Knut : Terraformer

Metal and rap music seem to be in the same boat—they both get a bad rap (pun intended). Hip hop looks bad to the older generation (i.e. your parents) because all they see is the MTV and major record store chains marketing the materialism, gold chains and scantly clad women in g-strings shaking their well-endowed rumps. Even though all of us here at Treble like big butts and we cannot lie, one can’t deny that if you scratch beneath the surface, you will find creative and artistically intellectually hip hop. The same thing goes with metal. Most people think that it is all about being gratuitous and killing goats and stuff, which is not so. In the past decade a new wave of metal has been emerging which, while sounding more arty and progressive in it’s sound, contains greater themes sorts dealing with mankind, existentialism, philosophical pondering, government control and all that other fun stuff. And within the last five years, the Swiss lads of Knut have been at the forefront with their spreading of the mathcore gospel. Knut’s first two albums Bastardiser and Challenger were nothing short of genius but with Terraformer most Knut fans will be left scratching their heads wondering what the fuck happened. It’s like Knut woke up in the Twilight Zone to be some completely different band.

From the start of “Wyriwys” the riffs are poorly arranged in a rather askew manner which makes the track itself seem botched compared to Knut’s earlier work. Their hardcore gusto seems to flow well on “Kyoto,” which goes into a really wicked and sludgy thrust midway through. That being the third track on the album, I was led to believe that the these songs just happened to be late bloomers and it gave me some hope as to thinking that a good album could be salvaged out of Terraformer. But just like someone who mistakenly believed that the Matrix sequels were going to be amazing, I was utterly disappointed with the following track, “Torvalds” because the rhythm is off in space.

While some nominal thrash elements may pop up from time to time a lot of the numbers start out on a pretty solid sonic ground but veer into bane-ridden song structures. Basically, it all just a heap of false hope. Try this on for size, the track “Seattle” will be utterly headache inducing to the most metal of metalheads, and we all know that metalheads have better headache resistance than anybody. Knut has paid enough dues to be given another chance for a solid album, but if not, Switzerland also needs people to make chocolates and pocketknives as well.

Similar Albums (to get instead):
Isis – Panopticon
Neurosis – Through Silver in Blood
Pelican – Australasia