KEN Mode – “The Terror Pulse”
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It’s taken a little while for non-Canadian bruisers to get hip to the kind of stomach-churning sludge/post-hardcore that Winnipeg’s KEN Mode have been hammering out for years, though a Juno Award for their 2011 album Venerable certainly doesn’t hurt. Yet based on “The Terror Pulse,” the newly released track from upcoming album Entrench, the trio has a lot more menace to unload.
A rattle of drums, a discordant shard of guitar, and a fierce low-end pulse — perhaps the one referenced in the title — drive “The Terror Pulse” toward its gradually escalating and increasingly harsh climax. A solid 1:08 passes before vocalist Jesse Matthewson even opens his mouth. That kind of build, in some cases, can denote a soaring climax to come. In this case it’s a slow build of tension before an unhinged eruption of violence. Matthewson screams “THIS… IS… A WRECK!” And if that’s the case, it’s an immaculately constructed and gloriously brutal one.
[found on Entrench, Season of Mist; out March 19]Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.