I came across Karmanjakah through Ancient Skills a while back, and “Listening” was the track that stuck with me first. That strange mix of delicate and devastating this band seems to specialize in. So when Diamond Morning showed up, I wasn’t approaching it as a die hard with years of history to defend. I was approaching it as someone who already knew this band had something, and wanted to see what a few more years had done to it.
The answer, it turns out, is a lot.
Bigger, Brighter, Heavier
The jump in overall sound quality and production from Ancient Skills to Diamond Morning is the first thing that hits you. This isn’t a small step forward. It’s the sound of a band that finally has the studio chops to match the ambition that was always there. Everything feels wider, cleaner, more deliberate and atmospheric without losing an ounce of the weight that makes this band worth caring about in the first place.
It’s the second longest record in their catalogue, behind only A Book About Itself, released a few years back. “Nautilus,” “Samples” and “Wild Horse” make a strong case that album deserves its own deep dive at some point. Diamond Morning earns every minute of its own extended runtime regardless. Nothing here feels like padding.
What keeps striking me, listening to this band and a handful of others doing similar things right now, is just how much real experimentation is happening in metal at the moment. Pairing genuinely soft, almost fragile vocal passages with riffs that bludgeon without mercy isn’t a new idea on paper, but very few bands pull it off with this much aplomb. Karmanjakah make it look effortless, which is usually the sign that it absolutely wasn’t.
The Tracks
“Dove” opens things with exactly the right amount of confidence, shimmering keys and soaring vocals riding over riffs that tighten and release like a held breath. It’s the most immediately recognizable Karmanjakah moment on the record, the song that tells you exactly what band you’re listening to, then spends the next forty minutes reinventing what that means. I played it with a friend in the room whose Spotify playlist is almost entirely pop, and watched him catch a groove he clearly wasn’t expecting, full stanky face and everything. I have never once seen that out of him on a metal track, which tells you plenty about how this song works even on ears that have no business enjoying it.
“Eyes Seeing Eyes” might be the album’s best single moment. It opens piano heavy, easing into a slow emotional unraveling before the rest of the band catches up. It trades raw aggression for patience, and it’s all the more effective for it. This is the track that convinces you Diamond Morning isn’t just a heavier record. It’s a more patient one.
“Thousand Horns” is where the heaviness gets properly serious. It’s built around a genuinely melancholic, minor key breakdown, and the tension it builds before finally releasing into something brighter is some of the best songwriting on the album. If you want proof this band can still hit like a truck, this is the track to point to.
“Sapphire” and “Ruby” work best as a pair, a short, jazzy palate cleanser that bleeds into something darker and more ambient. They’re not the tracks you’ll hum in the car, but they’re doing real structural work, giving the back half of the record room to breathe before the closing run.
The rest of the album rounds things out without a single moment that feels like filler: “Sun Astray” and “Moon Astray” as companion pieces, the title track “Diamond Morning,” “Diamond Art,” and the extended closer “Diamond Train.” That’s rare.
The Verdict
I went in cautious, having barely scratched the surface of this band’s catalogue, and came out the other side genuinely floored. Diamond Morning is the sound of Karmanjakah spelling out exactly what they do better than almost anyone else in this corner of metal, then doing more of it and completely smashing it. It’s fresh in a genre that can feel anything but, and that’s not nothing.
Rating: 8.5/10
Souvik Dey writes at the intersection of music, memory, and modern life.
A consultant by training and a storyteller by instinct, he explores how culture shapes identity and longing.
His work blends introspection with sharp observation, often lingering in silences others overlook.
When not writing, he is usually reading, listening, traveling or gaming.
