Lody Kong – Dreams and Visions

By RingMaster Review on March 30, 2016 • ( 0 )

Photo-Joey Nugent

Let us get the most publicised aspect about Lody Kong out of the way first. The Arizona based band is the creation of Zyon and Igor Cavalera, the sons of Sepultura/Soulfly/Cavalera Conspiracy famed Max Cavalera and brother of Incite frontman Richie Cavalera.

Now to the important bit; the release of the band’s blistering and increasingly impressing debut album Dreams and Visions. It is a ten track infestation of the senses as debilitating as it is invigorating as it uncages ravenous tempests forged in sludge thick, raw metal toned raging infused with punk belligerence and fuelled by post and hardcore causticity. Band and album challenges ears and incite the imagination at every turn with an array of invasive textures and flavours uniting in rabid exploits which generalising as psychotic punk ‘n’ roll would not be to deceptive.

Formed in 2011, the Phoenix hailing Lody Kong soon made a potent mark the following year with debut EP, No Rules. It was an introduction to the quartet of guitarist John Bauer, bassist Shanks, vocalist/guitarist Igor, and drummer Zyon reinforced and more by the band’s part in the 2013 US/Canada/European Maximum Cavalera tour and more recently last year’s Cavalera Conspiracy US tour. Now it is the turn of their eagerly awaited debut album to stoke up broad attention and for the major reasons of sound and fierce invention rather than band personnel.

The album opens with the outstanding Chillin’, Killin’; a venomous assault of a track offering searing bait from its first breath. That sonic intrusion soon erupts into an antagonistic rumble of raw riffs and hostile rhythms urged on by the emotive scowls of Igor. Piercing repetitive grooves only add to the compelling and exhaustive incitement, shifts in the predatory state of the track’s gait and character increasing its irresistible lure with a full throttle thrash kissed charge simply icing on the scintillating cake.

art_RingMasterReview The album’s title track keeps the grip on pleasure and appetite just as tight, its bruising weight and cantankerous intensity carrying an air of Pigs and Discharge to its irritable storm. It too is a song which twists through a host of inventive changes and detours, leaving a lingering psyche infesting dark presence and tempting which carries on into the likes of the emotively and sonically cancerous Kreative Center and the stalking animus of Pig In The Pen. The first of the two chews the senses with its nagging riffs whilst hooks and wiry grooves vein the scything swings of Zyon which cross another bestially toned bass trespass by Shanks. It is an unrelenting pressure of sound matched in its individual way by its successor whose initial doomy prowl soon expands into tar like sludge voracity interspersed with frenzied canters of energetic animosity.

Both tracks are spiteful punk rock with the virulence of numerous styles involved, much like the body of the bad-blooded Rumsfield where again band and sound enjoyably crush the senses with their creative and emotive jaundice. As across the album, there are moments of familiar hues and textures running headlong into ears yet each and every time their appearance is woven into something fresh, inventively damaging, and individual to Lody Kong.

Smashed and Blasted is proof as it presents its own hellacious and intensely imposing proposal next. The track is arguably the heaviest and most merciless on the release yet one with a host of imaginative hooks and sonic enterprise which hints as much at post punk and noise rock as it embraces extreme metal and post hardcore ferocity. Its thick enticement is followed and eclipsed by the predacious crawl of Some Pulp. There is liveliness to the song’s attack though it clambers over the senses rather than charges them, vocals and citric grooves the lead bait in its animalistic stalking with again numerous unexpected and incendiary twists.

Through the excellent old school punk/grunge feud of The Dangerous Quest and the dirty and schizophrenic Pistols-esque rock ‘n’ roll of Topaz, the album adds more aspects to its increasingly adventurous character. There are no major deviations from the heart of the songs before, but each explores another inventive hue and discord nurtured variation which continues with the closing sludge ’n’ roll consumption of the senses cast by Venomous Kool-Aid. It is a suffocating weave of thrash and doom metal with classic and hard rock strands, the guitars of John and Igor almost flirting with their bitterness laced craft around the latter’s rasping tones.

Though for personal tastes the loftiest highlights are found in the first two thirds of the album, Dreams and Visions is an unrelenting rousing of body and spirit, and indeed the debilitating devourer of both, which simply leaves a want for more from start to finish.

Dreams and Visions is out now via Mascot Label Group @ http://www.mascotlabelgroup.com/lody-kong-dreams-and-visions-cd.html

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