Khanate - Things Viral

Wrapping up this "dead bands of 2006" week is Khanate. This band was so slow, they made me mad. The first time I heard them, I questioned whether they were even playing music. It seemed like they were trying to stretch a four-minute Godflesh song over a forty-minute length, and it was painful to hear. Thud... bang... creak... scream... I like my music with rhythm, and this had none.

Only when I abandoned conventional notions of music could I appreciate Khanate (pronounced "con ate"). I started thinking of them as a performance art ensemble instead of a "rock band." How else could I explain sound so dramatic, yet seemingly unorganized?

Khanate - Dead

But as I listened more, I found that the sound, however unorthodox, was in fact organized. The group was hitting unisons and peaks and valleys with admirable synchronicity considering that "hits" occurred between extremely long pauses of seemingly random length. How was the band "composing" and rehearsing 10- and 20-minute tracks of this stuff? The members' resumes included OLD, Scorn, Sunn O)))), and Blind Idiot God, so obviously they knew what they were doing.

I still find the whole exercise a bit pretentious, and I'm not the type who feels "the everlasting pain of mankind" or whatever in this stuff. In fact, I usually listen to it in the background or before going to sleep - probably not its intended use. But I enjoy hearing clanking noises and anguished screaming cut down to tiny size. I find it cute. When you hear Khanate for the first time, you might laugh, too, or be scared, or both. Pick up this comedy of (t)error at Southern Lord.