Exploring the boundaries of matter, spirit, consciousness and the universe with the metal of death as the instrument – since 2015!
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From the looks of this there is a lot of deep thinking going on. Khanus like some bands just want to go all out to explore, create and take up new challenges without digressing totally from the goal in hand.
‘Womb of The Larger Self’ has blackened elements in abundance and a vocal that almost has a tongue in cheek effect, although this could be coincidental, but is short lived as this is only an introductory offering.
‘Orgone’ with a bit more to get your teeth into this track has a superb rhythmical pattern that is blackened to the core and Sovereign really shows his worth with a demonic growl although his vocal leanings do tend to go slightly off in places which is disconcerting! The guitars are fiery and challenging although sounding very mottled.
‘The Daughters of Fire’ starts off with a great bouncing rhythm but again there is a lot going on, so much so it is hard to remain focused. The choir effect really leaves me cold and I feel not really needed along with the shamanic gargling’s that do not serve any purpose apart from to confuse things
‘The Rites of Sacred Ecstasy’ sounds like it has been taken from a bad horror movie. A cold dirge and ritual chants to some un-inspiring goings on, it sounds like a mish-mash of sorts that offer no real goal.
Quite a disappointing EP really! If the band utilised the cosmic points to the full they could have got much more out of it, instead of going for the ‘tongue in cheek’ approach and making it farcical.
I know being a metal head there is always, more often than not, a sense of humour involved, but Khanus seems to have concentrated on theirs and as a result lost the ability to provide a comprehensive musical endeavour.
It does fall short despite the genre. Maybe they thought that by going under a new genre they could churn out an anything-goes but with no real goal behind it – it just doesn’t get off the mark and therefore crashes and burns into the fires of hell for all eternity.
It isn’t that the band can’t play either, as they do have some good arrangements on ‘Daughters of Fire’ and ‘Rites of Sacred Ecstasy’ but seemingly they have tried to take things one stage further and failed, which is a real shame.
Khanus Rites of Fire is to be released 6th May 2016 via I Voidhanger Records.
