Keelhaul

Subject to Change Without Notice (Hydra Head)
by Craig Regala

OK, look at aggressive rock music as a language instead of “genres” and you’ll get to this. The combined heft and riffage of metal language, the dynamic precision post-core/math-rock shares with prog rock and the ability to jam several ideas into a composition keys this as actual songcrafted rock. Luckily, they’ve given the material enough room to breath: The complexity isn’t a blur and the changes do something musical within the arrangement. This is a trait they share with peers/direct antecedents Craw and Red Giant, both of whom recorded for the Cleveland label Cambodia. If you like Keelhaul for these reasons, you’ll really jump for this. It’s got more space than the other two I’ve heard, but the attack never lessens. Actually, this dynamic allows the whmp! to really sink in. Lemme put it this way: When you’re getting tattooed, the lining is more painful and not big and showy – it’s not visually dense – it’s cutting. The eye pulls directly to it as the content provider: It’s The Line. If it sucks, it doesn’t matter how good the fill work is. The way these guys “work the line” makes this record. A great band to play with Mastodon and Meatjack on the “metal” side, Dysrhythmia and Stinking Lizavita on the improv/prog side (thanks to “bloodlust” Josh27 for mentioning that), and Unsane and Rebreather on the “noise-rock” side.
(PO Box 291430 Los Angeles, CA 90029)