KHANATE s/t CD

SOUTHERN LORD (2002) NEW / UNPLAYED / SEALED

DOMESTIC RELEASE

[PLOT SUMMARY]
DESCRIPTION:
Here's the debut album from extreme doom unit Khanate, featuring Steven O'Malley from Sunn O))) and Burning Witch, and James Plotkin of O.L.D. and Phantomsmasher. A continuation of the sort of stretched out sloth-sorcery O'Malley summoned in Burning Witch, these five epics are tortured, ultra slow dirges laced with diseased glitchy electronics and Alan Dubin's completely paranoid vocal menace, moving between murderous whispers and some of the most painful shrieking throat abstraction ever put to tape. These songs reek of madness and urban filth. The riffs are dissonant and pitch-black. The drumming is a beatless anti-pulse, existing solely to punctuate the jet black rivers of negative energy being collectively ejaculated from the eyes of Khanate. Droning, but hardly peaceful or relaxing. Extreme corpse psychedelia rotting in the gutter alongside Esoteric, Corrupted, Eyehategod, Bunkur, Moss.... Devestating.

SOUTHERN LORD BIO: KHANATE (pronounced CON-EIGHT) was born in NYC autumn 2000 after an initial meeting between James Plotkin/Bass (REGURGITATION, OLD, SCORN, James Plotkins's ATOMSMASHER, several releases under his own name and in collaboration with various other individuals) and Stephen O’Malley/ Guitar (THORR'S HAMMER, BURNING WITCH, SUNN O)))) administered a necessity to survive the sorely missed bleak aura of suffering evoked by the departed BURNING WITCH. Plotkin arranged vocal torture courtesy of Alan Dubin (OLD) with whom he had been working together in the proto-dirge unit SHADOWCAST during 2000 (along with ex-16 drummer Jason Corely). Tim Wyskida (MANBYRD, current drummer in BLIND IDIOT GOD) blessed the group with his hammers and KHANATE became solidified. During winter-spring 2001 KHANATE recorded and produced their self titled debut in studio necrodrone8negatives, with final mastering by Mathias Schneeberger (THE OBSESSED, SAINT VITUS, GOATSNAKE). The sounds can probably be described as the next step down the mentally unstable ladder from BURNING WITCH. Ultra gravitational hellish brooding black doom metal with inhuman vocal constructs. Well, something like that...... Shortly thereafter an agreement was drawn up between the unit and SOUTHERN LORD RECORDINGS of LOS ANGELES for a 2 album contract. A particular of KHANATE is Dubin’s relentless vocal assault lying somewhere in the realm of early DIE KREUZEN, ACCÜSED and such venoms. A unified purpose of bottom end wave structure and sound as physical onslaught drives KHANATE. Tortured cries collide with the musicàs low-end, gut-wrenching aggression. Each note is used to create forceful brutal impact...

REVIEW FROM ALLMUSIC: Doom metal may be the only genre where the words "dismal" and "wretched" are used as compliments, but if that seems strange, then take a brief listen to this album — very much a doom metal recording — and then try to imagine the band taking issue with such descriptions. Everything about it is carefully designed to evoke some feeling of pain, dread, or misery. The tempos are exaggeratedly slow, the vocals are yelped out in a high-pitched streak, the bass is distorted and sludgy, and the guitar spews out blasts of acidic feedback all over the place. But, Khanate realizes the difference between "good" dismal and "bad" dismal. Their songs are memorable, if unsettling — "Pieces of Quiet" and "Skin Coat" are as close as this kind of discordant, snail-paced music comes to being "catchy" — and they know how to pace their movements well enough to keep their ten-plus minute songs from wearing out their welcome. The production is also excellent, resulting in a very textured sound that's well defined on both the low end and the high end. All in all, an impressive debut that should appeal to fans of this type of bitter, black-hearted doom metal as much as it should repulse pretty much the rest of the listening public.

REVIEW FROM DOOM METAL COM: Khanate is the brainchild of Stephen O'Malley (Thorr's hammer, Burning Witch, Sunn 0))), Lotus Eaters) and James Plotkin (Old, Scorn, Atomsmasher) joined by Alan Dubin (Old) and Tim Wyskida (Manbyyrd, Blind Idiot God). Given this impressive line-up, Khanate had something of a name to live up to before they ever released anything. Well you will not be disappointed. Five lengthy tracks of extremely raw doom fill this debut album. Massive amounts of feedback, standstill music and what can best be described as 'vocal torture' make of this album one of the most painfully insane pieces of doom ever. There is not a happy note to be found on this silver disk. The slogan on their flyer, "If you loathe extreme doom, you will hate Khanate", definitely holds up, this is not for the weak of heart. Khanate often reminds me of an even more twisted version of Burning Witch but slower, more droning and hellish. Imagine how it would feel to slowly notice your mind slipping, when seconds become hours, when hours become days. Knowing you are losing your mind, but you are unable to stop it, at first fighting it, but then slowly giving in to the insanity and madness. Reality becomes a twisted mockery you are no longer connected with. The walls are turning in on you, the gravity is so extreme you can not even lift your head anymore. That is how Khanate sounds, hellish, brooding and most of all inhumanly insane. This is an absolute must for extreme doom fans! I will simply quote Khanate on this: "Khanate is raw f***ing power, submit or be crushed!!!".

