Karma To Burn
Almost Heaten

"On this occasion, did the folks at Roadrunner try to dissuade you from releasing an instrumental album, or did they give you free rein?"

 

"No, Roadrunner was not involved at all in the making of "Wild Wonderful Purgatory". It was Satan who rented the studio! Satan paid for our food, Satan sat at the console and took care of the mastering; in a word, Satan approached the label that owed him favors more than any other, and so he helped us release the album..."
(Rich Mullins, Karma To Burn)

Well, finding a bunny head inscribed within a pentacle instead of the usual goat head seems to me as iconoclastic as one might expect.

With their instrumental albums, KTB wanted to emphasize the desire to do whatever the hell they wanted, stepping outside the business and not caring about not having a singer, who probably wouldn't have been able to fulfill the role adequately (so much so that they were kicked out of Roadrunner for this choice, another example of how this label stinks and is crap for tattooed, pomaded puppets).
Let's just say that "Almost Heaten" is not an ordinary instrumental album, but an instrumental with balls and truly dangerous for the high doses of adrenaline it contains: a continuous and uninterrupted riff machine that leaves you grounded and keeps you almost constantly erect. What we have before us is a groove machine of the highest order that works on its own without the need for a voice, considered simply superfluous and also for a specific intent on how music should be understood. This choice to go "backward" and, in a sense, to primitivize has made the music more raw, direct, powerful, and straight to the point. Their proposal is therefore pure, and precisely for this reason, it may not find favor with the average stoner listener, challenging them. There are also some more "calm" and atmospheric interludes that give a moment of breath, but they soon give way to violent and brute explosions that once again sweep the listener away.
Everything is based on the riff which obviously plays a primary role, so much so that if you manage to get into the spirit and the right mood of the album, sometimes you feel that the riffs themselves "sing" to you and try to communicate something precisely because they compensate for the lack of a voice.

"Almost Heaten" saw KTB more mature in terms of instrumental songs and, having a more varied structure, they manage to be decidedly less verbose and more spot on: the fact that KTB in this album managed to condense the essence of a piece in less time means they eliminated the flaw of the previous one. Everything serves the song, and almost nothing is lost in empty turns.
And speaking of production, its monstrosity stands out: the guitars have a sound that calling it devastating is an understatement, they sound like a volcano erupting. That sound is the pinnacle KTB could reach at that moment, squeezing everything to the utmost.

References? Well, throw in the ever-present Sabbath, the obvious Kyuss, in short, hard rock filtered and bastardized with an almost metal perspective (for power), with a southern flavor and a '70s sensitivity. Not forgetting vague and slight hints of psychedelia, which are malevolent, gray, and wayward here, painting brief but intense scenes of desolation.
Song titles? Numbers.

Keep away from posers.