Khost – Buried Steel – album review

Khost – Buried Steel

Cold Spring Records

DL – CD

Out Now

Birmingham Industrial Doom duo Khost recently released their new album Buried Steel. The recording didn’t go smoothly ‘marred with events such as an electrical fire which damaged some equipment. As a result, a number of tracks on the album had to be pieced together from damaged analogue elements such as reel to reel.’ which meant that ‘the dynamic of some of the songs was altered, shifting their eventual outcome, particularly the tone of ambient work’ Fighting Boredom have been listening, read what we thought below

‘Buried Steel’ is relentless and hard. There is space, buzzes, drones wails and whines but they lead back to the motherlode of slow, hard heaviness. Distant sirens drift across black clouds, then the industrial percussion and bass move in as a bell chimes behind. Slow and unstoppable as a glacier carving out a valley from rock not pleasant and not conducive to sleep. The vocals are lower and more gutteral than before. They move from whispers, buried in the sound to spoken word, taking control of the music to roars and using the vocal as another part of the sound. It’s only the focus when spoken and that is twisted away into the noise and static as the music moves on.

This never stops moving, there’s no quagmire of sound swamped and lost, this is meticulously created and beautifully layered. An orchestral state of sound slow, deep and oh so heavy. Instruments you recognise are drenched and submerged in static and distortion and the machines are woven into the depths. It’s the sound of a city, not just the crumbling, concrete wastelands outside the aesthetic sculpted centres but the inevitable tarnishing of the edifices of industry and hope. 

It’s the sound of a far distant storm on the horizon breaking hard as an insane army marches on endlessly. It’s the sound of the roots of tower blocks screaming as they are being eaten slowly away by time. It’s a collection of slow as ice and heavy as hell music that is incredibly dense and quite brilliant.

Khost are on Facebook and have a Bandcamp page where you can buy this album.

All words by Adrian Bloxham

Adrian Bloxham

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