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Rating: Just a first glance at the cover of this album and your stomach tightens. A coldness and total desolation, the ruin and heaviness of a wreck abandoned in the Arctic frost.
The guitars that open the album with "The Pressure Keeps Me Alive" are the sound of rust and ice advancing relentlessly, menacingly and heavily. The sick melodies of "Wrong Side of History" are winds that penetrate everywhere like blades.
The album offers a scene teetering between Post Hardcore and Doom, leaning more towards the former, with a sparse yet imposing and massive sonic aesthetic.
The guitar and bass sounds are abrasive and natural: rather than using enormous doses of distortion, you can hear the amplifier valves heating up and the speakers cracking. The drums have a very "Steve Albini" quality, meaning that sparse yet powerful and natural sound that relies on the power of performance and the "room" rather than precision in the console - a sound often associated with this American producer's work.
To describe the voice, I think "visceral" is the right word. These are natural, chaotic performances that recall, albeit in a relatively distant way, sounds in the style of Minor Threat or Black Flag.
This is definitely one of those albums that are conceived "as albums," in the sense that the songs have a very clear reason to exist within the context of the album, almost as if the 7 tracks contained are part of an extended musical suite.
Kowloon Walled City take their name from a truly surreal place (do a Google search!) and their music manages to represent the same discomfort and unease with natural and credible sounds.
A listen is definitely worth it: the album is also available for free download or donation via Bandcamp!
Tracklist
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