Deceiver

American doom metallers Khemmis are back with a new album to follow their stunning opus “Desolation”.

Opening with a stunning passage of acoustic guitar melodies, the emotional nature of Khemmis is clearly due to be present on this new offering. Quickly subsiding for an array of melodic and triumphant riffing, the traditional heavy metal elements that infuse their potent doom metal is clearly not lost as we hear the sombre tones churn forth a most harrowing backdrop to some truly haunting vocals. Taking both the epic and the funereal moods in their stride, a juxtaposition handled to near perfection on the previous album, it is obvious that the return of Khemmis is one of grandiose, magnificent and equally powerful proportions. The opening song “Avernal Gate” is actually a perfect encapsulation of their sonic and emotional diversity which winds between heavy, doom and even black metal, inclusive of blast beats and scathing riffs alongside harsher vocals as the opening scenes fade to black.

It would be easy to presume as a doom metal band, that all of this music would be slow and mournful. However, almost thrashy drumming is not a rarity, nor are killer galloping riffs that are usually met with soaring leads, taking us back to the roots of metal music while offering something refreshing and unique. Lyrically of course we hear plenty of sorrow unfurl, delivered with a chilling voice that suits the crisp instrumental radiance superbly. A sublime concoction of illuminating sombreness that does not take long to hooks its way into your ears and grip you with their masterfully intense songwriting. The boldness to dip their toes into black and death metal in certain pieces such as “Shroud Of Lethe” pay off to accentuate the intensity of the record in a strange yet not jarring manner that injects some volatility into their sound. To create music that drags in such a distressingly heartfelt manner while avoiding stagnation has been a hurdle many doom metal bands in this vein have fallen at, but Khemmis leap triumphantly along with certain peers such as Warning, Pallbearer, Bell Witch and Spirit Adrift who each have their own uniquely crushing take on the genre.

With a production befitting of such devastating heaviness, there is clear influence of 70s hard rock, traditional heavy metal and even some more modern mixing that gives a smoothness without losing the overall bite of the songs, displaying their majesty in certain splendour. Veiled with a stunning artwork, this release does indeed feel like a whole that has been completely thought out with artistic integrity and clarity, offering the next section of Khemmis’ grand design which is certainly a powerful one. The sheer heaviness of the riffs does not rely on low tunings or overly saturated distortion but rather a more personal input and some ferociously biting grooves. Atop mountainous drum work, these guitars hit like a sledgehammer while the delicate intricacies of the howling vocals elevate things to a more resplendently full sound. A massively weighty delivery of truly brilliant doom metal.

Profoundly haunting music that has desolation and glory abound, continuing in the bands own pathway without repeating themselves, a healthy progression without sacrifice of individual character. Mournful, dejected and yet utterly epic and glorious in equal measures. This record will stay with you, creeping into your mind and pulling you back for more.

Written for www.nattskog.wordpress.com

Khemmis is a band that by all accounts have produced their best work already. Most fans of the band are united in the feeling that the band’s 2016 effort “Hunted” is the band’s greatest work and is a masterpiece of the doom genre. Although that opinion is likely closer to fact than not, “Deceiver” is proof a band that has already created their definitive work still has room to grow and hit new peaks.

The Khemmis sound is one of slow wall of sound style doom. Khemmis eschews overly fuzzy and bluesy sounds in favor of Maiden-esque metallic melodic harmonies and a melo-death tinge. Frankly, for a genre stuck in a decades-long arms race to replicate the magic of Black Sabbath’s “Master of Reality”, the sound as a whole is extremely refreshing. “Deceiver” sees Khemmis leaning further into the aspects of their sound that sets them apart from the rest of the doom metal genre. It was a success on “Hunted” and they pushed it further in a very pleasing manner. This is a wise directional move for the Colorado boys because it opens room for further ground to be broken in the future which will free them from constant comparisons to their early career magnum opus.

Interestingly enough, this album is home to what might just be Khemmis’s strongest standalone song to date. The album’s backbreaking opener, “Avernal Gate”, is a masterpiece in its own right. This track is an exemplar of Khemmis’s deeper lean into the epic and melodic side of their sound. Although the track is doomy and slow, as most doom is, this track would feel at home in a melo-death or even melo-thrash context. If you want to get your doom skeptic friends into doom and don't want to show them Black Sabbath, “Avernal Gate” is the song for you. The album proceeds with the album’s two singles “House of Cadmus” and “Living Pyre”. The first of which provides a heavy and chuggy contrast to the more melodic and up beat track that preceded it. The second feels like a call back to Khemmis’s roots, equal parts “Candlelight” and “The Bereaved”. The album’s conclusion, “The Astral Road”, is a ballad that takes structural cues from Black Sabbath and Metallica by picking up the tempo in the middle providing the quickest speed on the album. This track also features a beautifully chaotic instrumental break which picks up into the blood boiling climax of the record, the third act of the 8 minute epic track.

“Deceiver” is proof that you can be a high energy band but still play tracks that are slow as molasses. A significant step up from Khemmis’s previous work, “Desolation”, this record is evidence that despite seemingly making their greatest album already, Khemmis may still have another masterpiece in the chamber. It is also evident of a band on the rise. A future where Khemmis is one of the major support bands for legacy bands or the legends of tomorrow is certainly more likely than not.

