Meet Luna Kills, a young Prog-Rock band from Finland. The band was recently signed to Sweden’s King2Music Records and are re-releasing
their November 2018 album, Before The Satellites for worldwide distribution.
If you are already familiar with this band, you won’t get anything new musically with this re-release. There were no new recordings or mixes added to this release, it’s simply a worldwide introduction of the band and their music outside of the Nordic region. So if you are expecting new music, you will not find it in this release.
While being a relatively new band formed in 2015 under the band name Tocornal, the band has a group of talented musicians who are just starting their journey and finding their sound. Saying that, this wasn’t my favorite Prog-Rock album but I feel this band has great potential to make a mark with their new album that is planned to release in 2020.
Getting to the grit in the album, I didn’t care for the opening instrumental track, Aurora. To me, your first track should immediately grab the listener’s attention and this did not do that to me and made me hesitant to continue listening to the other tracks. I am glad I stuck through to the second track, Violent Waters where there is an interesting track that pulls the listener in with unexpected vocals and an interesting progression of tempos that lead into great hooks. This is what I would like to see Luna Kills do more of. But this first album didn’t have the consistency I was hoping it would have.
There are a number of strong tracks, then a number not quite as good which I believe is part of the inexperience of this new band that will resolve as their writing progresses in their career. They do this strange spoken word at the beginning of a couple tracks that for me, didn’t work. In a number of other tracks there’s great a feel of older rock music with gritty distortion, some blues influence and a bit of rawness in their sound that isn’t something you just develop, so they are definitely on the right track.
There was one track on this album that I found offensive, Life Goals. Some of the lyrics were offensive and in bad taste in my opinion. That’s not something that I want to listen to and certainly don’t think I’d want them suddenly blasting out around children or other listeners who don’t like the style of offensive content that was used. I caution artists to think of the audience that is going to give them a first listen and to leave out this content or make sure they include an explicit content warning so fans can have the control to skip something
offensive. But either way, give the listener the control to decide for themselves.
To me the album is a little confusing in their overall sound, which with this being a young band as well as a first album, I kind of expected a bit of confusion in their sound. What’s not lacking are strong vocals and technical musical ability with the band. I think when the second album is released we will find out who Luna Kills really is and what direction they will be taking their music in. I do look forward to hearing the progression of this group because with Prog-Rock you never know what you will get.
