Knut - Challenger
Hydra Head
Last year, with their eponymous EP and the reissue of 1998's Bastardiser (both via Hydra Head), Switzerland's Knut garnered a great deal of attention - on both sides of the Atlantic, finally - for their brashly burly 'n' bustling brand of metalcore. Now, with the release of their latest Challenger opus, the quartet not once rest on their laurels and, consequently, up the (already considerable) ante - for both themselves, and their genre.
A concept album, of sorts, lyrically grappling with the Challenger space-shuttle explosion, Challenger amazingly and (meta)physically *unravels* with the passing of each song, the record (and its creators, for that matter) painstakingly pulling itself apart every few seconds of its will-stretching/evaporating 52 minutes. Appropriately titled, "Whacked Out" opens the album in characteristic Knut fashion - a dumptruck demolition-derby on fast forward, with surrealistic snipers and serial killers waiting in the wings - and follows suit for the next two tracks.
However, that's not to say this is a rehash, for drummer Roderic busies up his (already) plaster-smashing rhythms like a bloody mad scientist whilst his bandmates deliver rusty-wreckage axe-blows in kind. *But*, it isn't until the latter half of "El Nino," where the tension becomes more loping, lysergic, and littered with paranoia and quicksand-stuck fright, when the physical/emotional/mental COLLAPSE of Challenger truly begins. By the time sixth track "H/armless" rolls around . . .
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