With 2009's astonishingly tight and fearsomely heavy don't-call-it-a-crossover crossover album, Static Tensions, still ringing in fans' ears, Kylesa burst back immediately with a "psychedelic" record that trashes everything you might expect from the genre in the 21st century, whether that means whimsical hippie folk or too-drugged-to-boogie sludge. A metal band to the bone, Kylesa stomp the clichés right out of psych-rock on Spiral Shadow. The Georgia band's new album, their fifth in less than a decade, is the next step in a pretty seamless evolution that's hidden increasingly complex (and catchy!) music behind an attack that still hits with the in-the-red rawness of hardcore.
With two percussionists going full-tilt-- check the way they build to a Godspeed You! Black Emperor-esque climax on "Distance Closing In", or the Can-on-uppers groove that pushes "Drop Out" to its final, roaring refrain-- Kylesa are as rhythmically complex (and diverse) as any current band that might pop up as "hard rock" when you rip the album to iTunes. Likewise with an arsenal of arena-era Floyd keyboard effects, and production that's incredibly dense with trippy sonic embellishments while still offering psych's sensual spaciousness, Kylesa's music is more enveloping than ever. All of which might lead you to expect meandering 10-minute "journeys," the kind of spaced-out noodling beloved only by a certain kind of stoner. That couldn't be further from the truth. Call Kylesa prog-- or even psych, really-- at your peril. Few modern prog or psych bands offer the kind of face-caving, riffs-first punch Kylesa bring to each tune. And tunes they are, with shout-along hooks that reliably hold things together between the double-drummer showcases and the bursts of uncut, old-school metal-flash soloing.
A groove band above all else, like so many of their swampy Southern forebears, Kylesa use their two-drummer setup not to show off their skill with complex polyrhythms but to give those grooves even more heft and drive. And whether bellowed by Philip Cope or sung with witchy intensity by Laura Pleasants, just about every song has a chorus that immediately stamps itself on [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| your brain. In that sense, Spiral Shadow is damn near a pop album. Of course, only "Don't Look Back" actually sounds radio-ready, but gloriously so, with a fat ear-worm riff, swooning wordless background harmonies straight out of the Kevin Shields playbook, and the biggest of the album's big-ass choruses. And ambitious as they are, Kylesa always come back to pleasing the core headbanging audience. They still admirably deliver when it comes to metal's air-punching, meat-and-potatoes riffs, and they want to keep the energy as high as possible, which is perhaps why they've been able to hold onto much of the no-bullshit-allowed hardcore crowd, even as their music has become less uncompromisingly abrasive.
Ten years into an unbroken wave of revitalized and omnivorous metal bands, it feels almost ridiculous to have to keep saying this, but: If you're not paying at least some attention to this stuff, you're screwing up. Like many of the best "extreme" metal albums in 2010, Spiral Shadow is less about alienating outsiders through heaviness, volume, or violence than it is about blurring those extremes (hook and noise, dreamy and ragged, virtuosity and bluntness, metal and pop) on the same record, on the same songs. Captivatingly intricate without sacrificing rough and tough forward drive, accessible without sinking into commercialized blandness, Kylesa offer the pretty irrefutable truth that metal's still the best place to find rock that actually rocks, that there's plenty of boot-to-the-sternum kick left in the old beast after all.