“Deceiver” is a strong and welcomed addition to the Khemmis canon and we should all expect several cuts to remain in regular rotation in the live show for years to come. Accordingly, this album earns a well deserved grade of A-.

Deceiver may be the first album that Khemmis has recorded as a trio following the departure of bassist Dan Beiers but there’s no stripping back their Doomed Heavy Metal style to be found here. Ben Hutcherson and Phil Pendergast’s dual dynamic continues to define them as the twin guitars put in the usual beefy rhythms and intertwining leads while the vocals serve up their established mix of dramatic yet workmanlike cleans and raspy growls. Drummer Zach Coleman also maintains a loose but hard-hitting method that moves from slow, abstract rhythms to blast beats with ease.

But with that in mind, the band sets this album apart from its predecessors by means of putting greater focus on the more melancholic aspects of their signature formula. The expanding classic metal influence that was hinted at on 2018’s Desolation has essentially been phased out, leaving behind a predominately doom foundation with more extreme tendencies filling in the blanks. The growled vocals stand on near equal footing with the cleans and the tempo shifts border on death or black metal. It’s a shame to see that heavy metal side of them go but there’s enough precedent for this shift to make sense, especially considering the current climate.

This approach also affects the songwriting, resulting in what is easily the most atmospheric Khemmis album to date. This is made immediately apparent with the clean guitars that kick things off on the opening “Avernal Gate” but gets even stronger development “Shroud of Lethe” and “The Astral Road;” the former is an especially notable curveball thanks to its borderline ballad layout while the latter is the latest in the line of climactic closers. Lead singles “House of Cadmus” and “Living Pyre” also stand out as more straightforward doom numbers, the latter featuring a particularly memorable refrain.

Despite all the setbacks, Deceiver ultimately proves to be yet another notch on Khemmis’ impeccable track record. I must admit it takes more time to properly digest than their usual fare, not having the same instant classic appeal for me as Desolation or 2016’s Hunted. However, the band still shines in their ability to pull from different metal spheres to form a unique whole and the extra pathos from the more downtrodden approach goes a long way. It has the makings of a grower and does a nice job of reinforcing their status as one of the strongest bands in modern metal.

Highlights:
“Living Pyre”
“Shroud of Lethe”
“The Astral Road”

Breaking new ground is a joy shared by artists and undertakers alike, and though it would seem that every twist and turn in the expansive maze of doom metal has been fully explored, there is a younger crop of adherents that beg to differ. Among the more curious of these latter day arrivals at the sonic cemetery that shares some similarities with North American contemporaries Pallbearer and Spirit Adrift, as well as Swedish fellow travelers Monolord is the Denver-based quartet turned trio Khemmis. Sporting a name pertaining to an ancient Egyptian city and a comparably mystical sound that is difficult to accurately label, theirs’ is a highly nuanced craft that encapsulates just about every permutation of the doom metal style that has occurred since the pioneering days of Black Sabbath. With a fairly sizable output since their 2012 inception that includes three studio LPs and several shorter releases, they’ve managed to build a brand for themselves that has caught the attention of Nuclear Blast Records, which has been the vehicle for their latest full length endeavor.

Per the band’s own testimony, their fourth studio album dubbed Deceiver is a thematic cycle of songs dealing with how people are tricked into believing a false reality about themselves and the world in which they reside. Structured to parallel the Inferno segment of The Divine Comedy, it is a highly vivid journey consisting of 6 complex chapters, though compared to past ventures such as 2016’s Hunted, is reasonably streamlined. Though no bassist is listed among the band’s membership since the departure of Daniel Beiers last year, the tone of the arrangement is extremely bottom-heavy, reminiscing upon the dank, sludgy character that one might expect from High On Fire, yet tends towards the slower rocking dirge that one would expect from a traditional doom proponent. The vocal interchanges of guitarists Phil Pendergast and Ben Hutcherson further accentuates this duality with a clean, smooth, non-operatic wail set against a brutal series of guttural barks and groans deep enough to fit in with the early 90s death/doom sound of Northern Europe.

Though this album is not a proper conceptual work, it progresses in a storybook fashion, often mimicking a theatrical performance schedule from one section to the next. The opening foray into epistemological trickery dubbed “Avernal Gate” begins on a melancholy acoustic note, expanding at each pass of its progression in a manner similar to the outro of Black Sabbath’s “Heaven And Hell”, then jars the audience into a vortex of chaos with a fast-paced thrashing blitz that sounds fairly similar to something from In Flames’ late 90s repertoire. Overall, this song’s character hearkens back to the traditional metal-infused, epic flavor of early Candlemass as it cycles between faster and slower segments, frequently featuring flashy lead guitar breaks and dueling harmonized segments, but also diverges at key points with an assortment of sludge, psychedelic and death metal-tinged segments. This highly varied exposition proves to be a highly engaging preview of what is to come, and the massive 8 minute slough of a closer “The Astral Road” mirrors its versatility and surpasses it in both technical and emotional execution.