REVIEW FROM MAELSTROM ZINE: There's doom, and then there is DOOOOOOOM (the more 'o's, the better). This is definitely the latter. Take the classic doom metal of Black Sabbath, Cathedral, St. Vitus, Candlemass and strip away all of the melody. Then slow it down to a crawl, add layers and layers of sludge and grit, and walls of squealing feedback, and you'll get some idea of where Khanate are coming from. A veritable supergroup, Khanate features James Plotkin and Alan Dubin of late great avant-noise-metallers OLD, as well as Stephan O'Malley, who is responsible for some of the slowest, darkest, most frightening sounds of the last few years with his groups Burning Witch and SUNN0))). The sound here owes a huge debt to doomed southern stoners Eyehategod as well as the crushing tarpit sludge of indie-doomsters Earth (O'Malley's SUNN0))) is essentially an Earth tribute band). Huge walls of buzzing and roaring guitars are laid out like warm, wet mud, burying you and suffocating you with sound. Rib cage-rattling low end hum, stretched out into entire songs, pummelling slow motion riffs are broken into jagged song fragments by ear shredding bursts of solid sate squeal, while inhuman black metal-ish squeals and spewing misanthropic negativity pepper the plodding, nightmarish soundscapes. Occasionally the whole thing collapses into a black hole of almost serene, rumbling and earthshaking drones, only to stumble back to life as a pounding and crushing behemoth. This is the new era of doom, along with Esoteric, Corrupted, Boris, etc... where the sound is more important than the songs, and the sound hurts.

REVIEW FROM INK19: Blood-splattered handwritten pages and photographs stained and overlaid with arcane symbols, rusty knives hidden in the folds of a straitjacket. That's Khanate. Khanate is not good times at the rock club or the soundtracked memory of a first kiss or that teenage grope. Khanate is scaring the s**t out of legendary "art noise" producer Martin Bisi and getting banned for life from his studio. Khanate is the unread scrawlings in the wall-to-wall journals of the killer in Se7en. Khanate is the face you think you see in the bedroom window late at night, the 3 AM phone call with dead silence and a faint gurgle on the other end. Khanate is the vilest, slowest, sludgiest, lumbering, anti-melody, anti-song death rattle that I have ever heard. It transcends mere doom metal and reaches an even more opaque plane. With a talent heavy lineup featuring James Plotkin, Stephen O'Malley, Tim Wyskida, and even ex-OLD vocalist Alan Dubin, the players seem to achieve some level of telepathic disharmony that is frightening. They all feed off one another, working off each other's basest instincts to achieve arguably their finest hour, both individually and communally. Dubin, in particular, just f***ing loses it, giving the performance of his life while crawling into a shell of introversion and demented paranoia that transcends any notion of a mere performer. It's snuff spectacle at its best and worst -- Dubin shrieks, groans, crawls and flays himself raw. All the evil that songs like "Nick The Stripper" and "Dead Skin Mask" promised but failed to deliver, is manifested in spades by Khanate. The unease factor is turned up even further with Dubin shrieking and skittering through lyrics like "Quiet time... No more whine" or "Peel... Now feel" in "Skin Coat," over and over into the depths of madness. Backed with raw stumbling guitar feedback and bowel rattling death rhythms, this is what I've been waiting for. This is the kind of f***ed-up menace that so many bands have hopelessly tried to reach. I can think of no higher calling in life than being in a Khanate cover band.

Hey! Don't forget to check out all of our other CRUCIAL BLAST -approved AVANT METAL / MUTANT NOISE releases in our Ebay store and on auction. Lots of OOP and RARE items too, for all you collector trogs!!

[CONDITION+INFO]
BRAND NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM STILL SEALED IN SHRINKWRAP. Picture is an actual scan of item.

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CRUCIAL BLAST is an independant underground label and mailorder specializing in cutting edge, "experimental" heavy music from the indie universe with a particular focus on avant-Metal, heavy mutant noise and drones, and edgy/abrasive/weird "outsider" rock and pop. You'll find everything from art-damaged European metalcore to amplifier-exploding psychedelic drones in our listings, which we update every week. We like our sounds weird, and we like 'em heavy. You're not going to find the popular flavor-of-the-month "alternative" music here...these are new mutations in extreme music.

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