Last year Krallice’s self-titled debut took the metal and indie worlds by storm. Landing on year end lists in both genres’ publications, it was one of the few albums that heshers and hipsters could agree on. Hipsters found an anchor in the emotional power of the band’s music, whereas heshers could get on board because frankly the band rocked the fuck out at amphetamine speeds and shredded the shit of everything in their path. The band’s sound is rooted in the influence of its two founding members, Colin Marston and Mick Barr. Marston, of Behold…The Arctopus and Dysrhythmia, is known for his love of lightening fast technical proficiency, whereas Barr, of Orthrelm, relies on repetition of patterns to get his point across. As a result, the band produce an original sound that draws upon on jazz, prog and post-rock, known for its emotional peaks and valleys, just as much as they do black and death metal. A typical Krallice song features lightening speed guitar playing over blast beats and tortured vocals, but is structured somewhere between Steve Reich and Mogwai with flourishes of King Crimson and John Coltrane. It is not a bad formula, but as Krallice demonstrates on their new album, “Dimensional Bleedthrough” it is a formula that has to be handled with the utmost care because too much or too little of each element will threaten the whole.
The band kicks things off with the album’s title track. Initially the song is a disappointment. It comes off like a continuous post rock crescendo. As a result, it suffers from overkill. Upon repeated listens minor changes grab the ear, and it is saved from being a throwaway. Still, I have never heard so much intensity in a song threaten to bore a listener so badly. It isn’t a horrible song, and you can hear the making of a great song in it, but it is just too much. One can’t help but wish the band would pull back from the precipice once in a while.
“Autochthon” follows, and unfortunately does not fare much better. The song suffers under the weight of its own ambition. The band mixes black and death metal with prog to take the listener through an absurd amount of tempo and style changes, some of which are absolutely inspired and some of which are just goddamned ridiculous and masturbatory. I admire the band for really trying to push the limits of themselves and the song, but the problem is that as a young, albeit massively talented, band they simply are not up to the task for this kind of exercise. Hell, I don’t even think Immortal could pull this off and they have been creating epic song structures for years out of black and thrash metal.
An even larger problem is that the band’s playing sounds more clinical than inspired on these first two tracks. What made their debut so outstanding is that every single moment sounded meaningful and heartfelt making the album unbelievably powerful. Such power is hard to accomplish when dealing with a band or musician that is not only technically proficient, but wears that proficiency as a badge of honor. One need only invoke the name Yngwie Malmstein to understand that technical prowess does not worthwhile music make. Krallice transcended that curse on their debut, but come very close to falling into the pit of navel gazing here.
The band finally scales it back a bit for “Aridity,” a song that mixes the band’s signature blackened shred with some midtempo post rock influence. The slowdown serves the band well and the song succeeds by offering up at least something different, even if it isn’t entirely revelatory. “The Mountain” follows. It is a short piece of filler that would be forgivable but for lackluster offerings up to this point.
Relief finally comes with “Intraum,” The band’s incessant crescendos drop into a breakdown of steady guitar buzz that burns its way toward a slow buildup back to the band’s reach for the sky sound. Once the band completes the ascent it sounds earned, it sounds right and it proves that there Krallice can still deliver when they focus on the song rather than how fast they can play or what crazy changes in key and chord they can toss off.
The album ends with “Monolith of Possession,” a nearly twenty minute song that doesn’t become remotely interesting until half way through. Even then, the song suffers from more of the same. The most intriguing bit comes right at the end when a sudden increase in volume pushes the band’s sound into the realm of noise. It sounds amazing and underlines the fact that if the band focused more on dynamics, in terms of speed, volume, and tone, they would be untouchable.
I am willing to write off the album as a classic example of the sophomore slump. I still have great hope for Krallice and can’t wait for album number three, where hopefully they will take any negative reception they get from this misstep (although I fear the hype machine is going to mute any reasoned criticism), learn from it and turn it into gold once again.
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