REVIEW: My Kundalini – The Art of Dying

Sometimes some emails you get manage to catch your attention right away. When Jukka-Pekka Miettinen (ex-ArthemesiA, ex-Ensiferum, ex-Stone Beast, Kirkkokahvit) reached out to me about his new solo project My Kundalini, that’s exactly what happened. The album “The Art of Dying” was described to me as “based on the need to express music of the cosmos without the need to limit it to some genre.” Well, if you have been following this magazine, you know that we are a big fan of cross-disciplinarity. We are beyond genres and labels. Now, doesn’t that sound like a promising start?

The album opens up with “Bone”. It immediately shows us the progressive nature of this album, the song is drenched in rock ‘n’ roll-like groove, but has the aggression of death metal. What seems to be a strange combination, is actually a recipe for a great and compelling start of the album. It has a tiny bit of a Devin Townsend feel to it. When the chorus and the clean vocals hit, it shows already quite a lot of versatility. And all of this in just one song. “Bone” is immediately very catchy and pleasing to the ear. In the same way the second song “Love”, kicks in. Around 2 minutes into the song a nice rhythmic surprise occurs vocal-wise and then gets followed up by a great and immersive solo. It’s by moments like these, that I can definitely already say that this album has quite some twists and turns once in a while. What I especially like in general, is that often the songs have quite a nice flow in the vocal parts of the album, it seems like there has been played around a lot with words and rhythms, which gives a nice extra punch to the album. “Stone Beast” explores a more slow side of the album, in “Stone Beast” there sometimes are small very detailed accents that make the song flow even nicer, it’s all in the details they say. “The Art Of Dying” is a very eerie song, it’s really slow and melancholic, but around 5 minutes into the song the tempo suddenly changes swiftly and surprisingly and a smooth guitar solo once again is accompanied by some more twists and turns. “Leaking Mind” is definitely the quirkiest song on the album, it’s jazzy, it has peculiar lyrics and it progresses nicely. The album ends with “Codex Bestia”, a mid-tempo song, which picks up after a one minute build up, the song is a nice and relaxing, clear-your-mind-from-all-your-worries ending to an excellent album.
As I mentioned before the album has a lot of both refreshing and surprising elements. It’s not the easiest music to listen to, but it’s very immersive and because of its complexity and unusual elements in there sometimes, it’s a very nice and intriguing addition to your shelf. I can only recommend to listen to this very progressive album. As to what genre this album really belongs to, I honestly have no idea, but I’ll be very interesting in hearing your thoughts about that matter.

Links
https://www.facebook.com/mykundaliniofficial/