Kalas

Kalas was considered a supergroup, only because of Matt Pike's involvement in the band. Oh, and he was handling the vocals only. No guitars. What the fuck? The other guys are from "lesser bands", at least in comparison to Sleep and High on Fire, in which Pike has been crushing us all with his riffs, and I don't give a fuck if you disagree. Either way, the line-up is decent and combined with the album artwork, you might actually brew up some hope for the band's only release - the self-titled album.

The production is pretty good, in the sense that it's clean and you can clearly hear the instruments and vocals. It's nothing much to complain about unless you're a whiny, hipster-cunt who pretends to think that the awful production of, say, Bedemon's 'Child of Darkness' is the only way to go. But, if one of these hipsting, self-absorbed bastards came up to me and told me that Kalas' music would sound better with a "Sleep-like" production, I would be okay with his or hers view.

The production isn't what disappoints the most with Kalas' sound. The band clearly had plenty of potential to sound pretty awesome, but the damage was already done when Matt Pike was set to handle the vocals only. The riffs aren't packing any sort of punch you'd expect from a band featuring this pot-bellied rocker. This was probably intended, since a lot of the music has somewhat mellow guitar parts scattered around; mostly operating as intros or other small-passages in songs. The problem with the guitars aren't the "softer parts", but the fact that the main-riffs simply aren't memorable enough. Neither are the bass and drums, although, thanks to the clear production, they're there and do the album some justice, despite not being impressive in any way. The only thing that really stands out are Pike's harsh vocals that bring a resemblance to High on Fire, regardless of the lack of musical potency.

The songs don't ever really go anywhere. They're all in a similarly mid-paced tempo with the occasional mellow guitar-bits, but ultimately; they fail to impress, and eventually end up sounding too similar to one another. All in all, there are no total fuck-ups here. No disasters, so to speak. But, the album also lacks actual good/great moments. There are decent ones, but far too short-lived, and repetitive as the album drags on.

So, almost an hour of uninspired stoner/doom metal is what we've got here. There are already far too many of those bands all over the place and we don't need another one. Kalas probably realized this and eventually dissolved into nothingness saving us from further boredom. This is easily the least appealing work done by Matt Pike ever. Even the worst moments of Al Cisnero's OM are more engaging than Kalas, so don't keep your hopes high, if you haven't listened to this album yet.