Black Metal History Month- Knoll : "As Spoken"

 

This is the kind of explosive chaos I can get into because it is also pretty dark. However, meth raised the bar pretty high with their album "Shame". Thus causing me to listen for what I did not already get from that album. The vocals sound like Gullom being choked in a feral state, so I support this form of expression. They lay the intensity on thick, at times causing a uniformity to the chaotic blur. In other words, some of the songs sound the same. The guitars are not giving much room to breathe in the first few songs and perhaps that is the point. It also creates one of those moments where after your ears stop ringing you ask "I get you are fucking heavy, but can you write a song?" 

"Revile of Light" blasts at you for the first two minutes, and then there is some atmosphere to let you breathe. Four songs in they have already fucked your ears enough to make them raw, so it might need a little more of a bandage than this effort to just stop the bleeding. They drone out until it drops down into ambient noise. The pound of "Mereward" is welcomed because anything to change the dynamics. It sounds darker and brings more menace than just hurtling down the stairs at a hundred miles a second. "Guardian Bind" is more angular and rabid as they seem to be progressing down a wild spiral of abandoning the songwriting headway they were made for crazier grind core-like outbursts. This causes "Unto Viewing" to sound like an extension of the previous song. 

"Portrait' buzzes with a denser tension. They feel like they are trying to control the urge to violently lash out with the blasting. It does provide a little more dynamics, but the way it's produced finds the overdriven edges creating a uniform blur that reminds me a little of Brutal Truth. By the time we get to "Fettered Oath,' these outbursts have me exhausted. The last song does not do anything to inspire more confidence in this album adding anything more interesting to the beating it is intent on inflicting upon the ole ear drums. I will give this a 7.5, I like some of the sounds they use as instruments of torture and the album gets off to a good start before losing my attention in the relentless swirl of chaos. But that might be more your thing. 

pst55