Album Review: Kongh – Sole Creation

//Album Review: Kongh – Sole Creation

Kongh sole creation

Kongh – Sole Creation

by Colum Bell

Swedish 3 piece Kongh are back for their third outing of 4 slabs of crushing sludge. This is their first album on Agonia Records, a label known for some great death and black metal releases.

The 10 minute title track, ‘Sole Creation’, starts with pounding tribal drumming with David Johansson’s twisting riffs erupting into sweet sludgy groove. David’s blackened tinged screams lead into soaring clear vocals somewhere between Mastodon, Alice in Chains and Callisto. The track winds down into haunting riff that builds back to that great opening assault and those soaring vocals.

Second track is entitled ‘Tamed Brute’, but there’s nothing tame about this track as it stomps its way forth like the giant Gorilla adorning the cover. Again David Johansson’s mix of crooning and dark howls work nicely with the punchy riffs. This has elements of Yob’s colossal riffs and as the end of the track approaches the riffs slow to a crawl.

Track 3, ‘The Portals’ has a good mix of genres in one song, without losing any overall cohesiveness. It kicks off with a dark, breach-like riff and the pace changes with a traditional doom main riff that is reminiscent of High on Fire. This again changes to take a more sludgey slant with David Johansson’s blackened growls. The track builds into an epic tremolo picked section and comes crashing back to the chorus and a pounding finale with great little solo that again has me thinking of High on Fire.

The finale, ‘Skymning’, is the longest on the album (at 13:26) and really slows the pace with a chilled, reverb heavy intro. The Yob influence shows as the peaceful riff takes a heavier turn before briefly dying down and returning. The instrumental second half of the track builds from the theme of the intro into a gritty, discordant, chugging climb before hitting the darkened summit. Although Kongh’s influences show at the beginning of the song, it creates a great journey where I imagine it as the soundtrack to some primordial beast’s evolution climb from ocean to mountain top.

This great album is certainly for fans of Yob, Knut, Mastodon and High on Fire, with some truly excellent crushing riffs, some great vocals (clean and raw), Tomas Salonen’s fantastic drumming and overall nice thick groove that you just can’t help but bang your head to. Kongh’s influences can be more apparent at times but with such broad mix, the album is different enough from their peers and certainly warrants a listen from fans of said bands and sludge fans in general.

Here’s hoping they’ll make another trip back to these shores soon, as I’d imagine this new material sounds even better live and in your face like the giant gorilla on the cover!

8.5/10

Sole Creation comes out on February 5th and can be pre-ordered from the Agonia Records website.

Check out Kongh on facebook here.

By |2013-01-20T00:00:00+00:00January 20th, 2013|CD Reviews|0 Comments

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