Though blossomed in the heart of traditional Scandinavian black metal, there is no escaping the rock ‘n’ roller in the sound of Finnish metallers Kyy. It has a rousing quality which tempers yet equally accentuates the dark and creatively ravenous instincts of the band’s music which brews a toxicity living up to the meaning of their name, which in English means viper. The invasive evidence relentlessly roars from the band’s debut EP Travesty Of Light, four tracks of insidious black ‘n’ roll to breed a healthy appetite for.
Formed in 2013, the Lahti quintet fuels their music with the “sole purpose is to spawn an antithesis to existence of universe and to serve the Great Unknown.” The tracks making up Travesty Of Light were recorded towards the end of last year with E. Wuokko and came to the attention of Saturnal Records who signed the band up for its unleashing this month, a release coinciding with the same day the band’s first steps into the live scene, starting at Rooster Death Fest in Lahti.
The EP opens with Death – The Great Liberator and an immediate consumption of ears by thick riffs and challenging rhythms escorted by venomous vocal squalls. Already there is a devilish swagger to the track and subsequent scythes of steely sonic bait from the guitars, their lurking presence and occasional expulsions icing on the toxic cake of corrosive intensity and drama clad and hostile enterprise. The track continues to swamp the senses like waves of the sea across its harrowing length, at times a relative calm soaked in melancholic rapacity escaping whilst for the main of its body, the song is an undulating tsunami of inhospitable emotion and ravishing but eventful destruction, physically and emotionally.
Everlasting Fire follows and quickly exposes its rock ‘n’ roll attributes. Whereas its predecessor was a more ‘formula’ black metal affair, the second song instantly rocks like a horned goat in heat but infusing it with an increasingly intrusive and caustic soaking of blackened animosity and sonic brutality. It’s less than three minutes also flirts with understated but unmissable, almost siren-esque, whispers and tendrils of acidic post punk spicing which incite thoughts of bands like Sex Gang Children.
The EP’s title track crawls in next, its melodically honed citric vines of guitar veining a lumbering body of rhythmic punishment and raw intensity. As in the previous pair, vocals are varied but even more diverse and compelling to match the epically hued musical narrative of the encounter. With great choral chants across the band and the song erupting into a corruptively magnetic canter at times, it is a theatre of suggestiveness and imagination all on its own.
Travesty Of Light is brought to a close by Immaculate Serpent King, another track stalking the senses and imagination with shadowed gripped grooves, belligerent rhythms, and a spread of vocals as harrowing as its canvas of sonic and emotional pestilence. Once more there is an instinctive rebellion to the song, a rock ‘n’ roll roar which only enhances and inspires every festering tempting of the elements uniting for the excellent violation.
We are not going to say that Travesty Of Light is going to be the best black metal encounter you will come across this year or that Kyy is going to reshape the genre’s landscape in the future, but both has the potential and right now create one of the most enjoyable raw metal offerings over past months.
The Travesty Of Light EP is available from August 17th via Saturnal Records.
RingMaster 17/08/2015
Walk the Earth (No Longer) from sludge/doomers 
whilst pouring more diversity into the compilation, variety further expanded by The Aberration and their track Bologna Skins are the Next Big Thing. The band consists of Travis O’Connell (guitar) and Jim Cole (drums), an instrumental duo creating, on the evidence of their contribution, compelling proposals of snarling progressive metal loaded with uncompromising attitude.
The rich beginning continues with Ordet, grooves and hooks as ready to engage the senses as the barbarous onslaught of riffs and rhythms. It is a contagious mix, bursts of hostility taking seconds of captivating breath throughout as the guitars continue to relentlessly spin their more refined bait across the sonic and emotional ravishment. The track perpetually keeps attention gripped with every pestilential surge which in turn is disrupted by expectation defeating invention, a trait repeated across Gud and indeed following track Himmelen. Its air, as those before it, might suggest uncomfortable and stark landscapes but its uncompromising presence is a full on charge of musical and emotional rabidity, one uncaging brutality rather than ambient suggestiveness and just as riveting.
It is a transfixing start matched by the more rigorous and savage Den Sorte Porten where rhythms and riffs immediately show more aggressive urgency and volatility. A lumbering stalking of the senses emerges eventually though, scythes of guitar and brutal rhythmic stabs lining the incitement before busying themselves again beneath the singularly gaited stroll of the vocals. The song continues to flit between both assaults, smothering all before with its ruinous touch before making way for the predatory and glacial trespass of Ulvehyrde which in turn gives the listener to Fra Kulden Til Flammene to consume. The first of the two reveals a great trail of sonic colouring, grooves which could just as much be bred in the barren realms of post punk as metal, whilst its successor from an enthralling and delicious acoustic serenade of guitar, spreads a melodically toxic tapestry courted by heavier and less dramatic but just as potent bass predation. The track is a gripping affair, the guitar of Malphas absolutely stealing the show but sizeably backed by the individual intimidations and threats of Sorath and Gheist for one of the major moments of the album.
The sonically irritated and intriguing lure of Mystery Orbs is the first rapacious persuasion to the album, the opener an increasingly volatile maelstrom of riffs and melodic toxicity governed by the intimidating vocal scowls of Malthus. Equally though, there is a composure within the song which allows moments of tantalising beauty and calm to entangle with the ravenous black hearted hostility and erosive intensity. It is a seriously magnetic start to the album, guitars like rancor soaked troubadours in the design of the song and rhythms a barbarous framing to an impending apocalypse.