KHANATE - Capture And Release

Pitch black, the sound of Khanate (pronounced "Con-Ate") is thunderous and fearsome, mammoth and nerve-shredding. An apocalypse in slow motion, filmed in a single unbroken take. It's the apparent calm that precedes the coming of the end, when blood freezes and life mummifies, slowly. The third offspring of Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Burning Witch, Lotus Eaters), James Plotkin (formerly of Atomsmasher), Alan Dubin and former Blind Idiot God member Tim Wyskida is an open, bleeding wound of doom-metal pushed to its most extreme consequences, through a dramatized use of minimal details scattered in an abyssal, atrophied, desperately unfathomable void.

Uncompromising, driven by an inexplicable need to push past the boundaries of the sonic manifestation of absolute evil, Khanate translate their initial "metallic" premise into an esoterically abstract form of lied, steeped in a catacomb-like slowness. Compared to the two previous works ("Khanate" from 2002 and "Things Viral" from 2003), the empty spaces increasingly fill up with noises, creaks, low frequencies, disjointed words and fragments of soured sound. Two panels for roughly 43 minutes of terror. Terminal psychodramas. Agonizing.

Dubin's scream ushers us into the first chamber of horrors. The space is cut through by rotting guitar lashes, stunned cymbals and murky bass modulations. For those lucky enough to have stumbled upon their records, Harvey Milk come back to mind, architects of a "degenerate" and epic rereading of the Melvins sound. The instruments duel in terror, tracing ever narrower limits with each pass. In contrast to the hyper-kinetic minimalism of Orthrelm, Khanate's ultra-doom stages a close-quarters struggle (not conceptual, but fiercely instinctive) with the hypnotic and creative possibilities of slowness, working through amorphous dilations and sudden implosions. There is no center of gravity to speak of. Everything hovers indistinct, airy, light yet unbearable.

The ultimate meaning of such an operation only emerges through Dubin's disjointed, raving vociferations: a frightened beast ready to fight for survival in an inhospitable world. The sinister quiet that opens "Release" feels almost disorienting after the brutality of the first movement. But it's only an apparent calm, a scrap of atmospheric stasis the soul needs to recover. Indeed, the malevolent virulence keeps pulsing underground and reasserts itself within barely four minutes. The tragic density is amplified by the "performative" use of Dubin's declamations. An increasingly abandoned world springs from the exhausting tension created by the whirlwind of extremely slow riffs, cymbals carved out of silence and desolate bass rumbles. It's the thirteenth minute, when silent meditation returns: "It's cold when I touch you", Dubin repeats in a faint voice, filtered through a stunned distance. The guitar arpeggiates a skeletal, gothic melody.

Everything unfolds in peace. In an icy silence, sheets of cymbals sweep from one side of the stage to the other. The void behind the bloodless advance. Seven agonizingly long minutes of terminal anguish, before the bass turns into a jagged cliff and the whole structure plunges into the abyss, in a pandemonium of screams, filthy detonations and flayed noise. A great comeback.

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30/04/2026