"Rock is Dead!" is a line traipsed out every year by the media yet every year Desert Psychlist gets more and more debut EP's and albums landing on our overly cluttered desk from new bands playing their own forms of this supposedly dead art form. The latest debut to hit our desk comes from a Swiss trio going by the name of Kala Azar, three guys with a background in crust, hardcore and death metal who have got together to try their hand at some low tuned and sludgy doom, something that we think they pull off with some style after listening to "Kala Azar", the bands debut self-titled album.
Opening song "Nothingness" introduces itself with droning effects and a reverberating guitar motif beneath sampled narrative lifted from Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror movie "Psycho" then explodes into life with a crunching guitar refrain supported by thundering drum patterns and grizzled bass lines over which a thick bear like vocal tells of "climbing stairs to nowhere", the songs full on sludge/doom dynamic only interrupted by a brief but effective dip into more ambient waters. it's powerful stuff! The song the band take their name from, "Kala Aza", rears its gnarly head next, the song references a nasty viral disease called Visceral leishmaniasis caused by a parasite and like that parasite this song gets under the skin with an ear pleasing mixture of chugging riffs, slow pounding percussion and powerful throaty vocals. If you have ever been to a hot country and sat down to a meal only to spend more time swatting insects away than you have spent enjoying your food then next track "Flies" is the song for you, although we suspect the songs lyrics have a much deeper meaning than just a throaty rant against annoying winged beasties, heavier than a truck load of lead pipes the song boasts dank stoner doomic guitar riffage and pummelling percussion and in terms of its overall sonic impact is probably the albums most "blackened" sounding performance. Kala Azar sign off with "Stone Fragments" a sublime mix of crushing doom, swampy sludge metal and dark heavy psych decorated with a strong gravelled vocal, the song tends to dwell around just one main riff, varying the tempo of that riff so as not to become tedious while adding little subtle touches of six-string colouring here and there to add texture, a gnarled curtain closer on a seriously impressive debut.
Naming your band after a particularly nasty disease might seem a strange thing to do but given that one of the symptoms of kala-azar is a blackening of the skin it kind of makes sense as the bands sound definitely falls into what could be described as "blackened" territory. Either way Kala Azar's debut is a stunning opus packed to the gills with everything the discerning metalhead/doomer/stoner could possibly hope for when pushing play on a brand new album.
Check it out ....
© 2024 Frazer Jones
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