Customer Reviews

Things Viral

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I do declare that all four members of Khanate have crossed unheard-of barriers in time and space and stranger things, and have brought back with them the sound of deepest, darkest outer space. Much as I loved (in a very masochistic sort of way) the mind-disassembling feedback and bowel-rattling drones of their first release, I can't think of anything to compare to this album. The music blew me into nihility and rebuilt me from the ground up.
Buy this album right now, and then until about an hour before dawn, and put it on. At first, you'll think that the only thing that's happening is Stephen O'Malley and James Plotkin bumbling around in the studio, but in fact they are subtly plugging you in and preparing you for the sludgy abyss of sound that will come.
Then you will become aware of Tim Wyskida, apparently beating a bass drum the size of Mt. Everest, from several thousand miles away. It sounds disturbingly like huge footsteps, and they're coming your way.
Then the voices will start, and you will begin to question your own sanity. Can it really be the same Alan Dubin who spat blood at us in the first Khanate album? Whatever it is, it doesn't sound human, and it sounds like it's coming from some catacomb deep beneath your feet.
Then the first chords are laid down... the guitar and bass seeming eerily clean and quiet compared to the previous sounds of Khanate, and yet bursting with harmonics and sub-harmonics that are so far beneath the human hearing range that you will feel them before you hear them. O'Malley and Plotkin strum out a dirge for the funeral of civilization, and you almost begin to think that you're there, marching in the procession, with the mourners, behind the casket. It's a long march through abandoned streets, drawing more masked and hooded participants as it goes along. Eventually it leads underground, deeper and deeper until it reaches the furthest and darkest tomb, and then the preacher gets up out of the crowd, throws back his hood, and reveals himself to be Alan Dubin. And boy, does he have some things to say...
I love Dubin's voice so much that I even dug up some albums of his and Plotkin's previous group, OLD (definitely worth checking out, if you can find them). I cannot say enough about this man's (?) vocal abilities. He doesn't sing, he *emanates.* He takes raw thought and emotion and drives it into your mind like a red-hot katana. One of the things that struck me about his performance on this album was that Dubin's words were actually quite clear and understandable (quite different from, for eg, the "pseudo-Latin ramblings" on Under Rotting Sky). At first it will seem like none of the words have any relation to one another, but listen to the first two tracks a few times and you will get it. I myself have fallen completely in love with these lyrics, but maybe I'm just messed up.
Once you've gotten to this point, there is simply no turning back. Khanate has sucked you into an infinite quagmire of nihilistic mental destruction. All you can do now is sit very still and stare dumbly at nothing while experiencing a series of terrifying (yet oddly delightful) hallucinations, occasionally emitting an odd random scream or two. Once it's all over, you will truly begin to comprehend the mind-numbing magnitude of huge, scary, and unseen things that abound in this and other universes. Khanate will have turned you into a believer.

My personal advice is, listen to this album, but never listen to it while actually reading Lovecraft... I will never be the same again.

I have always tried to find music that is so far beyond convention and so far beyond what you would call normal. This is it, folks. This is the album. Khanate's Things Viral is the soundtrack to the apocalypse. Before and After. If you are sick, and I mean SICK, of all types of music, then this is for you.

Seriously, what kind of mind produces music like this? This is unbelivably slow, and so far beyond the typical "Doom" metal genre that they fall in, I don't know what to call it. It's also the BEST horror movie soundreack ever. Alan Dubin's vocals range from a chilling whisper, to a horrific scream. Check out the last track, Too Close Enough To Touch. If you don't feel like hiding in a corner and contemplating sucide, you are not human.

For fans of Boris, Earth, and The Melvins, this may or may not be for you. The influences are there, but Khanate have definetly taken these influences and made them their own. Listening alone at night is reccomended.

I was way into metal as a young teen and then grew away from it. I'm into about everything, but thought most metal these days was just dumb and following an old formula that was done much better in the past anyway. Then I heard this album. It is a true mix of psychedelia, metal and ambient. It's like a drug. I haven't been this tripped out by music in a looooong time. It makes me feel like a child again to hear it - it's so illustrative. It reminds me of when I saw Herbie Hancock live actually - It's music without boundaries - it's not really even music in the traditional sense - it's sort of like a sensory experience. Most people will hate this disc, but if you like the idea of laying back in bed, putting on a pair of headphones and disappearing in a very strange way for an hour, I think you will love this.

Khanate is a band that inpires a lot of hyperbolic critical vomiting (most who bother to review them in print rave; most who are exposed to Khanate by "friends" tend to be horrified). I'm a fan, so here's some positive expectoration: .....from the frigid depths of Hell's purest vacuum comes roaring, whispering kkkkkKKHHHAAANNNNAAATTTTTtttte. (neat, huh!).

