CALEYA is a Post-Black Metal/Hardcore band based out of Hamberg, Germany. As far as I can tell (their Facebook page in in German), they've released three previous albums on three different record labels. Now independent, they are releasing their latest, titled "Lethe," which contains six tracks.

"Lawra" opens the album. There is some clean guitars mixed in with distorted ones. The production is muffled to give it that earthy and organic sound. The vocals are done Hardcore style...yelled in the same note range. There is an ambient pause around the half-way mark...depressing and doleful, and then the chaos returns. "Golem" is similar in pacing and sound. The music paints a sad and melancholy existence while the vocals rage with fire. Another pause just after the half-way mark allows you to breathe a bit before the intensity returns.

"Trostland" opens with clean guitars and a slower pace. You might be stuck in an elevator in some department store. The madness that resumes you are barely ready for...blast beat drums and enraged vocals. There is some dissonance in the guitars and it's as if life makes no sense. "Heym" has steady and sturdy riff passages but the vocals are so intense that they overpower nearly everything else. The music shows some real creativity but I'm getting more Doom/Stoner sound that Post-Metal. "Freilicht" is aggressive and weighted from the start, and it never lets up. "Trophae" has a brief clean guitar passage before the vocals come in and rip everything to shreds.

What the album lacks overall is diversity. The riffs stay in a comfort zone while the vocals sound exactly the same in every song. I suppose they found the sound that they are looking for, but the vocals killed the album for me. Just too much sustained intensity. Like the winds in a hurricane, they grate on your ears and rarely let up. When they do, I enjoyed the more ambient passages, but they were just few and far between.