Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Kylesa's Ultraviolet - An Album Review


According to Online, the term “kilesa” comes from the Pali language of Central India. In Buddhism, “kilesa” (spelling dictated per dialect) refers to a mental state of emotional distress or thought poison. The band Kylesa, from Georgia's fair city of Savannah, where the trees pull more tourism than the pecan pie or the hospitality, seeks to embody this cerebral slide. I can't speak to all that, except to say that when you're writing an animal attack death scene into a story, Kylesa is the perfect tonal inspiration.

Also from Online, one learns the band Kylesa fulfills most of the musical genres my mother considers “devil worshipping” – sludge metal, doom metal, death metal, stoner metal, psychedelic rock, fuzz rock, crust punk. I’m too new to Kylesa (and all this genre lingo) to say who worships who here. Kylesa's syrupy guitars and spiraled bass pry-back an Inferno-reflective doorway into the sky, assuring that Up remain rooted in Down, and Hope swings hinged on Despair. Vocally the album swims: yells, cleans, choral, shared male and female leads. Lyrically, Ultraviolet questions the validity of Absolute Truth. And the Christ follower in me, prone to similar curiosities, welcomes their inquiry.


Point blank: this record works. Slow and dire. Thick but beautiful. Ultraviolet pierces sensation, dividing the blur between conviction and suspicion. I’ve found profound creative inspiration in this record. And, called back, I’ve found Kylesa’s discography genre-ly scattered but consistently progressive.

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