Are Romania’s Katharos XIII the best-kept secret in the metal underground? Their music is not available on the major streaming platforms, and you’ll need Bandcamp if you want to listen to their latest offering. Of course, you could do something radical, like buying their record on CD, which is the correct way to support your favourite artists. Scream Blast Repeat had the band’s fourth album on our radar from May this year (along with the new White Ward record) and never found the time to give it the appraisal it deserves, so why not squeeze it in before the end of 2022? The quintet’s 2019 Palindrome LP was one of the finest pieces of experimental metal from the 2010s, but how do they shape up in the new decade?
When you think of Romania, you think of avant-garde black metal legends, Negură Bunget, and it’s no surprise to learn that Katharos XIII founder, Emilian Matlak, spent some time in that band from 2010-2013. Lead soprano vocalist, Manuela Marchis, also contributed guest vocals on the later Negură Bunget works, but Cthonian Transmissions sounds nothing like the former. There is no name for this, unless you want to create an absurd new micro-genre called post-black doom jazz. Opener, ‘Neurastenia’, starts like an atonal rush of post-metal with thumping drum snares and dense chords ringing through the amps. Péter Hanos-Puskai’s bass is loud in the mix, like the part of an extractor fan that buzzes with the most velocity. A second guitar holds the same high register note in a slow pitch shift without disrupting the flow of the spacy doom metal. Manuela Marchis wants to hypnotise you – she might even hypnotise herself in the way she floats between the notes. Few bands can start an album with a fourteen-minute song, but Katharos XIII wrap you in their cape and caress you in their humane embrace like teachers of a lost gospel. Listen how the subtle piano sprinkles and tenor sax weave in and out of the distortion. This is what Dead Can Dance would sound like if somebody asked them to return as a post-metal artist.
Perhaps London jazz-doom quartet, Five the Hierophant, are the nearest thing to a reference point for the music of Katharos XIII. ‘The Golden Season’ reverberates with the heaviest riffing on the album, full of crunchy discordant shapes and angular guitar-picking. Harsh vocals alternate with a mystical bass voice as you try to resist the force that tranquilises you and soothes your limbs in a comforting but coercive grip. One moment they cool you down with the ocean spray of serene keyboards and clean guitar passages; the next moment they rupture this bliss with a vicious onslaught of heavy guitars and nocturnal saxophone movements. The ambient passages are the opposite to shoegaze – there’s always a cloud hanging over their compositions rather than the promise of the sun breaking through.
Katharos XIII inhabit a planet of sparse daylight, where the moonshine acts as the substitute for the sun. You grow acclimatised to this permanent midnight tranquillity and learn to appreciate the solitude. Few people live here, few signs of human civilisation impose on the landscape. The title-track writhes in the agony of a cosmic doom metal trap with bloodthirsty vocals yet extricates itself with a daring trek through the woodlands in search of fireflies. Again, you cannot shake the feeling of paranoia that stalks you in the distance. Everything about this music is out of focus and off-kilter, and that’s the point. Manuela Marchis echoes in the mix like a distant soul waiting to be freed by God’s angels. ‘From the Light of Flesh’ poses the question – why use keyboards when you can use ambient guitar loops and saxophones to create a dream world where the promise of light galvanises you into action? Alexandru Iovan is the most taciturn member of the band. Not once does he brush the others aside with his saxophone. Instead, he searches for the places in the overlap where he can insert his notes like air-conditioning units on the lowest setting.
You know there’s still so much to discover when the electronic drum strokes burn out like candles, and you reach the end of ‘Okeanos’. Glittering gold stars appear as a climax to a Joy Division-esque mesh of tribal percussion and faint rays of melody that camouflage underneath the repetition. The high reverb soprano vocals of Manuela Marchis burrow into your brain like a hallucinogenic drug. You’re not sure what you experienced, but you know it’s an enigma that will entice you towards the repeat button.
JVB
Verdict
Release Date: 23/05/2022
Record Label: Loud Rage Music
Standout tracks: Neurastenia, The Golden Season, Cthonian Transmissions
Suggested Further Listening: Five the Hierophant – Through Aureate Void (2021), Dead Can Dance – Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (1987), Messa – Close (2022)