Review Summary: Short, sweet and devastatingly heavy.
For those unfamiliar with this five-piece from Birmingham, Kroh is predominantly a doom band but inject influences from bands outside of the genre they stick to and into their own music. Their activity can be traced back to 2011 where Paul Kenney (***pig) formed Kroh with Francis Anthony supplying vocal duties and through this incarnation of the line-up, the band would go on to release one full length before quickly disbanding a year later. Luckily, this disbandment would be short-lived and 2015 marked the return of Kroh, ultimately releasing the pleasingly crushing
“Altars” in 2016 with a renewed line-up and sense of purpose.
Fast-forward a year on and Kroh has established themselves as a force to be reckoned with and has gained a reputation for brilliant live shows, often upstaging many of the bands they end up supporting. However, all their success is ultimately down to the music and
“Pyres” is a logical continuation from
“Altars”. It showcases an array of chunky riffage and mesmerising vocals over a digestible duration that demands instant replays while simultaneously teasing which direction the band is heading for in the future, as all effective EPs should.
The contrast between Oliwia Sobieszek’s luxurious, gliding wails and Paul Kenney’s filthily elephantine riffs make this a multifaced sounding EP that seeps into other genres such as grunge and even the dark side of trip hop. Oliwia’s enchanting voice is a stand out aspect in the band, let alone this EP, where she lets loose ghostly wails, infectious choruses and sultry whispers throughout the record and the fact that her singing is occasionally edited with a quivering effect during “Namertean Girl”, in a Bjork-meets-Chelsea Wolfe sort of tone, allows her to stress the feelings of innocence she projects beneath the dominant guitars and browbeaten bass. Furthermore, the minimalistic buzzing and shimmers of guitar during “Rigor Mortis” create a great, eerie harmony with Oliwia’s infectious singing.
Nevertheless, Kroh is indeed a doom band and they still sound like their riffs are repeatedly bashing your head to pulp. Those looking for a straightforward approach to the genre will find
“Pyres” particularly appealing as Kroh convey feelings of gloom and creepiness through heavily distorted riffs that crawl around the undiscovered parts of your brain. During these rhythms, when those riffs explode into action, the impact is immediate, evocative and catchy as hell. At the start of “Moriah”, Oliwia’s vocals take the form of tribal, ritualistic croons while the swarming electronics in the background intensify the moment those lumbering riffs drop. Fortunately, Kroh shows enough of this variation in their music to separate them from another run-of-the-mill doom band.
From a distance, this is simply a lovely slab of fresh doom metal. Every box of the doom metal record requirements receives a big tick over the course of this EP, however, Kroh has displayed an ample amount of creativity and diversification throughout their career, which continues further on
“Pyres”, to prevent them from being anchored down by a weathered genre whose sound is beginning to become far too predictable. Satan laughing spreads his wings.
