This seventh album from the Manitoba noise rock/ metal titans sees them going deeper and darker than ever before, stepping back from the more “punk rock” sound and tempos of 2015’s Steve Albini-recorded Success to really embrace their black and death metal influences for a sludgy, largely midtempo workout. That’s not to say they’ve radically changed their style, though — this is still decidedly a noise rock album through and through, with amazingly raw, garagey production by Andrew Schneider (Unsane, Daughters) that’s worthy of Kurt Ballou or Albini himself.
“Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should” sets the scene, opening with a squall of feedback before racing out of the blocks with sheet-metal riffs, blasting, off-kilter drums, and hoarsely shrieked vocals.
After that, most of the album continues in much the same vein, with minor variations in tempo and dynamics. The musicianship is, as ever, impeccable, with frontman Jesse Matthewson’s scouring rhythm guitar work of particular note. The words are completely indecipherable without the lyric sheet, which, once referenced, reveals remarkable, rather abstract, almost stream-of-consciousness prose poetry, which tackles the human condition in a cynical, bitter, at times almost hopeless fashion that one suspects may be at least partly tongue-in-cheek, given the band’s seemingly well-adjusted demeanor. The album’s extremely creepy cover art also has a faintly knowing air. Several tracks feature incredible Mats Gustafsson-esque free jazz saxophone blasts from Kathryn Kerr (of lo-fi dream pop project Tansy), while her contribution on the muted opening of “This Is a Love Test” recalls Angelo Badalamenti or Bohren & der Club of Gore at their smokiest. The epic eight-minute closer, “No Gentle Art,” is actually subdued, at least for the first third of its running time, before it erupts into a steadily building maelstrom that eventually sweeps away all in its path.
While this effort takes the band to new corners of its sound, there’s little really new here in terms of the genre canon; but, in truth, it’s not a genre with which all that much can be done — it has to be noisy, it has to be brutal, it has to be dissonant, it has to be bleak. That’s not to say that this is not a good album, however — far from it. KEN mode are masters of their craft, and this is easily the equal of anything from the heyday of the genre on labels like AmRep and Hydra Head. While the more casual listener will find this heavy going, fans of the band, and of noise rock in general, are going to be stoked. — AMG