Kalmah will release their sixth longplayer 12 Gauge on March 3 via Spinefarm Records. Nine new songs and one cover version were laid down during the sessions which “went [smoothly], as always, even though this time the recordings were done in three different time periods within a half a year,” according to the band.

12 Gauge track listing:

01. Rust Never Sleeps
02. One of Fail
03. Bullets Are Blind
04. Swampwar
05. Better Not To Tell
06. Hook The Monster
07. Godeye
08. 12 Gauge
09. Sacramentum

The album will be made also available in Japan on February 24 and will include a cover version of Thin Lizzy’s “Cold Sweat”.

For the Revolution, the predecessor of 12 Gauge, in May 2008 landed at position No. 17 on the Finnish national album chart. This was the band’s strongest chart showing to date in Finland. The CD’s cover artwork was designed by former Sentenced drummer Vesa Ranta, who was also responsible for the artwork of The Black Waltz.

Miika Tenkula, former main songwriter, guitarist and founding member of the finnish Gothic/Melodic Death Metal band Sentenced, has passed away on February 19th at the age of 35 years. Although the cause of death has not yet been revealed, drummer Vesa Ranta claimed that Tenkula “had a serious drinking problem for many years”.

Rest in pease Miika, we will miss you.

Finally i’ve got the fifth longplayer by Kalmah and I have to confess: this thing rocks! The Kokko brothers continues where they stopped with ‘The Black Waltz’, although there are much more scream parts, which were irritating me in the very beginning pretty much. Pekka Kokkos vocals are still droning deep and throaty out of the speakers and appear very mighty and majestic. Amazingly Pekka is able to give always some melody to his grunts, which you won’t find in other bands of the genre (excepting EToS maybe).

The instrumentation is — as accustomed — on a very high level and keeps on following the path they choose on Black Waltz. Especially the keyboards are much more integrated into the sound as before, and does not act as a nice goodie or gap-filler anymore. There are a lot of ass kicking rifss, as well as those typical scrub parts that will invite your head to bang around. As on the Black Waltz, the production is again very powerful and so the tracks sounds very intensive and heavy.

Vesa Ranta (ex-Sentenced drummer) who did already the cover for the Black Waltz, is again responsible for the artwork.

All in all, this record is already now, my personal hightlight of 2008, especially because Kalmah keeps going on to define the identity they found on the Black Waltz and wherewith they clearly seperates from those pabulum by CoB or In Flames.

At least there’s still the hope remaining that those guy will hit germany on their tour too.