Kylesa - To Walk A Middle Course - LP (2005)

Labels: Havoc
Review by: Alex Deller

Like a muddy torrent of shit, filth and foreboding Kylesa are back and dragging the whole world down with them. From murky chugs on the worlds’ thickest e-strings to spidering, Eastern-flavoured leads, their music thrashes and churns like subterranean creatures being dug from the earth, all while a chorus of voices howl and wail like a carnival of the damned spiralling down toward the eight hundred chambers of hell. Much of To Walk”¦ sees the band caught grimly out on the wire in a no mans land between Mastodon and Nausea though moments of grave beauty do seep through the mire, working with and against the fully-fledged terror in order to make it nigh-on impossible to predict where the next breach will occur. While this new-found sense of restraint prevents the clamour from being the utterly devastating experience it could have been, it simultaneously opens a new set of gloomy pathways – and whichever route is chosen you can guarantee the journey will be a gruelling one with precious little by way of happy-ever-afters at the end of it”¦