Customer Reviews

Khanate

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Usually masochism isn't a adjective befitting a music fan of any sort. That is unless your thing is playing music so loud your ears start to pus and bleed, but I digress. Khanate have fashioned an album here that will bring out the masochist in anyone. It has to, otherwise there would be no way to enjoy such a vile thing as this. Yes Khanate do belong to the doom metal genre yet they share few ties with the usual Sabbath-esque canon of bands that populate this style. They've removed every last drop of bluesy riffs and stoner elements from the doom sound and infused it with something that is much closer to The Swans and Godflesh then anything Ozzy ever concocted. I could be swayed easily into believing that Khanate's intention here was to construct an album of absolute oppressiveness and where torturing the listener was high on the agenda. This goes beyond the feeling of immense gravity a band like Earth or Sunn O))) might create. Khanate yields to you that same feeling of suffocating heaviness but perhaps while trying to escape the gravity you fell into a bubbling tar pit. Unable to move due to immense force bearing down on you and slowly being sucked deeper into the black liquid you have no choice but to give up. The most promising doom band to come along for some time

This is frightening. Not just because of the volume, the grindingly slow pace, the subsonic frequencies, the sense of revelation through abjection, or even Alan Dubin's tortured vocals. No, what's really frightening is just how MUSICAL Khanate are.

They're often described as an evolution from Stephen O'Malley's earlier band Burning Witch: whereas BW was more obviously doom metal (although their two tracks on the Goatsnake/Burning Witch split album pushed the envelope pretty far, and sound more like the later band), Khanate goes way beyond the genre. Think of Swans, or Melvins' more experimental stuff. Most of all, think of Scorn, whose bass player James Plotkin provides the foundation for Khanate's rotting edifices of sound.

And there is something architectural about Khanate, a sense of coherent structure that you don't get with most doom metal. Far from just cranking out 16rpm Sabbath riffs, Khanate create a sense of space and atmosphere I haven't heard since Scorn's 'Vae Solis' (THE prototype ambient metal record). Don't get me wrong, there are spine-rattling riffs here. But there's also beautifully teased feedback, near-impressionistic percussion (via Tim Wyskida's 'hammers'), and some surprisingly clean guitar sounds. And how they manage to play in time at this speed is beyond me. It's almost telepathic.

Then there's Dubin. Personally I preferred Edgy59's vocals in Burning Witch: he could sound like a murderous psychopath one second and a frightened infant the next, and even convince you there wasn't much difference. Dubin is more aggressive and more self-assured. Superficially the two bands are similar, but where Burning Witch sounded lost and confused, Khanate sound like they've come through that to the other side -- they have suffered into truth.

If you like anything else O'Malley has been involved in, any of the bands I've mentioned so far, or Earth, Thrones etc. you will love this. Just don't listen to it on acid.

Khanate is a doom-metal supergroup, made up of musicians from the likes of Sunn O)), Burning Witch, and O.L.D. So if you're a fan of the scene you have a basic idea of what to expect, but Khanate goes well beyond the typical doom (which is basically the loudest ambient music in the world) and full-on into the realm of conscious insanity. This is DOOM in caps.

There's nothing superficially offensive about Khanate. There's no occult/satanic references and no profanity.... and yet this manages to be more frightening than every "nEkRo" black metal and submusical grindcore outfit out there. This is the kind of primordial fear and dread that only the likes of Swans and Godflesh have approached. This is PURE EVIL, the sonic equivalent of H.P. Lovecraft. So make sure that all sharp objects are put away before you proceed.

Khanate's debut consists of 5 long-playing (the album is nearly an hour in duration) slabs of audio torment--all screeching feedback drones, thick bass, SLLLOOWWW and deliberate rhythms that recall shifting tectonic plates, and Alan Dubin's voice, which sounds like it is being broadcast via short-wave radio from the lowest reaches of Hell. And the lyrics are totally depraved and sickening (recite the lyrics of Skin Coat and feel the room get colder).

While most doom has a sort of mammoth, hazy vibe (as if you were smoking a truckload of herb on an oppressively hot summer's day), this is like witnessing Black Sabbath jamming in the midst of a collapsing black hole. Totally oppressive and without a shred of remorse or a shaft of light. Very hard for me to rate (I'll settle for a four, since it does what it is intended to do EXTREMELY well) and definitely not for most tastes. However, if you love extreme music, this makes 99% of it look like child's play. Venture at your own risk. Oh, and for what it's worth, I really like the cover art for some reason.

