Kylesa’s Best in Tension
Heavily-percussed — their two drummers might have something to do with that — Savannah, Georgia five-piece Kylesa will release Static Tensions, their fourth album (third for Prosthetic Records) on March 17. It’s an album that sees the avant sludge metallurgists concocting yet another highly individualized piece of post-metal, thicker and seemingly more focused on songcraft than 2006’s Time Will Fuse its Worth with heavy atmospherics built from aggressive riffs and savage performances.
As ever, with Kylesa, it’s a tale of sonic conflict. On Static Tensions, we hear guitarist/vocalist/producer Phillip Cope versus guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants, Cope and Pleasants then teaming up to take on drummer Carl McGinley and drummer Eric Hernandez, McGinley and Hernandez then turning on each other, the songs doing battle with themselves (and our eardrums) and the unavoidable maturation process and willful progression engaged mano a mano with the desire to bludgeon listeners over the head with heaviness. How bassist Javier Villegas manages to cope with it all is a mystery. Perhaps a lot of rocking out and the occasional bit of recreational drug use. Pure speculation.
From the start of opener “Scapegoat,” it’s clear this is Cope‘s finest recording job yet, and while the album doesn’t boast an especially “live” feel, it is in no way artificial-sounding, as the drama injected into “Said and Done” and “Almost Lost” attests. Static Tensions hits its most riffingest point at the center, with “Running Red” drawing a pagan circle around a riff that, if it was on a Hatebreed record, I’d probably call retarded; not to undercut the culmination of closer “To Walk Alone” or the Neuro-sludge of rainy highlight track “Nature’s Predators,” which crashes with an anger that should appeal to anyone who got down with 16‘s recently released Bridges to Burn.
This day and age — not to mention the common Georgia lineage — Mastodon comparisons are inevitable, if only vaguely appropriate since the two bands have gone in disparate directions through the course of their careers. Still, you’re going to see them in reviews anyway, what with “Only One” (more dueling percussion) scaling its way up and down a neo-heavy-prog ideology with a Brann Dailor-esque full-then-half-time drum beat behind. Call it a Today is the Day influence instead. Everyone will be way impressed you know who they are.
Artwork from the increasingly-ubiquitous John Dyer Baizley (guitarist for Savannah brethren Baroness and cover artist for Pig Destroyer, Torche et al) is worth mentioning even if it’s been done before, and obviously with the record not even out yet, the staying power of Static Tensions is totally unknowable, but what even cursory listens demonstrate is that the band has grown considerably since Time Will Fuse its Worth. Of particular note is the versatility Pleasants brings to her vocals on “To Walk Alone” and elsewhere. Whether this is the record that gleans them the notoriety they seem to have been trying to beat down the wall of for so long, I don’t know, but it rocks. One way or another, it’s got that going for it.
Tags: Georgia, Kylesa, Prosthetic
