Melodic Death Metal has a genre has seen some really innovative bands over the ears and KARKAOS is one added to the latest list of this genre of bands. Coming from Montreal, Canada, "Empire" is their first full length release and actually took me by surprise due to the sheer innovativeness.

Starting off with the battle-ready-feel kind of song with the title track "Empire", the album moves into heavy keyboard parts with "Leap of Faith", blasting Melodic Death in combining sharp riffs and blast beats with fast paced Keyboard notes. Combing clean singing vocals with extremely impressive growling vocals, Veronica Oriz Rodriguez lifts the music of KARKAOS to a whole new level, though I must mention that I'm not sure who exactly is behind the growling vocals here. The riffs are very catchy throughout the album and are a treat to the ears, forcing the listener to headbang all the way in every song, especially during the growling vocal parts. Songs like "The Condemned" show the individual proves of axe men in Francis Tremblay and Vincent Hamois, with their jaw dropping solos and the ability to keep the tempo high when required.

While most Metal bands try to only express anger in their music, KARKAOS bringing in the symphonic and Power Metal feel, also brings in sadness and extreme sorrow, clearly audible in songs like "Echoes of Perpetuity". While the band is bound to be compared to the legends of Power and Symphonic Metal, it has its own identity with the duel vocals, without either the clean or the growling vocals overlapping each other. Both the styles go to and flow and take turns in taking the song writing to the next level. Even the atmospheric parts are placed in right place and are not overly used as is the fashion with some bands.

"Blood, Sweat and Tears" has a few Metalcore elements bringing in more diversity to the album, and wait, I'm not complaining. The band succeeds in expressing pain and anger at the same time, which is one of the big achievements of the album. The rest of the album goes on the similar lane of war themed music and bringing in timely atmospheric melodies to increase the impact of the heavy parts. The last song "Eden" gives a fitting ending to the album with its 8 minutes keyboard driven catchy headbang-able music, and doesn't really feel like its 8 min long.

Right from the album cover art to the lyrics, the band has war and religion written all over its songs and has excellent inspirational lyrics and the band's music works just fine to express the same. The production seems to be of modern style and works just fine for this album. "Empire" is worth your 41:32 min of your life and I would recommend this album to every Melodic Death fan and fans of war and kingdom themed albums.