Khünnt - Dead Eyes






Room atmosphere is important with this release. It sounds intimidating and claustrophobic and sets the mood to this frightening brand of sludge. The First track kicks in with a warm steady beat, overlaid with thick distortion.  I get an AmRep feel instantly, like an ugly love child of Killdozer and Unsane. The vocals are mostly high pitched and sound strangled. The lead singers voice is bizarre, it gives me an eerie feeling like I should look over my shoulder. The amps sound blown. Everything is drenched in tar. This kind of guitar fuzz played along to such plodding rhythms is probably only soothing to me or other die hard funs of sludge but it does the trick. It has a cool evil vibe, not unlike Burning Witch.


At times the two vocalist ground the songs with a more definable crust punk sound. Hearing it I’m reminiscent of the skunky beer I was drinking when I first heard Neanderthal. A skunky smell hangs around these tracks too. The second track starts out slower with small note changes barely escaping through the cacophonous guitar. It punctuates the drone like a rusty machine in a ghost munitions factory, like the kind you would read about in Heavy Metal magazine. Finally the hum breaks into a sound very reminiscent of Grief.

This is great music. I had heard good things and I was not disappointed. These Newcastle noise merchants are working hard to get a hard to listen to sound out into the world and I find that commendable. Their name though, well I suppose it takes quite a bit of kühnheit to call your band Khünnt.


-- Plague Rat

 http://khunnt.bandcamp.com/album/dead-eyes




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