Khanate

Capture & Release

[5/5] For all metal has done to build its own canon of lyric-sheets-as-horror-literature, you can count on one hand the bands that’ve shirked the safer inspirations of H.P. Lovecraft and Italian zombie movies for a leap straight into the abyss of psychopathy. Put more simply, if Mortician’s catalog is the Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer of heavy metal, Khanate’s is the schematic of Henry Lee Lucas’ faulty mental wiring. Fittingly, Capture & Release is a two-track, 43-minute depiction of one victim’s “Capture” and ultimate “Release” (here, a metaphor for spilled innards), with vocalist Alan Dubin primal-shrieking a sort of killer’s narrative that’s at once devoid of emotion and emotion itself. Not so much counterpoint as sympathetic brainwave, Dubin’s accompaniment by bandmates James Plotkin (bass), Tim Wyskida (drums) and Stephen O’Malley (guitar) is an exercise in pure, claustrophobic terror: Snare and cymbals twitch and decay; riffs and bass lines fall off the fretboard and rot; and time signatures slow to the point of barely existing. And while descriptions like these may seem more apt for a police report than for a CD review, listeners with endurance for this sort of thing (and there aren’t many) will recognize the poetry in Khanate’s sickness. (HYDRA HEAD) Aaron Burgess



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