This “soundtrack to a dying world” comes from Polish experimental band Ketha. This is their fourth album release, accompanying a couple of EP’s, one of which is called “#!%16.7”. Imagine walking into a record shop and asking for that one. But then we mostly don’t have to do that these days.
It’s weird. Obscure sounds and cries surround a funky sound. The vocalist sounds dead beat. Life is being sucked out of this thing. Discordance yields to a fuzzy 70s sounding guitar solo. This intriguing trip, in every sense of the word, to the border of insanity is “Stoneclad”. The surround sounds and the weirdness are well in advance on the woozy “Kanati”. A heavy guitar scene bursts into the garbled mayhem, but discordantly of course. The riff very much resembles one from Ephel Duath, to whose abnormality Ketha can loosely be compared with unhinged lashings of Carnival in Coal for good measure. For all its strangeness, it’s audience-friendly and I felt we could all join in the riot, but mouthing what I couldn’t say. Entertainingly, it makes no sense, as we disappear into territories that other bands do not reach. A little cosmic interference ends it, and then these downtrodden cybermen take us to the dingy and dirty world of “Seventhunders”. It’s headache-inducing. From somewhere there’s an electro-bass-symphonic section. Like an old record player it seems to be warping between 33 and 45 rpm, but this doesn’t stop the lads from Ketha who continue to utter strange noises.
“Coyotes” is an old school crusty blast, developing into a shuddering avant-garde progressive explosion. But make no mistake: this is hard rock with a deliberately different sound. From old school rock we return to the electronic sound waves of “Waterbabies”. The fuzzy sound is the foil for a dark, funky jazz-type beat. The vocalists are no less agonised, and it all points to musical anarchy anyway. It’s entertaining and vibrant anarchy. The Ketha boys sound like they’re warbling and suffering incoherently for our pleasure. And the beat goes on. The beat now becomes trip-hop. Like Netra, Ketha use it to convey a gloomy image of a rainy urban suburb. A colourful guitar solo breaks the monotony. The lads wail. The music gets more frantic. Breathless, we return to the urban scene but now the hardness of the guitar creates the repetitiveness. To follow “Maneto”, growly bass and drum set the sinister scene of “Wetsthebed”. The vocalist whispers strange and discordant utterings and the pounding beat reinforces the glum progression. Extra-terrestrial sounds appear, but there’s no knowing what world we are in as we are being hypnotised into this dead space which Ketha present us in a myriad of rhythms, and strangely, colours. Haunting cries can be heard over a cosmic electric field. The effect is as impressive as it frightening. The beat goes on some more but the world seems to be falling part. And they continue to hypnotise us with the growly bass. Welcome to a very, very strange world.
From the disharmonious drunken harmonies to the anarchic structures, this is a very clever album. The stuff of nightmares becomes a strange world of intrigue. Not a note or idea is wasted. It falls between a multi-genre sonically disturbed metal album and a riot in a pub. From the vocals to the mixture of sounds, this disparate and outstandingly creative album is way out and unusual. “Wendigo” is utterly captivating and entertaining from beginning to end.
(9/10 Andrew Doherty)
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