Kardashev - Alunea (2025)

Showing their breakthrough release “Liminal Rite”, was not a fluke, North American outfit Kardashev returns with the brilliant “Alunea”. Perfectly blending genres and creating totally unique aural experiences, this outfit delivers eight tracks of crushing melancholy. Taking their “Deathgaze” genre to new heights, the band showcases extra maturity and polish in one of our early candidates for album of the year.

Opening with the dreamy “A Precipice. A Door.”, the band embarks on a very ethereal journey that is perfectly flanked by completely crushing Deathcore onslaughts. Mark Garrett’s vocals are some of the most exhilarating in Metal music, as they go from dreamy cleans to insane growls and harsh shrieks, creating an extremely contrasting and yet satisfying experience, through tracks like “Reunion”, “Seed of the Night” and “Speak Silence”.

There is just something very aurally pleasing about how the band manages to change tempos from intricate and very proggy blistering Deathcore passages to more melodic and restrained interludes, to full blown clean-vocals led emotional climaxes, like on “Truth to Form”. The band’s melancholic nature and ability to go from dark and sinister places, to more hopeful and demure atmospheres is just brilliant as the moody “Edge Of Forever” and the trippy “We Could Fold the Stars” unleash waves of crafty tempo changes.

As the band closes with the demoralizing “Below Sun and Soil”, we are left anxiously waiting for the album to restart again and relive the whole experience again. Kardashev has managed to carve a unique place for themselves with a truly different and expansive sound. We usually have a set amount of spins we give each album we review, but we completely blew past those with such an amazing release. Do not miss out on one hell of a well crafted and masterfully contrasting release with “Alunea”.

Label: Metal Blade Records

Release: April 25th, 2025

Genre: Deathgaze/Post-Metal/Progressive/Atmospheric Deathcore

Country: Italy