Kylesa
Static Tensions

LA RECENSIONE

So, I didn't want to write this review, actually now that I'm writing it, I don't want to do it. But not for any particular reasons, rather because I think I'm not capable of reviewing this enormity of an album. I'll try anyway, at worst you'll all slap a nice "1" and we'll remain friends.

More than anything, I would like to fill the void left on DeBaser, because this album definitely deserves a place more than others in the legendary review archive of this site. So since no one has yet decided to write about it, it means that I will do it.

Especially because in the reviews present in the database, I saw not too positive comments about this band. Some say that Kylesa is a mess of sludge, hardcore (horrible vocals???) and stoner... others consider them overrated. But I consider them underrated. And this is because I ask you... how many post-metal bands can list in their discography a monstrous masterpiece like this "Static Tensions"??!

I'd say not many, someone might say Mastodon (I didn't really like their latest) and Baroness and I might agree. But few others. The truth is this band has something truly original. Besides having two drummers in the lineup (and you can hear it, because in the more tribal parts of this album, you can feel it), they have a "progressive" taste for the search of riffs and melody (yes, okay, sludge is an a-melodic genre, but here the melodies stand out), really particular. For those unfamiliar with Kylesa... I would suggest the immediate listen of the fourth track of this album titled "Unknown Awareness" (it's my favorite)... in four minutes, it's a piece that says it all: stunning intertwined male and female vocals, like an open-eyed dream... powerful psychedelic riffs (at the edge of stoner yes, but that of the masters Kyuss and not other minor bands of the same genre) placed in the right spot, an enchanting piece that makes you dream. Really. The beauty is that this album is very short... just forty minutes are the duration of this dream.

This is an album that can appeal to everyone. And this is its strength. It can appeal to the posh indie-rocker as well as to the true hardcore metalhead... because it has such an amount of rhythmic and vocal solutions that would make any existing album envious, but shall we also talk about "Almost Lost"?? The seventh track of the album?? How does it say so much in just three minutes? It says more in three minutes than entire discographies of other bands (that I won't mention because I don't want to offend anyone's taste, but there are many)... In short, I know you'll slap me a nice "1" because this is not a great review (actually, maybe it's not even one), but I wanted to tell you about this album... which in my opinion truly deserves to be considered one of the masterpieces of heavy music.

Misunderstood phenomena. (?!)