KTL – IV

January 9, 2009 • Editions Mego

It is an unfortunate truth that the reason some artists are so prolific is that their quality control is not as good as it should be. Take, for instance, an artist like Merzbow, who churns out albums at an alarming rate—some of them are excellent and among my favorites, while others are simply crap that does nothing for me. Stephen O'Malley, of Sunn O))) fame, has been starting to fall into this pattern lately, although usually the quality releases are separated from the others by different artist names. Sunn O))) has a pretty darn good catalog, but another of his groups, KTL, is a bit more lacking. Their 2009 effort IV continues the trend.

Simply put, IV is a dull album. I know it's entirely possible to create interesting and captivating drone music, as we have seen with the Sunn O))) album that came out the same year. But KTL fails to captivate in the same way that Monoliths and Dimensions did. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that KTL feels like a throwaway side project rather than a full-fledged band (even despite having the same number of members as Sunn O)))). Perhaps whether KTL releases are any good is of little consequence; rather, O'Malley and Rehberg want to simply experiment and see where things go. But I don't think it worked particulary well.

The music itself is mostly vanilla dark ambient occasionally punctuated by some industrial noises and seemingly-random, slow, angular guitar riffs in typical O'Malley style. It sounds okay in theory but the execution falls flat for me. Despite some tracks being pretty long, the sound doesn't develop in any way, just continuing until it decides to stop for whatever reason. Some of the sounds and textures are pretty good and every once in a while the music does get slightly interesting but these moments are few, and pretty weak.

It would be unfair to say that this album is all bad, though; "Wicked Way" is a standout track despite its shortness—it just sounds really cool—and the dreamy end of "Natural Trouble" is quite beautiful as well. It's unfortunate that the bulk of the album is taken up with music like that of "Benbbet", which is incredibly boring and pointless (and fifteen minutes long, for some godforsaken reason), and "Wicked Way" and "Natural Trouble" can't save it.

In short, the album just isn't worth the time. KTL simply isn't bringing anything new or interesting to the table. It's a shame, but then again there are plenty of places to look for good music like this. Personally, I'll stick to Sunn O))).

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