Khanate: Capture & Release (green) LP

Khanate are Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O))), Burning Witch, Thorr's Hammer), James Plotkin and Alan Dubin (OLD), and Tim Wyskida (Blind Idiot God, Manbyrd). Largely recognized as their breakthrough album, Khanate was confident enough by the two-song, forty-minute "Capture & Release" (2005) to peel back its layers of thick mossy drone and reveal the minimalist underpinnings, a change either interpreted as maturity or an implied threat. It's a grim, avant-garde exercise in tension and paranoia. Dense, leaden drones fill up the spaces between O'Malley's sparse, deeply sustained guitar chords. Vocalist Alan Dubin's anguished vocals seem to convey the tortures of the damned as if there were not a shred of hope left for existence in this world. "Capture & Release" is not dissimilar to black metal in how it so violently conveys such a bleak and ultra-nihilistic world outlook. But while the standard tempo on a black metal album typically strays into the triple digits in terms of beats per minute, Khanate's plodding pace keeps the BPM soundly within the single-digit range.