Names. Hmm. The problem with some names is that they have been used for one thing or another for so long that you get confused as to when you have been hearing about them recently. Anyway, to clear it up, this is Kongh (Sweden, sludge). Not Kong (Netherlands, proggy instro). Or the big old monkey (Skull Island, classy b&w movie) But he is on the cover.
Ahem.
It’s their third full length and they definitely originate from the Swedish end of the sludge pool, Four songs, ten minutes plus each and the opener and title track is initially a little weird: We get a nerve jangling few chords and a riff that actually straddles the line between doom, sludge and the hint off highly blackened death. Which is pretty cool until the clean vocals come in all Metallica meets Alice In Chains standard. Those I can do without as they change the mood too suddenly for me but when they drop away we are left in a fine, moody, melody tinged slow swirl of sludge that flirts witha dark, unsettling chaos.
Second song, Tamed Brute, uses the clean vocals better and the mood flows from them rather than being interrupted for them. There is a weird sense of atmosphere here; whilst I can’t shake the comparison of Alice In Chains buried under a wave of filthy sludge, there is an other worldly touch here, things peeking around the corners, drawn by the nerve jangling melodic edge. Pretty creepy cool which comes into it’s own on the next song.
You see for me though its the third song where Kongh finally fall full blooded into something truly fascinating and different. From the opening fuzz and chainsaw guitar on The Portals, the black and the weird are upended into the sludge, spewing out a dark doom caked in black metal. Roiling away in the undercurrent there is a taint of, well, the feel and sound if not the same level of fucked up-ness of the mighty…er…Portal. The sound on the riffs is there but more direct and surrounded by a death heavy noise of doomed out sludge. Totally intoxicating and dark eyes and shoulders above the previous songs. This is continued in closer Skyming. Though less thunderous, the otherworldly fear and wrongness is there, crawling in superb slow fashion with excellent strained but clean vocals and an unbalanced mindset that reminds me a little of Griftegarde. It might be a little too much true doom for some but it works superbly in atmosphere and execution after The Portals.
So a little bit of an album of two halves for me. So different in fact that there would have been a good argument for being released as two EPs. Neither is less than fine but, wow, the last half for me is where Kongh are at their creepy, unnerving, compelling best. I wonder which is the course they will end up plotting?
(7.5/10 Gizmo)
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