Thursday, December 10, 2020

Kara Lin - "Aura" [2011]

Artist: Kara Lin
Title: Aura
Genre: Gothic/Alternative/Oriental Metal
Country: Russia
Release date: 2011

Track List: 

  1. Королева
  2. Открой глаза
  3. Ведьма (Linda cover)
  4. Припять
  5. В сердце
  6. Пустота
  7. Не верю
  8. Ворона (Linda cover)
  9. Когда рухнет небо
  10. Oni
  11. Папа№6
  12. Отрываясь от земли
  13. За стеной
  14. R.I.P.

Kara Lin were formed in St. Petersburg by the vocalist Daria Shafarevich and guitarist/keyboardist Daniil Kozlovsky, initially as a studio project named "3ODIAC". After some of their demo tracks received positive reviews on the net, they became a full band that actively performed live during 2009-2011. Their first and only album was released in 2011, but unfortunately they seem to have stopped their activities after that.

"Aura" offers a pretty nice nix of your typical gothic / female-fronted metal (or maybe rock? not sure this album is "metal" enough...), industrial rock/NDH and alternative rock with a healthy dose of oriental melodies thrown in. Of course it's not without its shortcomings, most importantly rather stereotypical lyrics (which is evident even from the song names, with mostly feature late 2000s Russian goth scene cliches)... but it most likely isn't that important for the foregn listeners. The vocals also could be better performed at times, but that's a minor flaw, and overall it isn't bad for a debut.

Here's their live performance of a rather famous song, originally performed by Linda. Looks like Daria got a fashion sense similar to that of her namesake from Emplosia, and she looks great in a short black dress too:

She also reminds me of Juliette, the vocalist is even more obscure EBM band MelissaTod from Kursk, to whom I was acquainted at the same time (unfortunately they haven't released any albums to my knowledge). I was at the festival where this interview was taken, and maybe was even caught on camera in the crowd:

 
 
Those were the times when the local "dark" scene was full of long-legged girls performing nice music, and in a retrospective, I have nothing to complain about :) Now we have mostly hipster fashion and mediocre post-punk, but we still can enjoy undeservedly forgotten stuff from a decade ago:

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