Review Summary: to be kind?
It’s on the moment, more than five minutes into the thing, after all the dust-swept, atonal building of tension, after the crashing blows of those deep, deep, blaring drone chords, when Alan Dubin’s voice
shrieks the words “I. Feel. Dead.” with the kind of emotion that could only come from someone buried alive that it’s understood that Khanate is well and truly back, fourteen years after their last release, their vomiting, screeching hellsounds an avalanche descending to bury all hope and life. Given that anyone who’d been following Khanate since their debut probably assumed that they’d hung it up permanently after
Clean Hands Go Foul, the surprise drop of a new album raised a few questions. What developments had they made in fourteen years? With a hiatus of almost a decade and a half, would they be able to bring anything new to the table, be able to keep up the level of manic depravity they'd been so known for? Would Dubin be able to maintain that manic intensity that had made up so much of Khanates maladapted personality?
The answer to these questions could almost be expressed in terms of quantity, rather than quality. The band's made very little in the way of stylistic changes beyond a shedding of structure and a doubling down on intensity. It’s as much of an ordeal as any other album by Khanate has been, this slow-grind into the pavement, the interminable stretches of feedback and crashing, glacial, arrhythmic pounding from drummer Tim Wyskida. Dubin sounds more unhinged than he ever has, and if there’s nothing quite as evil-sounding as the moment on their debut where he intoned, ”silence, while I strip bones”, it’s all intensified here, the honing in on on their feral, manic sound, drawn out and stretched to the point of being nearly physically painful. The production is sharper, clearer than on
To Be Cruel, Dubin more at the forefront of the mix than on previous Khanate outings, and that prominence is showcasing the fact that he has well and truly abandoned whatever tatters of vocal control he’d been clinging on with
Clean Hands Go Foul. There’s no human way he'd would be able to maintain this level of intensity through the whole damn hour of this thing, so when he shifts to a menacing semi-whisper in the middle of It Wants To Fly, his fever-dream inducing, quasi-psychotic ramblings as drawn out and punctuated as the rest of the album, it’s understandable, if slightly less effective.
Dubin’s nightmarish shrieking and spoken ranting aside, much of the effectiveness of the atmosphere here is drawn from Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, as his deft, hellish touch with droning doom chords and squealing feedback dig the pit from out of which Dubin is shrieking. There isn’t much resembling conventional musicality on much of this: rhythms are creepingly slow when they’re present at all, melody is very nearly nonexistent, the atmosphere that O’Malley’s building is less the structured doom of their debut or the bizarre blues breakdowns and squealing minimalism on
Clean Hands and more of an exercise in a crushing ambiance, in music that resembles more of a noxious, amorphous cloud than anything resembling a conventional song.
The adroitness with which this band induces a certain mental state, and the total oppressiveness of that state does have drawbacks. The hour-long length easily feels like a punishment, a claustrophobic endurance test that leaves its oppressive mood lingering on the skin for hours, like a mixture of dirt and animal grease. Mileage is going to vary greatly as to how much the listener’s going to get out of that. And regardless of how well it’s able to plunge the listener into that mindset, that unpleasant buzz somewhere within the skull that just smothers any feelings of life and hope, there are also those occasional passages, such as the back half of It Wants To Fly, that really don’t justify their length, where the atmosphere begins to grow a bit sparse, less punishing and more just dull. Couple that with those moments when the recognition settles in that there is going to be no reward, no catharsis for this thing, that this isn’t going to lead to the oceanic, dreamy melodies of
Feedbacker or the purgating violence of
Dopesick, that all hope really begins to be abandoned. No doubt that’s been Khanate’s intent since day one, and no doubt they’ve rarely carried out that intent as effectively as they do here. This unrelenting, pervasively ugly experience is only alleviated by its final moments, the only release from its crushing weight coming after one final, crashing blare of feedback. Personally, I came away from this thing exhausted, like I’d just struggled my way out of some black, suffocating morass into the light of day. Will I ever go back into it? Twenty two years after their debut, and fourteen after
Clean Hands Go Foul, I’m in a very different place in life than I was when the absolute despair of these albums appealed to me as much as they did. So it’s with a deep sense of appreciation for how well Khanate are doing what they’re doing that I bid
To Be Cruel farewell, and with a sense of relief that I go back the sunlight, maybe with a better appreciation for it after this deep-dive into hell.