Anyway, these guys are well known for creating some of the slowest, heaviest, hair-raising anti-rock you've ever heard. I hesitate to say "ugly" (though many would say so), actually finding an obscure beauty in Khanate's music.

This one is slower and more meditative than Khanate's s/t debut. Actually, "slower" is not really an appropriate term, since "slower" indicates identifiable tempos. Identifiable tempos are largely absent here. Alan Dubin's vox play a larger role this time--more considered and well enunciated, bringing forth a greater dramatic and emotional weight. For this type of vocal style (the bloodcurdling shriek) it's quite remarkable. The guitars are quite subdued in comparison much of the time, replacing the stabbing feedback of the first album with a lot of, well, silence (and the creaking of guitar strings that evoke the image of men hanging from ropes in dry places). I was caught off guard at first by this album's mellowness and even thought "booooring." But like many great and difficult albums, it grew on me. I like it a lot.

Khanate are, in my opinion, one of the most exciting bands currently operating in metal. Sure, we could toss around the usual adjectives used to describe doom bands, but none of these can quite convey what Khanate managed to accomplish on Things Viral. This album is virtually without precident; I can't think of another metal band that sounds like this. What strikes me most of all about Things Viral is how incredibly sparse it is. While every metal band that comes to my mind (and indeed most music, metal or not) seeks to fill the available sonic space, silence and quietness play a massive role in Khanate's sound. This album is heavy--oh is it ever heavy--but Khanate don't take the easy route and accomplish this by 'rocking out'. It's almost as if the heaviness comes across by implication. Needless to say, with four songs clocking in at about an hour, this album requires a lot of patience and won't be to every taste. It is, however, in a style of music cluttered with far too many 'genre' bands, something refreshingly original and ultimately incredibly rewarding.

after months of anticipation, i can honestly say it was worth the wait. 4 songs topping out at about 60min. takes on more of a feel of 'no joy', the last song on their debut CD. the vokillz on this release are the major player here. while not taking a back seat either, the guitar, bass + drum ensemble are more subdued, nonetheless heavy. graphic visions from MK ULTRABLIZZARD are great as well... beautiful typography going on in the booklet, etc. very solid release all around + a must for any/ all doom fanatics.

Doom metal minus the metal.

Okay, so that wasn't really a sentence. It was a fragment. Whatever. This disc is frightening. This disc is oppressive. This disc is beyond slow. Yet at the same time, it is introspective, detailed, and honest.

I was first introduced to Khanate by way of their s/t LP. I wasn't very impressed, honestly, though the songs on that album have grown on me quite a bit.

On Things Viral, however, the group has really focused their efforts on creating the same suffocating, oppressive sound of their last album with much more open, uncompressed. The production on this disc simply kicks the door wide open for the entire doom genre. Never before has a band actually frightened me as much as on this disc. It's as if the band wanted to get some foreplay in, teasing and taunting you before finally crushing you to a pulp, instead of just getting the inevitable out of the way. The careful, tedious approach to this disc is truly what makes it a must-have album.

The guitars almost sound clean, ironically, yet are as heavy as ever. Drummer Tim Wyskida dons a pair of mallets for parts of several tracks to draw out the emphasis on the gradual ebb and flow of each song's dynamic contrast. I'm equally impressed with bassist James Plotkin's programming on this disc, mostly prevalent on Too Close Enough to Touch (though effectively present on several of the other tracks as well).

Khanate has truly created something unique, and assuming you have the patience, and more importantly, the nerve, you'll thank yourself for at least checking this disc out.

if there are oceans in hell and you were drowning in the ocean while overdoseing on heroin in the midst of a bad acid trip this would be the perfect album to listen to while you did it.

This is probably THE most unique CD I have ever heard. It really isn't for everyone. In fact, it probably isn't for most people. It is very hypnotic and numbing and has basically no musical pattern but the fact is, it is good! You really must hear it to understand what they sound like, I didn't really know what to expect just by hearing about them. Just take a look, nothing to lose but $10 or so.

"makes the debut album sound like speed metal", and that's unbelievably true, but you'd have a better idea of the sound if it were: "makes the debut album sound like if played by live people", for you definitely have to be a decomposing corpse to play SO slow, SO barren, with clean sounds for 19' each song, as if you were lying in your grave with nothing much to do except playing and with only small gear... it' dangerous, almost "ambient" at times, making you mellow and relaxed but with the feeling of something evil reaching for you.