Music for small minorities. Khanate proposes -in this return by total surprise and against all odds- to bring to the game that precious asset that music does without in practically all its social and cultural stages: patience. You have to have a lot of ovaries/cojones and a lot of will to give yourself to a work in which a musical intention sounds every ten seconds. If we add to this the content of unfathomable misfortune that lyrically expresses “To Be Cruel”because the challenge is doubled.
We know: the drone, before being the device that will take humanity to hell but in a spectacular way, is the style of music that boasts of being the densest and slowest on the scene. This would be the height of drone metal or drone doom, basically “The devouring mass” of contemporary music with a high noisy content.
In that tortuous and revealing environment (depending on the ear that covers it) Khanate is a true cult supergroup, made up of Alan Dubin and James Plotkin (both ex OLD), Tim Wyskida (of Blind Idiot God) and Stephen O’Malley (of Sunn O))) and Burning Witch).
This comeback album contains three pieces of about 20 minutes each, that is, the concept taken to the extreme. Of course there are no melodic lines or ways to remember these “songs” (in fact one breaks your head wondering how these themes come to be), but what there is is a group of “deranged” (I try to say it in a positive sense) who blindly believe in their art form, an admirable emphasis, to be sure. And they also respond coherently to the experimental and path that they traced before their separation in 2009.
Between interruptus whiplashes and dissociated drum hits, the torn voice of Alan Dubin appears, pleading, warning, sinking to the bottom of a black oil sea. Anti-everything. Because anguish and resentment make the soul speak of him. Really, this is very dark shit but it’s not alien to many people.
Know how to discern: if you are not up for deep and uncomfortable emotions, pass by. But let you know that you are missing out on witnessing a form of art with pure conscience and feeling, with pure stubbornness and fight against the current; and that’s always a shame, surely bigger than getting involved with a record like “To Be Cruel”.