This is the most depressing sick thing i've ever heard! Ultra gravitational hellish brooding doom!!!! The ultimate...

this album....its very good. the music assumes a life of its own, as it crawls and retches along like an entity in itself. unfortunately, the label(southern lord) made too much of a comparison with this and the guitar players previous band, burning witch. while this does sound like the next logical step in the damaged cycle of battery that was burning witch, this is very different in some ways, and should be considered on its own merit, not ex members of so and so, (stuff..) like that. i dont know what they could possibly tune to, it sounds like a lot of low a notes rattling around while someone beats a drum a far off and a goblin screeches until his heart slides up his throat and onto the floor. if you were into burning witch, pick this up. if you werent, i wont recommend this to you, bacause this stuff will seriously change you.

Few bands that are called extreme metal live up to that, but Khanate is just that: extreme! The instrumentation is much like Steven O'malley's other band, Sunn O))). The biggest difference is that there is a regular vocalist and he screams like a demon possesed black metal vocalist. These are the rawest black metal-ish vocals I've ever heard. And once in a while they sound like they might get the slightest bit more melodic, and do not. This is an extremely heavy sickness and is only for the strongest of listeners. Be warned!

I'm usually able to figure out if I'll like a band after listening to their music for just a few seconds. But I've listened this this album many times without forming any sort of opinion. I don't know what to think about it. I oscillate between revelling in its extremity and finding it utterly dull and boring. Part of the problem, probably, is my ignorance about doom metal in general. Another part of the problem is that I'm a big fan of just about everything else James Plotkin has done (OLD, Atom- and Phantomsmasher, etc). I hold it all in the highest respect (although I haven't necessarily liked all of it). But I'm not even sure whether to respect this. I see very little that I can associate with Plotkin's other projects. The straight doom metal parts are sort of cool, I guess, and have a sort of extreme minimalist appeal, but don't sound that different from the limited amount of other doom metal that I've heard. The best parts are the more bass-driven (if driven can be applied to music so down-tuned and slow), slightly jazzy parts, that tend to occur towards the end of some of the "songs." Plotkin, as bass-player, seems to have injected some of his avant-garde sensibility into these sections, and they are pretty cool. I've always associated Plotkin more with the John Zorn jazz scene than with metal, and he has always shared some of Zorn's willingness to hurt his listeners. This tendency reaches full fruition on this album. Some of the screechy feedback moments on this album are actually painful to my ears, and if listened to at high volume could probably cause permanent hearing damage. The lyrics and vocals call up a primitive, otherwordly atmosphere, where bloodthirsty sub-human creatures hunt each other. I don't know how to rate this-- to be safe, I'll take the middle path and give it 3 stars. Maybe I'll revise my opinion about it in time-- maybe the very slowness of the music itself has slowed down my capacity to form an opinion about it.

...and loved it! i don't have a metal background, but james plotkin's work in OLD, and his guitar work (not bass work--nic bullen was scorn's bassist) on scorn's amazing album evanescence made me check them out.

this album is a good intro to their sound, which now is even more concerned with pure sound as its main device. plotkin's bass' microtones are amazing.

S. Frank, whoever you be, you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Khanate are most definately doom, they just don't conform to the horribly restrictive conventions of the narrow-minded, self important 'true doom' scene (You know who you are, Doom-metal.com). This is a nightmare of a record, but in a good way. Inhuman screeching over piercing feedback and drone, all anchored by a lower-than-low end. Skin Coat is enough to have you sleeping with the lights on. All these grindcore bands, in their quest to sound as horrific as possible, have once again been outdone by the inspired lunacy that appears commonplace at Southern Lord. If you like Grief and haven't heard these, I cannot recommend this enough.

this cd is sick.

featuring the vocalist from burning witch, and members of other various bands, this is excellent 'hellish brooding doom.' its sort of an evil thing to behold, man. its very slow, so dont be expecting speed metal. this is heaaaaaaavy. and black. but not black metal, no, this is blacker than black, i promise. black sabbath and burning witch get into a fistfight in a vat of thick, black venom spewed from the mouth of satan himself. truly sick. recommended.