Trees

Seeing as Khanate currently live on only in the memories of masochistic lunatics and open-minded metalheads the world over, Trees are a more than adequate replacement. Possessing an organic quality that Khanate somewhat lacked, the group trudge their way through two lengthy tracks and effectively split unwary listeners’ skulls in the process. Those familiar with Khanate, or to a lesser extent Bloody Panda, will be prepared for something as angular and nauseating as this, and should check it out sooner rather than later. To others, the best that can be said is to prepare yourself for the sludge equivalent of Thergothon or older Current 93: slow, deep, hard and superficially near-structureless doom, with the emphasis placed more on the spaces between the strums than the notes themselves. Feedback rings desolately over sparse but occasionally pummelling percussion, with black metal-inspired vocals howling away somewhere behind the barely penetrable wall of molasses-soaked riffage. It’s somewhat derivative but strangely mesmerising.