Khanate
But the brontosauruslike trudge of slow metal has come to a near standstill of late thanks to the recent emergence of doom metal bands like Khanate, now on tour promoting their second album, Things Viral (Southern Lord). Khanate’s music is closer to the score for a Japanese Noh play than anything in mainstream metal. Seemingly endless stretches of meditative silence, illuminated by otherworldly discord and pocked with tiny abrasive sounds, are shattered by precisely placed bursts of thundering agony. The dynamic range is symphonic; the pace is glacial.
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On Things Viral and their eponymous 2001 debut (also on Southern Lord), Khanate’s raw elegance is articulated through James Plotkin’s production. Plotkin, who also plays bass for the band, has a 15-year history of recording in experimental noise and music projects like those of Jansky Noise, Scorn, and Mosquito Dream. He and vocalist Alan Dubin worked together in the electronically enhanced metal band OLD. The way Plotkin scrupulously modifies, delays, magnifies, and repeats sounds, he’s not just making heavy metal with an extra layer of experimentation–he’s testing the limits of what metal can sound like. He leaves plenty of room for sounds to come and go above and below each other, creating an undulating, occasionally crushing mass of hallucinatory disharmony. Like all great metal, Khanate’s recorded music stands up to scrutiny, and like great minimalist experimentation, the monotony offers surprises on repeated listenings.
Khanate’s recent show at the Empty Bottle, while exhilarating, was more austere than their richly nuanced recordings. Instead, the punishment was blunt and visceral. Absurdly loud, the band effectively simulated the experience of getting shock treatments in a wind tunnel during an earthquake. Wearing identical black shirts, mostly staring at their instruments with their backs to the audience, Khanate almost seemed, but for the long hair, like any other indie darlings. They played a 50-minute set consisting of three songs rendered with mechanized accuracy. And only a few semiaudible samples and vocal effects run through a delay hinted at their craft in production. Live they’re just a metal band playing tight arrangements, albeit creative ones; the sonic depth and experimental flourishes of multitracked recordings are impossible to reproduce in performance. But the primary irritant for me was trying to determine whether they were channeling somber priests at the state funeral of a cruel despot, or just being the affectedly indifferent elder scenesters that they are. Between songs one audience member shouted “Hail Satan!” The band responded by…not responding at all.
