Album Review : Knoll - As Spoken (2024)
To my experience, the study claiming that your favorite band when you’re fourteen years old will be your favorite band all your life is mostly right. I just can't love new artists the way I love Slayer, like you can't love anyone with the same ferocity you love someone with the first time. But it doesn't mean that I can’t love new bands. Three weeks ago, I didn't even know who young Tennessee grindcore quintet Knoll was, but I'd been obsessed with their new album As Spoken since.
I haven't love a new record like this in some time.
As Spoken doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard. It's even a stretch to call it grindcore. Knoll themselves call their style funeral grind, which is pretty accurate for lack of a better term. There are noticeable influences, though. Full of Hell and Portal are the two obvious ones, but Knoll are not a ripoff or a worship band in any way. They’re explorers of a different layer of sonic chaos. One that’s also influenced by doom metal, jazz and noise music. Nothing can quite prepare you.
The first thing that hits you upon the head like a when hearing the title song is the sheer fucking intensity of these guys. They are as uncompromising as it gets. Knoll's compositions are complex and unpredictable in the way mathcore songs are, but they’re also not obsessed with being complex. Jamie Eubanks' vocals performances are the other star of the Knoll show. His hellbound shrieks distend and deform words in order to create additional layers of atmosphere and texture in itself.
Offering is a shorter, doomier cut with furious changes of tempo (it sounds counterintuitive, but I swear that it works) that features murky guitars and a simple, but terrifying and unforgettable bridge lead again by a possessed Eubanks. Wept Fountain incorporates more conventional grindcore drumming and disclocated, doomy, almost industrial riffs to already rich cocktail of overwhelming dread. It has a lumbering quality to it, like the soundtrack of a boogeyman chasing you in your dreams.
I don't understand much of what the lyrics are supposed to mean on As Spoken, but it doesn't really matter. It also functions more as a whole than as a collection of songs. Many share similar qualities. Revile the Light is more on the furious side. It features blast beats and murky, Gorguts-like death metal riffs… and the first appearance of trumpet on the record. I first thought it was a moog synthetizer someone fucked with or some weird noise effect, but I’ve seen them live last week and it is a trumpet!
I love how ballsy this is. It works too. The guys are not just putting trumpet in grindcore for the sake of it. They exploit all the latent sorrow of the instrument. Revile the Light ends with creepy sounds Jamie Eubanks makes by rubbing a violin bow against loose wires on his noise board. Mereward is a ghastly, dissonant number that features a commanding drumming performance from Jack Anderson and ungodly guitar soundscapes that complement Eubanks' self-exorcism quite well.
It's one of my favorite songs on the record.
Guardian Bind is a noisy, unhinged pleasure that’s barely over two minutes long that features guitar acrobatics from Cameron Giarraputo and Ryan Cook that transfer right into the following song Unto Viewing without a warning. One just becomes the other. Unto Viewing much more straightforward and ferocious, though. It’s one of the most conventional grindcore songs on the record or at least what comes the closest to it. Absolutely stellar drumming again and some more atmospheric guitar work.
Portrait is my favorite song on As Spoken. It is powerful and ominous and has a darker texture than the others. The guitar tone is fucking gnarly and nightmarish. Jack Anderson and Lukas Quartermaine are anchoring the song with by going crazy on their instruments, which is most apparent in the dramatic finale of Portait, which feels like you must feel when fighting fucking animalistic zombies at the bottom of a pit, hacking away without concern for your own survival. It’s terrifying, but also liberating.
Holy fuck, what a song.
The following song Utterance functions as somewhat of an interlude before the final sprint of As Spoken. It reminded me of Portal’s god-tiered, unholy experimental record Hagbulbia. Fettered Oath incorporates trumpet again, but more in a free jazz way. Once again it sounds counterintuitive, but it complements the big, predatory riffs to perfection. The closer Shall It Be is one of the most abstract compositions on the record. It’s both murky and proggy in its own way, but fiery and muscular too.
*
I hate to cry "album of the year" so soon, but As Spoken is record everyone is going to measure themselves against. It has everything I love: unbridled fury, atmosphere, emotional performances and a paradigm that is entirely its own. Knoll have written the soundtrack to how you must feel on the day of your execution. This is what it sounds like after you die and eternity is absolutely fucking awful afterwards. I love this record. I love it more each time I listen to it. I’m obsessed with As Spoken.
OBSESSED.
