KTL - 2

Stephen O'Malley, Sunn O)))'s hooded drone-master, teams up again with Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) for another go-around as KTL, tackling material from their initial sessions which produced their (also excellent) first album. 2 contains four long tracks that not so much unfold but expand, each track crafting a uniquely bleak sonic environment that is fully explored. 2 blows through genre boundaries of black metal (O'Malley's descriptor), glitch (or whatever Rehberg's Mego label is being branded as these days), and old-school isolationism into a a new headspace.

2 starts with the barely-there "Snow" -- muted electronics and some deep rumbling. "Theme," the longest track at 27 minutes, sounds like O'Malley doing some fast cross-picking in the upper register, and Rehberg's distortion/enhancement on top of that, but it could very easily be almost any sound chopped up and processed. At a loud volume, the sound they create at the peak of this track (about 25 minutes in) is very disorienting. If a sound could make you lose your balance, this is that sound. "Abbatoir" follows in the footsteps of another Mego artist, Kevin Drumm, more specifically his Sheer Hellish Miasma, with its tightly controlled and sharply wielded noise. Slightly more riff-oriented than "Theme," "Abbatoir" is closer to Sunn O))) in spirit but not in execution. Where Sunn overwhelm the senses, KTL punishes them without pity or mercy. Until the nine-minute mark, where everything drops away, leaving a cavern of reverb, every sound so very distant, Rehberg's laptop aping the sound of a swarm of locusts approaching. At 13 minutes, the locusts arrive and it is the sound of chaos. The track peaks around 19 minutes in, and slowly disassembles itself into silence, leading to the closing track, "Snow 2," a quietly menacing drone/feedback exercise with what could be genuine nature sounds on top.

More exhausting than its predecessor, 2 achieves its aim, which is getting more and more rare these days. Loudly recommended.