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Salome: Terminal

02/03/11 || Khlysty

It might be surprising, but the first person to deal with Salome at GD was a certain gentleman of, let’s say, a misanthropic disposition, Mr. Kampfar, who gave praise, albeit in his own eccentric way, to the band’s first E.P.. Which was kind of a bummer to me, ‘cause I was in love the first time I heard Kat’s angelic voice, cutting like a rusty scalpel through the psychotic grindnoise of “Agorapocalypse” and I wanted to be the first one to introduce to the devout GD hellspawns her “other” band.

No matter, though, because now there’s the band’s proper full-length, which I have the pleasure of dealing with. Now, if you’ve already taken a peek to Kampfar’s review, you’d already know that Salome is a trio – vocals, guitar, drums – which plays its own version of the slow and down-tuned and exasperated, usually called “sludge doom”. Let me tell you upfront that if you’ve already exposed yourselves to the more, ah, exotic variants of said sub-genre, Salome initially won’t hold any surprises for you.

This means that the band’s music is as it should be: slow, heavy, more menacing than an elephant on crack and as happy as a crutch. Kat screams and growls steadily for over an hour and she clearly appears to be a very distressed young lady – it still amazes me how such inhuman screeching and growls can emanate from such a small and, ehm, cute frame. But I digress: as I said before, on first listen, Salome sounds as what you’d expect them to, as another sludge band that is very upset about something and it WILL POUND YOU TO PULP IN ORDER TO EXPLAIN THE REASONS OF ITS ANGER AND DESPAIR! SLOWLY AND BRUTALLY!

It’s on second or third listen that the little quirks that define Salome start to become more apparent to the listener: like, say, how creative and borderline-groovy the drumming is. Like, how the band inserts these crazy-ass rhythmic breaks into its otherwise slow beating of the listener, that made me go, “hey, that’s interesting”. Like, how they have the audacity to burn the audience’s ears and speakers with seven-fucking-teen minutes of scraggly noise and feedback, dead center in the record. Like, how the songs seem to be in a constant state of flux, even when there’s the inevitable riff repetition that characterizes the genre. Like, how, even bass-less, the band’s sound is full and evil all the time.

And, finally, how real, how authentic Kat sounds, how, err, scary. I mean, she reminds me of an old girlfriend, who, when on PMS, had to be locked in a metal cage and fed raw meat just to calm her enough so as not to attack – I mean, physically attack – anyone she though might be “her enemy”. Kat’s vocals are the centerpiece of this record and, lemme tell ya, they’re real harrowing. Production-wise, “Terminal” is A-OK, bottom-end-friendly and snappy at the same time. Bottom line, of course, is that Salome enter triumphantly into my collection of beloved “slow-and-low” bands, and so they should do for y’all.

P.S.: check Salome’s MySpace and see what bands they like. It reads like a fucking who’s-who of doom. With these influences, what the fuck would anyone expect from Salome? Fluffy fucking bunnies?

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Profound Lore
Website: Salome MySpace
Band
Kat Katz: vocals
Rob Moore: guitar
Aaron Deal: drums

Tracklist
01. The message
02. Terminal
03. Master failure
04. Epidemic
05. An accident in history
06. The witness
07. The unbelievers

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