Khost - Many Things Afflict Us Few Things Console Us

The mighty Khost return with their fifth full album. Calling them industrial doom or industrial metal is something of a disservice as Khost offer so much more beyond those genres and Many Things Afflict Us Few Things Console Us does it best to represent the many influences that seep and evolve from their hefty, mammoth sound, a grimy wall of oppressive noise swollen with abstract electronics and eerie samples. Hailing from Birmingham Khost share roots and a heaviness with Godflesh, Napalm Death and Scorn and but also some of those splinter off-shoots like Techno Animal and 16/17. I'd say it must be something in the water but it's more likely the city and its architecture: the brutal concrete, the industrial factories and the desolate spaces. Khost have so much to say and in fact the LP and CD editions offer variations on tracks and running order and that's before considering the incidental textures and atmospheres that open and appear within songs together with tracks that stray from the brutal guitar sound while continuing the unease. Members consider the experience as venturing into off-limit wings of a gallery after-hours where every turn is more disorientating or as wandering around a city at night, catching snippets of conversations, hearing distant trains and passing traffic.

Many Things Afflict Us Few Things Console Us opens with some fine examples of their customary heaviness 'The Fifth Book of Agrippa' crawls to massive slow droning chords and punishing rhythms, woven with Eastern drone and wails shredded by a low scraping guttural growls, given a solemn edge from Jo Quail's cello score. If 'The Fifth Book of Agrippa' is dense, then 'Death Threat' is intense and threatening. A buzzing droning riff, sliced by searing guitars, powered by industrial rhythm, low end bass and a furious scraping rasp "you follow like you've lost your liberty". Eastern wails also feature within the chugging doom chords of 'Incinerator', with its throat scraping vocals almost existing above as another layer. Those eastern wails that seep in are recurrent motifs in Khost albums, offering beauty amidst the harshness, which together with the undercurrent of subtle effects and textures add further depth to their imposing claustrophobic sound.

Khost lyrics though hard to decipher wrestle with themes of suffering, struggle and pain created by political decisions but there's also an esoteric strain running through their work. It's there in the title of The Fifth Book of Agrippa' referencing the works of the German mystic and alchemist and the lyrics which, as they have said, are sometime automatic writings. 'Apotropaic' which alludes to a witches bottle is disorientating. Something akin to a chanted spell is cast through layers of sustained riffing propelled by skittering rhythms. It's a hellish concoction of flailing guitars, ravaged vocals and spirited cornet parps. It's maybe a magickal invocation that is sampled throughout the title track over pounding and pattering dubby rhythms and slow-mo fizzing guitar movements. It's more spacious than the other riff heavy tracks giving prominence to the chanted spell behind the cracked roar of the continually repeated title, surrounded in droning guitar distortions and slight electronic treatments.

Several tracks strip away the recognisable aspects of the Khost sound for a more direct post-punk approach offering valuable insight into the musical origins of Damian Bennett and Andy Swan. This is perhaps something the duo have never explicitly displayed within the confines of a Khost album before. 'Face' lunges to frantic hi-hat clips and jerky, booming bass tones with hushed harsh tones. The guitars may be clipped emitting splintered textures but there is something reminiscent of early Killing Joke here. 'Transfixed', meanwhile, sets Damian Bennett's curt oblique observations to a driving bass line underpinned by a looped crunchy textured rhythm shrouded in electronic shudders and feedback, completed with an apt niggling Joy Division type guitar line. 'Hands In Broken Time' provides further insight delving back to remind us of Andy Swan's involvement in harsh electronics. Here, Axebreaker (aka Terence Hannum of experimental metalists Locrian) delivers a Ramleh type distant exasperated holler drenched in appropriate lashings of abrasive electronic noise.

These ventures into other areas are welcome as its default setting might be heavy but interspersed amongst the brutal riffing and post-punk offerings of the above tracks are the many diversions and detours they take on the vinyl edition illustrating the different facets of the Khost sound. 'Reading Between The Lines' flits between rudimentary electronic rhythms and mangled electronics and splurges of droning guitar riddled with snatches of oriental chants (a sample provided by Iron Fist of the Sun). 'Overrun' is another of those spoken word pieces that feature on Khost albums. Eugene Robinson, Stephen AH Burroughs, Syan have all featured previously and this time it is the calm tones of Manuel Liebeskind who returns to intonate over atmospheric street recordings, ending on the phrase, "cease to exist", providing another link back via someone else to Throbbing Gristle, whilst 'L2L6' closes the vinyl edition in echoey location recordings coupled with skittery, scratchy noise textures.

The CD edition is bolstered by a further 7 tracks showing the full expanse of Khost. 'Death Car' kinda fizzes with metal riffings with a restrained intensity, erupting into explosive guitar noise compounded with heavy pummels, whilst 'Cheapside' layers a stretched growl over degraded noise textures. But it is when they dispense with the oppressive riffing to explore other territories it becomes clear Khost aren't your typical industrial doom/metal band. Damian Bennett's elusive and evocative spoken word continues the unease on the expansive 'Define The Edge of Someone', shadowed and electrified in live guitar improvisation emitting formless squalls of drone and shaped guitar drifts, while the blurred chords and splinters of hazy psychedelia of 'TVSB' meander and drift, flowing over supple bass tones and snatches of sampled voices. This is Khost unadorned, sparse and atmospheric and another indication of the scope and versatility of the group without diluting the overall cohesion.

For the final tracks they enlist a number of guest remixers to burrow deeper into nightmare territory. Bereneces' take on 'Death Threat' foregoes the bombast for a shifting dark ambient setting with a minimal pulsing and clicking rhythm with muted trumpets to evoke an eerie city nightscape, while the Adrian Stainburner remix of 'Yellow Light', reimagined from their previous Buried Steel album, enters a "liminal transient zone", with decayed shuddering electro sequences and reverberating taps and shift reflected in the spoken word from Stephen Mallinder (ex-Cabaret Voltaire, Wrangler).

Disorientation and unease is at the heart of Many Things Afflict Us Few Things Console Us. Khost could easily have taken the easy option of settling for an album's worth of ear crushing industrial doom and metal. Instead in numerous nuanced interludes and departures into more subtle, abstract territories with spoken word based noir ambience, alongside their dense onslaughts of guitars, Khost remain resolutely unique and not limited in their expression of a hopeful yet unsettling defiance. Play it loud for the full effect. Massive. Many Things Afflict Us Few Things Console Us is available digitally and on black and red vinyl from Cold Spring bandcamp and Cold Spring