Kult Ikon - Sheet Metal Sessions
KULT IKON DROP SUPERB ‘SHEET METAL SESSIONS’
A few days ago, on May 1, Raleigh, North Carolina doom outfit Kult Ikon released a new album, entitled Sheet Metal Sessions, recorded and mixed by Scott Holthausen, and mastered by Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski, with artwork and layout by John Vincent.
Kult Ikon
After checking their Facebook page, their website, and their Bandcamp page, I still don’t know who is in the band. I do know it appears, from the photos, to be a trio: drums, bass, and guitar. And they push out gravitational waves of thick doom.
According to their Bandcamp page: “Somewhere in Raleigh. Within a storage unit, where the light is too bright and sound of Tejano seeps through the walls, some dudes are hammering out tunes in the key of doom.”
That pretty much sums it up.
The album encompasses four-tracks, beginning with “The Great Wall,” opening on deep, bluesy flavored muscular guitars riding a heavy crunching rhythm from the Jovian drums. I really like the drums on this track – lots of potent thwacks on the snare and a flat thumping bass drum. A fat resonant bassline reverberates, while the grimy guitar revs up on grinding hefty textures transitioning to strident hues, and then back to rough and gritty.
More superb drumming gives the track punch and beaucoup oomph.
“Black Hand of the Emperor” travels on dark colors, dripping and trickling with pulsing discharges. A feedback-filled breakdown – excellent! – leads to an almost jazz-inflected dread-laced melody of rumbling energy, espousing the doctrine of worth through magnitude and supercharged bedlam-Esque dynamics.
“Orgasm of Death” starts off with some spoken word passage, and then reaches down to the pit of Hell for dense guitars emanating black, crepuscular washes of dirty colors. More superb drumming gives the track punch and beaucoup oomph.
“Circle Birds” launches on Robin Trower-like guitars, drifting with concentrated filaments of platinum tones. Then the guitar goes all Lord of the Flies, injecting glistening sandy timbres, followed by reverting to the Trower-Esque textures, almost progressive in nature. This might be my favorite track on the album because of its low-slung sophisticated hylotheistic flavors and relentless flow.
Kult Ikon has it going on, blending hints of prog-rock with massive doom coloration, as well as the innovative creativity of Tool.
