ALBUM REVIEW: Kara Ihlas – Imha Tarikat

Germany’s IMHA TARIKAT are a prolific band who, with their 2017 EP, Kenoboros, took the black metal underground by storm and made a solid mark on the German scene. With the passage of two years, a demo and a record deal with Venddetta Records, IMHA TARIKAT have managed to craft and refine their sound, maturing with a surprising swiftness. Their first full length album, Kara Ihlas, is the end result of all this musical growth; this is an album that ties together the darker and more aggressive side of black metal with a much more grandiose and expansive sound, giving us an early contender for black metal record of the year.

Cokmus Muhur (The Broken Seal), Kara Ihlas‘s opening effort, is an incredibly fierce track, which is a brilliantly raw and chaotic song from start to finish. This is a solid slab of caustic black metal with an underlying punk influence, most notably in the guitars, which range from dizzying speeds and visceral riffs to thick, crusty power chords. The drumming, frenetic and energetic throughout, is a great driving force for the music, and backs up the general rage of the music really well. The vocals make great use of ferocious, throaty bellows and primal roars that further adds to the darkness and aggression on offer. It’s a brilliant opening gambit, which leads seamlessly into Akan Sir (The Flowing Wisdom). A noticeably tighter affair, Akan Sir makes use of some razor sharp melodies, but it continues in much the same way that the last song did, with intricate, expert drumming, gnarly yet epic guitar motifs, and the grating, acidic howl of the vocals soaring over the top and providing plenty of piss and venom to the proceedings. It moves forward at a blistering pace, and only shifts to a more mid-paced tempo very briefly, as the end of the song is in sight. The song reaches its climax with a virtuosic and hair raising guitar solo, which dies away almost as soon as the final notes of this solo are played.

Omninihai Cozmu (Omni-Final Solution) is a much more lively track, with bouncing, spirited guitars and steady, rhythmic drumming passages all make this song feel far more alive than the two songs that preceded it. There’s some great, minimalist lead guitar parts that inject a sense of grandiosity into this song, contrasting perfectly with the rabid, tortured approach of the vocals. This is a far more mid tempo offering, and the lack of speed helps to allow the more subtle, hard rock influences in IMHA TARIKAT‘s playing style to come to the fore, giving this song a confident and powerful swagger that sets it apart from the rest of the songs on Kara Ihlas. Katarsis Vaazi (Catharsis Sermon), unceremoniously throws the listener headlong back into the more breakneck pace of the first two songs and the much more cacophonous sound that marked their music. The drums, at points, seem to be almost on the verge of going completely off the rails, the guitars never stick with an idea longer than it needs to, jumping from one riff to another with a regularity that shows just how impressive IMHA TARIKAT are as song writers. The vocals also manage to capture a lot of that demented urgency, being absolutely acerbic from start to finish, and proving to be some of the most varied and impassioned vocal performances on the whole of Kara Ihlas. Once again, in amongst the ferocity on offer here, there’s a definite grandiosity that underpins the music, making everything sound vast and expansive, and ultimately making the song sounds unbelievably huge.

The second half of Kara Ihlas bursts into life with Safaksiz Ruya (Dawnless Dream), a slow burner, glorious track that is built around an expansive, atmospheric sound, full, robust guitars and powerful drumming, which quickly gives way to a raucous, noisy piece of music. There’s definitely a lot more melody on offer here, with plenty of great hooks to draw the listener in and make this song thoroughly engrossing throughout. The vocals once again give a great contrast with the music, and gives this song some of its more discordant and bucolic moments. It’s a more measured and catchy track than what has come before, and it’s hard to find fault with it. The albums titular track, Kara Ihlas (Black Purity), picks up this thread, and blends the more bombastic, reserved side of IMHA TARIKAT‘s sound and their more potent and dissonant one. It’s got the perfect mix of frenzied, speed driven black metal and a vast, primal intensity which does an amazing job of making this one of the stand out tracks on the record. The guitars and vocals in particular excel beyond what we’ve been treated to up until this point, and the drums definitely do a good job of setting a tight and steady metre.

Imha Tarikati (Sect of Destruction), Kara Ihlas‘s penultimate track, takes the listener back towards the chaotic styles and dirtier tones that characterised the first half of the record, whilst still retaining much of the atmosphere that has been so integral to the last two songs. The guitars switch between tight, jarring black metal to fuller and more sprawling rhythmic sections, with the drums providing plenty of cacophony and some booming, primitive moments. The vocal delivery on here is, as always, dark and grating, with some blood curdling howls and ferocious, barked sections, which works really well with the more traditional black metal moments, and injects a lot of bleakness into the epic parts of the song. It does a great job of providing a climactic track and setting the listener up for the eighth and final song, Son Mistiiszm (The Last Mysticism); this is slab of sublime musicianship, with some crushing guitar parts imbued with a little hard rock influence and tight, dancing melodies, razor sharp, authoritative drumming patterns and sparsely used, vitriolic vocals. The palpable atmosphere that runs through this album are certainly more prevalent on here, and it gives this song a triumphant and uplifting feel which directly opposes the oppressive and intense nature of the music. It’s a really good song that brings Kara Ihlas to a close on an incredibly high note, leaving the listener eager to hear more.

Kara Ihlas is extremely impressive for a debut album. There’s lots of great music and ideas on offer here, spanning a wide range of different approaches to black metal. Each half of Kara Ihlas feels as if it was composed and recorded by two very different bands, each going for a different style, with the first half being far more vicious and feral, with a much dirtier sound, and the final four songs being suitably more epic and melodic, and having a much more expansive sound. It would not be surprising if it turned out that IMHA TARIKAT wrote each half of the record at completely different times. This eclectic mix of sounds and performance styles really helps to keep Kara Ihlas interesting from the first song to the last, and, as I stated at the beginning of this review, could be a strong contender for black metal record of the year.

Rating: 9/10

Kara Ihlas is out now via Vendetta Records. 

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