calmer, more atmospheric side of things and sounds like the gates of Heaven itself opening its gates. The closer, ‘Arrive / Resolve’, is the perfect culmination of the entire album, tying everything back in with a folky, natural atmosphere and a bright mix of ambient electronics, acoustics and violin before some dreary riffage comes back into the fold. Kauan just know how to execute every style they decide to delve into to complete and utter perfection.
With all of that being said, I'm not sure if I can quite put
Wayhome on the same level as
Sorni Nai simply for personal reasons, but it is right there with it in terms of quality. Bringing back the darker doom sections and the blistering black metal onslaught was a good choice after
Ice Fleet was almost completely void of anything remotely similar and therefore lost a lot of personality. This album is a homecoming of sorts for Kauan, who have proven after 20 years in the business, that they are still top-tier artists of atmospheric metal/rock.