While the two highly involved compositions that surround this work at its fringes are forces to be reckoned with, the massive body of music between them is no less intricate. Leaning a bit into the graver side of the doom coin, the slow trudge of “House Of Cadmus” lays on the dank heaviness about as thickly as can be conceived, with the choir-like vocals providing a haunting contrast that further accentuates its funeral dirge character. The muddy and dreary atmosphere set on “Living Pyre” takes things in an even more sludgy direction, to the point of sounding like it could have been recorded by one of original Nola pioneers of the 90s when discounting the soaring clean voices and noodling lead guitar interchanges. The wandering epic “Shroud Of Lethe” has a slightly progressive bent to its down tempo sorrowing, frequently shifting ideas and feel. “Obsidian Crown” is arguably the closest thing to a banger among this gang of expansive epics, featuring several brilliant vocal and guitar hooks while maintaining a more rocking pace.

The billing of Khemmis as a standard doom metal outfit, while arguably falling way short of what they do, is probably the best way to go. It just as accurately be described as psychedelic sludge with a massive side-order of Swedish epic doom metal, but at its core, the highly innovative trails that were blazed by Sabbath back in the 70s were equally as versatile while not requiring such an expansive label. This trio’s unique approach to thinking outside the box has basically found them recapturing the same raw character and appeal of the old days here, then projecting it through a present day kaleidoscope of numerous sub-styles that developed out of the original. The contrast of an extremely gritty and dark instrumental attack with what could best be described as borderline angelic vocals is an interesting twist on a style that is generally not known for its pristine crooning, and might prove a turn off for fans of sludge metal. But overall, the unique mixture of elements at play here is a highly effective one, and doom fans of all stripes will find a rock solid entry here.

Originally written for Sonic Perspectives (www.sonicperspectives.com)

Out on November 19th via Nuclear Blast, Deceiver is the fourth LP by US doomsters Khemmis. The Colorado band recorded the new album as a trio after the departure of bass player Daniel Beiers, who was with the band since the beginning. Guitarist Ben Hutcherson took on bass duties on the new record, while Phil Pendergast and Zach Coleman soldiered on behind the mic and the drumkit, respectively. It may be a coincidence, but the line-up change has brought on a subtle sonic evolution in Khemmis’ music, which has taken on a more distinctive progressive flair on the new record.

Deceiver sits in its very own sweet spot, halfway between doom, melodic death metal, and modern progressive metal. The guitar riffs range between the boisterous and the sluggish, depending on the song’s mood, injecting a ton of variety into the record. At times, the guitar melodies bring to mind the classic Scandinavian melodeath sound, like on the gorgeous album opener “Avernal Gate”, where the initial bars after the acoustic intro evoke the golden age of bands like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. Elsewhere, like on “Shroud of Lethe”, things take a slower turn as downtuned guitars churn out dark, labyrinthine riffs that verge on the death/doom. Coleman’s drumming is no less diverse and engaging, constantly indulging in rich fills and licks that add a propelling sense of urgency to the proceedings. On top of this complex instrumental tapestry the vocals provide a great mix between melodious cleans and menacing growls. Pendergast’s cleans are excellent. His dramatic tone and phrasing remind me a lot of Soen’s vocalist, Joel Ekelöf. Like Ekelöf, Pendergast flawlessly conveys feelings of both darkness and epicness, a perfect combo that never fails to strike a chord with metal audiences.

The comparison with the Swedish progressive metal group I made in the previous paragraph is actually quite fitting, not just for the similarities in the vocal department, but for the overall dark, yet very emotional and ultimately empowering mood that the new material transmits to the listener. There are also analogies in the approach to melodies, which are subtle and subdue, and never “in your face” or too obvious, and the overall slick, modern progressive metal sound that strikes the right balance between complexity and accessibility. This is also evident in the song structures, which are just one step away from the standard verse/chorus repetition, but contain just enough twists and turns to keep one on their toes, guessing what may come next.

All these qualities make Deceiver a very enjoyable album to listen to, flowing easily and almost flawlessly from song to song. The album, however, lacks more tracks like the opener “Avernal Gate”, which is textbook material of how to write an engaging, versatile song that delivers the right amount of build and release, with an amazing chorus. The other songs are based on the same ingredients but fail to reach that elusive climax where all the tension and darkness of the builds is released to a cathartic effect. Instead, these other songs build and build, moving from section to section, but never deliver the big emotional payload that one is expecting. It is somewhat frustrating, especially because lots of the builds are actually very good. These issues are particularly evident in the last section of the album, where “Obsidian Crown” and “The Astral Road” plod their way through, resulting by far the less convincing tracks of the record and closing the album somewhat unspectacularly.

Deceiver is nevertheless a good album, offering plenty of interesting moments and ideas. It’s also a big step forward in terms of sound for Khemmis, who have never sounded so slick and polished. Some may see this as a minus, but I find the new sound a perfect fit for the band’s sophisticated compositions. With a slightly more explosive songwriting, Khemmis may go very far. Now that they have the backing of a label like Nuclear Blast, I can only foresee a prosperous future for these guys.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]