For the metal-disheartened ones …

If you don’t feel that much push towards “normal” metal anymore for the moment, you may enjoy what Kkoagulaa from Norway has been doing.

Funny enough I had read about this project recently on Terrorizer, and to me this makes that magazine even more worth the (big) amount of money I pay when I buy it (in Italy it costs almost 10 euro).
Kkoagulaa is a new project of the musicians previously involved in the avantgarde/experimental/black metal/jazz entity Manes (now in stand-by).
The reviewer on Terrorizer wrote that “for an evolutionary leap so drastic that it couldn’t be psychologically accomodated under that (Manes) monicker, it must be something pretty freak”. And he mentioned Ulver and Throbbing Gristle …

Mmmmm …

I had checked various reviews on the web (metal wezines) and the reviewers were appalled and unable to categorize this stuff, beside being unable to make a review according to their standard procedure. But all of them were somehow charmed by this “insane” stuff.
A guy, on Ultimate Metal Forum, summarizes all well: “There are many different snatches that you hear on the journey, there are moments of drum and bass and jungle and dub thrown in, perhaps a snatch of freeform jazz, trance, post rock, electro and black doom. The vocals at full croon are very Bowiesque and also at times remind of Marc Almond and Peter Murphy as they expressively flow around the ever changing music.”

Mmmmmm again …

I would also add that in some instances these guys remind me of the trance but pummeling tunes by Bill Laswell and co-workers in Tabla Beat Science.

I think that there are far too many and too good reasons to get hold of this 56 minutes-long single, gloomy track (bearing a Latin title that can be translated more or less as "our gold is not the common people’s gold”), isolate oneself and listen to it without distraction.
And then, maybe, one goes back to some “normal” metal!
Or maybe not, as this stuff is great indeed …

dl

band’s myspace