There’s a precise, chilling moment, right before Perdition truly unfurls its massive, blackened wings, where you realise Karu has absolutely no interest in in following the normal trends. Instead, they pull you sideways into their world—a soundscape stitched together from pure tension, crushing shadow, and a sense of doom that feels less like something approaching in the distance and more like something that’s been relentlessly waiting for you. The initial sequence of Shores of Mist and Blood is less an intro track and more the slow, calculated turn of a massive, rusted key in a lock you probably shouldn’t have dared to open.

What follows is a six-track descent into Symphonic Death Metal delivered with a widescreen, cinematic sweep and a predator’s precision. It’s a curious structure to dissect: three powerful, full-length songs surrounded by an introduction, an unsettling interlude, and a final, bolted outro, all clocking in at just over thirty minutes. On paper, this design should fail—it sounds too fragmented, too reliant on atmosphere, too dependent on its own architectural framework to hold together. But in practice, Perdition thrives on that very structure. It moves like a sophisticated film whose crucial scenes bleed into one another, meticulously building dread through deliberate pacing rather than sheer, unsustainable volume.​

When the first proper song finally arrives, Shadow War, the shift is truly seismic. The guitars surge forward with a sharpened, surgical edge; the drumming lands with enough calculated force to rattle bone, and the symphonic elements snap into full, terrifying focus. Crucially, Karu resists the easy, lazy route of simply plastering generic orchestral stabs over blast-beats. Instead, every single element is woven tightly together, giving the music immense weight without unnecessary excess, and drama without a shred of melodrama. The violins don’t sing; they scream.​The vocals, which are deep, ragged, and serrated, sit perfectly within the mix like a voice carried from the lower, ruined chambers of some crumbling temple. They are authoritative and commanding, but they are never pushed forward to drown the instrumentation beneath clumsy, tired theatrics. The voice acts as the narrator for the coming catastrophe, not the spectacle itself.​

What stands out across Perdition is how deliberately it moves. Even at its most violent and chaotic, there is a cold calculation behind each abrupt shift in tempo, each strategic swell of strings, and each moment where the guitars claw their way to the front of the assault. Karu works with tension the way a great band works with the riff: stretching it, twisting it, snapping it tight again only to allow it to surge. There are passages where the symphonics take on a ritualistic, ominous pulse, creating a sense of grand, overwhelming ceremony, and others where everything strips back to a bleak, death-stained stillness that feels like a slow-motion impact—the moment right before the bones splinter.​

The interlude, Embers in the Sky, placed fourth in the tracklist, functions as a breath—but it offers no relief. It’s more like a necessary, held moment between devastating blows, a widening of the camera’s focus just before the final plunge into the abyss. And when that plunge comes, the last full track of the album moves with renewed, surgical violence; the guitars grind and surge, the drumming opens up into a full barrage of aggression, and the orchestral lines twist themselves into terrifying shapes that feel both ancient and alien. Karu clearly understands that the term “symphonic” should not, under any circumstances, equal “pretty.” Here, it is unequivocally a weapon—edge first.​

Perdition is an album that builds, adding crushing layer upon crushing layer until the entire composition feels like it might tear itself apart under the sheer weight of its own scale. But it never collapses, never bloats, and never loses the intense sense of disciplined direction that defines the entire record. Where the album opens like a door being unlocked for the curious, it closes like one being slammed shut and bolted tight. It is not an invitation—it is an absolute, final warning.​

Perdition is not a straightforward Death Metal record, nor is it a typical Symphonic one. It sits perfectly in the space between—that rare zone where ambition and brutal discipline meet. Every element feels deliberate, every decision purposeful. The fragmented structure that could have undermined it instead becomes the unyielding spine that holds the entire terrifying experience upright. Karu has created something that feels less like a statement and more like a fully realised, cohesive vision—one that knows exactly how it wants to be seen, felt, and brutally remembered.

Perdition by Karu is available now via Rockshots Records.

CHOICE CUT: Trail of Fire

BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: A dark, cinematic invocation carved from discipline and dread. Karu take Symphonic Death Metal and reshape it into something colder, sharper, and far more deliberate than most bands ever attempt. Perdition isn’t just listened to — it’s entered. And once you’re inside, the walls close in beautifully.

PRESS SOURCE: ASHER MEDIA RELATIONS. Jon Asher – Music Publicist. Facebook @AsherMediaRelations. Instagram @AsherMedia. Tweet @AsherMedia.