| Kylesa (May.07 issue) |
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| Written by Jeff Clark | |
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Page 2 of 2 It was that second CD, their debut for Los Angeles metal label Prosthetic Records, which first turned my ear towards Kylesa in 2005. An onslaught of crushing, metallic whiplash; stinging, boomerang guitar flights; rumbling rhythmic breakouts; psychedelic undercurrents; and jarring, triple-team vocal interaction between Pleasants, Cope and bassist Corey Barhorst, To Walk a Middle Course is the watershed creative blueprint from a band I predict will have a vital role in the future of experimental, heavy art-rock. To borrow a title from a not-so-off-base comparative band from another decade, coast and scene, they sounded desperate - so get used to it! Exilerating and exhausting, that album was, and if anything, with dueling drummers now doubling Kylesa's pummeling thunder, Time Will Fuse Its Worth is an even more thrilling rollercoaster ride. "It's funny, because when Phillip and I started the band, I remember sitting on his back porch, and he had this idea to have two drummers back then." Circumstances prevented that concept from initial fruition, but when then-drummer Brandon Baltzley left after the release of Middle Course, they auditioned a transplant from Detroit, Jeff Porter, around the same time they had been jamming - just for fun - with their longtime friend Carl McGinley from Unpersons. When both drummers decided they wanted the job, the band decided to finally go with their original plan, and added them both. 
"I kinda look at having two drummers as having two guitar players,"
offers Pleasants. "Sometimes you play the rhythm together, and
sometimes one person will play the lead, and sometimes you play off of
each other. Or it'll be textural. It's kinda the same concept - it just
adds more dynamic and possibility. I think we've barely tapped into
what we can do. We wrote (Time Will Fuse) pretty much right away
after they joined, so a lot's happened since then. I think it really
benefits in a live setting, where Carl also runs samples."While most of the sound on their albums is created live, during shows Kylesa have taken to triggering samples to add atmosphere and weirdness. "It's ethereal sounds, really, but it's all made up mainly from guitar," explains Pleasants. "It's more like soundscapey stuff. It's not like, ‘Oh, that's a guitar.' It's definitely tripped out, weird sounds that we got from guitars, and we had a theremin in the studio, just a whole bunch of different stuff. We used different percussion as well, and Carl and Corey both play piano. We're all interested in various kinds of music, and we wanna try as many different things as possible, and still make it cohesive and make sense." They've recorded covers of songs by anarchic punk band Nausea and Seattle hardcore act The Accused for 7-inch singles, but lately Kylesa have taken to covering - quite impressively - Pink Floyd's early dirge "Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun" in concert. It works surprisingly well as a climax to the band's controlled chaos, and it underscores the oft-overlooked psychedelic component of the band's sound. "Early Pink Floyd is definitely one of my favorite bands," says Laura, 29. "Phillip and I, and Cory, too, are huge fans of psychedelic music. I've been listening to a lot of it the past couple of years. I've just been digging more and more into it, like obscure, weird bands," she enthuses, citing little-known '70s relics German Oak and Japan's Flower Travellin' Band as current favorite discoveries. Just as the late-60s and early-70s saw an explosion of far-flung and imaginative groups in the psychedelic scene, it seems to me that we're in the midst of a fertile creative period for metal bands and heavier music, where it's reaching an audience that might not have given it a shot before. And Pleasants is quick to agree. "It definitely is the time for this kind of music, right now," she says. "We've been doing this since 2001, and gears have shifted tremendously, as far as what's been going on with music in general, and what kind of bands are out there playing, and what the audience is like. A lot of our fans today may not have listened to us back when we started. We were pretty much the outsider band on every bill we ever played for a few years. There were really only a handful of bands that were actively playing heavy music. And it certainly wasn't as popular as it is now. Especially experimental hardcore metal, and the cross-pollination of genres. It's definitely a fruitful time for heavy music." |
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