Ducks Battle Satan

Just how many bands has Stephen O’Malley been in? Khanate first crossed my radar a couple of years ago when I picked up their self titled debut to supplement my knowledge of doom. At the time it was a little too much metal and a little less doom than what I was looking for. Over the years that record has grown on me and when I saw this get released I was pretty keen to hear it. The thing about this record is I had trouble figuring out whether it was some collection of out takes, demo tracks or what because depending on what you read the band broke up somewhere between 2004 and 2006. I’m not sure when these were recorded or why it took so long to release them. Again depending on what you read this is either the third or fourth proper Khanate record.

The thing about Khanate is that if you are looking for the full on monster riff doom expereince of Sunn O))) then you are going to be disappointed. The metal that Khanate produced is a highly dissonant version of black metal but trending toward the artier end. The screamed guttural howls of the lead singer are actually understandable which is nice and the music some across as an intelligent version of Tortoise had they burnt down a Swedish church and fucked a goat on occaison. It’s certainly not easy listening but for those looking for a less campy, more cerebral black metal experience, this may be it.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2009 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Doom, Music, Sunn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.