Published on May 2, 2005
Savannah, Georgia-based Kylesa confuses me — and, frankly, I
think this is a good thing.
Their latest full-length release,
To Walk A Middle Course, defies any type of labelling by
critics. A combination of doom metal with hints of thrash, and
peppered with sounds influenced by Helmet, X and even
Rocks-era Aerosmith, Kylesa write and perform music that is
on their terms. There will be no shoving this CD in one particular
genre, nor will there be any real way to compare them to any band
before them.
Carving such a musical path is a challenge, albeit one that
Kylesa — guitarist/vocalist Phillip Cope, guitarist/vocalist Laura
Pleasants, bassist/vocalist Corey Berhorst and drummer Brandon
Baltzley — prove they’re capable of handling. If only the disc
didn’t seem to drift into the background while one was listening to
it; otherwise, this disc’s power could well have been
unstoppable.
Make no mistake,
To Walk A Middle Course is a worthwhile, though challenging,
listen. It is challenging in that tracks such as “In Memory,”
“Train Of Thought” and “Welcome Mat To An Abandoned Life” take all
the rules that one thought they knew about music — metal in
general — and grinds them up like so much meat in a food
processor. Styles are crossed like state lines, often several times
within the course of one song. Yet Kylesa is able to make such
shifts sound almost common, to the point that the listener almost
fails to notice when the style shifts, say, from an homage to X to
an almost stoner-rock groove.
But the one weakness dogging Kylesa throughout
To Walk A Middle Course is determining how to keep the
listener’s attention throughout the course of the disc. I can’t say
I have a better grasp of how it could have been done in this case,
but as I listened to the disc, I oftne found the music moving to
the background as I went about my day. To be blunt, music this
mentally challenging (and that is meant in a good way) demands that
the listener focus almost all their attention on the sounds
eminating from the speakers. Somehow, Kylesa needs to figure out
that one step to fully realize their musical plans.
Interestingly enough, the closing track, the instrumental
“Crashing Slow,” turns out to be one of the most powerful on the
whole disc. This isn’t to take away from the vocal performances
throughout this album, but it does give the listener the full range
to appreciate where Kylesa is coming from musically. Maybe it was
because this piece came after the drawn-out assault of “Phantoms”
that it gave the listener a chance to catch their breath and regain
their senses. And while I think it’s a great way to close this
disc, I could also argue for moving it to the middle of the track
lineup.
To Walk A Middle Course is a disc that refuses to tread
those well-worn musical paths while Kylesa utilizes all of the
musical influences they have and make their own unique sound. They
show some incredible power within these ten tracks, even if it
sometimes seems like they’re still one step away from true musical
domination. If their next effort continues to build on the
strengths you can hear on this disc, one can imagine that Kylesa is
not terribly far away from that last step.