"Silhouettes arched awaiting judgment
Seldom gestures steep in gloom
Unto the viewing, a scintillant geist of vision
Low herald summoning empirical astray
Dread thrown at the arch
Exequy of infinite manor"
("Offering", Knoll)
Judging from the lyricism this surely is Funeral Doom, right?
KNOLL -As Spoken (LP) (2024)
If there are Ohlsen Ultras out there and you are one of them, you should have already anticipated this review, since for some reason me purchasing this album has been an integral part of my report from the third Roadburn Festival day. And if you've read that one you also already know that Knoll are definitely not a Doom Metal band. But... hold that thought!
For by far most of the time Knoll technically can be described as an absolutely savage Grindcore band with open influences from Black Metal, the most evil forms of classic Floridian Death Metal and the genre's more recent Dissonant twists.
But there is something else, not only in the words and presentation of "As Spoken", which justifies that the band from Tenessee uses the term Funeral Grind.
For a start the original, unfathomly extreme vocal performance - both the screeches and guturrals -, has a very rotten, gurgling, ghoulish quality to it, as if the singer was screaming at you from inside a moist coffin, an undead spirit, using a foul rotting corpse as a vessel for his voice.
On the other hand this album also has a musical layer of grave earnest grandiosity to it, which oddly enough is woven pretty subtly into the constant abrasive attack of Grind and Noise. It only gets really obvious when the occasional trumpet calls for a procession above the maelstrom. But in a way, which I cannot fully grasp yet it is present on the whole album.
Knoll, who have released this record independently and shroud themselves in a certain mystery by not offering any credits beyond the lyrics on the gatefold sleeve or sheet, have indeed carved themselves a unique niché within the world of extreme Metal here.
If you're always on the lookout for new exciting variations of brain-smashing brutality, but you have slept on this when it came out in January, do yourself a big self-flagellating favor and catch up on it now!
For by far most of the time Knoll technically can be described as an absolutely savage Grindcore band with open influences from Black Metal, the most evil forms of classic Floridian Death Metal and the genre's more recent Dissonant twists.
But there is something else, not only in the words and presentation of "As Spoken", which justifies that the band from Tenessee uses the term Funeral Grind.
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| Knoll live at Roadburn 2024 |
On the other hand this album also has a musical layer of grave earnest grandiosity to it, which oddly enough is woven pretty subtly into the constant abrasive attack of Grind and Noise. It only gets really obvious when the occasional trumpet calls for a procession above the maelstrom. But in a way, which I cannot fully grasp yet it is present on the whole album.
Knoll, who have released this record independently and shroud themselves in a certain mystery by not offering any credits beyond the lyrics on the gatefold sleeve or sheet, have indeed carved themselves a unique niché within the world of extreme Metal here.
If you're always on the lookout for new exciting variations of brain-smashing brutality, but you have slept on this when it came out in January, do yourself a big self-flagellating favor and catch up on it now!
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