Artist: Kongh
Title: Shadows of the Shapeless
Type: Album
Label: Trust No One Recordings
The marriage of progressive, post-rock elements (Christ, someone please execute me for using that genre description), and doom metal seems to be all the rage at the moment. When done well, taking the vast, expansive soundscapes of the more cerebral bands and marrying them to the sheer gut-punching power of the doom riff can pay dividends. When done badly, this unholy splicing of self-absorbed shoe-gazing and that most cliché ridden of genres can produce a musical still-born clusterfuck of an album; an unwanted red-haired bastard son forever destined to sit unlistened to on the shelves of any unfortunate listener unhappy enough to have picked it up. Which child is ‘Shadows of the Shapeless’? The be-loved kid or the abandoned orphan?
Kongh are a Swedish three-piece outfit that has come together from a variety of musical backgrounds. The assembled shoe-gazing throngs always forget to set sail aboard the boat of atmosphere, in my opinion, though that isn't a problem that Kongh have. With their lengthy compositions (five songs weighing in at around sixty minutes music, anyone?), it would have been all to easy to jam each song full of different musical motifs, piss around with time changes and pretend to take the listener on a journey. Not so with opener ‘Unholy Water’, a powerful track with cascading riffs, dissonant guitar work and blackened vocals that tell of despair. I was most reminded of the barbaric, forward thinking (and much missed) doom of Thee Plague of Gentlemen (specifically on their magnificent ‘The Ocean Has No Sides’) with the ebb and flow of savage guitars which seem to collide and clash as the waves against the harbour walls. ‘Essence Asunder’ continues in a particularly cool lounge-blues band meets Electric Wizard on extreme medication vibe, all distorted swing and demented swagger, the drums pounding like a head full of tablets shipped ‘fast from Mexico!’. ‘Tank Pa Doden’ is a cool little acoustic track sounding like The Obsessed jamming through Entombed's equipment. ‘Voice of the Below’ is a track for which the term ‘Vast’ was coined; like an incredibly laid back, distorted road trip through a deep canyon, the hypnotic passage of drums and bass, when combined with the gravelly vocals and buzzsaw guitars produce a bad-trip in musical terms. End track (and title track) ‘Shadows of the Shapeless’ is a masterwork in aggressive build up and relentless, driving doom, from the quiet almost early Anathema frailty of the opening sections, through the barbarian Motorhead caveman stomp of the end.
Complaints? They're few and far between. The production is perfectly honed to retain the rough and warlike vibe of the songs without losing some of the frailty of the counterpoint elements of quiet reflection. The songwriting is accomplished, though I can't help but feel some of the songs - particularly Essence Asunder - could have benefited from a little more savagery in the editing, and been more effective by being about a minute shorter. These quibbles aside, Kongh have produced a debut album of impressive scope, vision and execution.
http://www.kongh.net/
http://www.myspace.com/kongh
Chris Davison
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