UK-based experimental label Cold Spring Records presents the third full-length recorded excursion from Birmingham-based death industrial/doom experimenters, KHOST, titled Governance.
The ten-track Governance continues KHOST‘s immersion in themes of detachment and dissonance, and ruminates upon the exertion of wills that are not your own, and upon the ways to detect and trace the outlines of the presence(s) that may exert these daily wills upon you, day by day. It was written over the course of the 2016/17 Winter, during times of unease and sickness for the band, including one near-death experience. The resulting album is a hinterland of low resolution transmissions interspersed with broad concrete columns of distortion that loom suddenly from the dim landscape. Governance is like driving at night with your spirituality asleep at the wheel.
With demoralizing vocal terror, hypnotic nightmarescapes, frost-encrusted tones, and horrifying rhythms, KHOST‘s Governance devastates the listener with nearly fifty minutes of entrancing yet hazardous tectonic doom-laced revulsion. The album was produced and mixed by KHOST, and mastered by Martin Bowes at Cage Studio. The record features a guest spoken word passage from Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson on the track “Cloudbank Mausoleum,” and guest cello by Jo Quail on “Defraction,” and the album closes with a remix of the track “Coven” by Tel Aviv artist Adrian Stainburner.
Cold Spring Records will release Governance on CD and digital formats on June 16th, with a vinyl pressing to follow at a later point. Stand by for audio samples, preorders, and more to be issued in the coming weeks.
KHOST is a duo comprised of Andy Swan (Iroha, Final) and Damian B (carthage, Gauge, Techno Animal). Since their inception in 2013, they have toured with bands such as Godflesh and Conan, have shared the stage with Asphyx, Locrian, Okkultokrati, Vodun, Moss, Anaal Nathrakh, Final/JK Flesh, and played shows as far abroad as Israel in 2016. The band has collaborated with the likes of Eugene Robinson of Oxbow, Daniel Buess, and other sources, who have provided saxophone, cello, and voice for their wide-ranging recordings. The band has also been remixed by D&B artists Hostage and Necrobia, and more. Prior KHOST recordings include two prior albums — Copper Lock Hell and Corrosive Shroud – as well as the Needles Into The Ground EP which was KHOST material deconstructed by Justin Broadrick of Godflesh.
Governance Track Listing:
1. Redacted Repressed Recalcitrant
2. Subliminal Choroform Violation
3. Low Oxygen Silo
4. Cloudbank Mausoleum
5. Demenized
6. []
7. Coven
8. Depression
9. Defraction
10. Stockholm Syndrome
11. Coven (Adrian Stainburner remix)
“Even before I found out about who KHOST were… I could tell they were from Birmingham. They have that sense of music being crushed out of them that all the best heavy Brum bands have, that sense that they grew up under a car park, didn’t see sunlight until they were well into their twenties, that same dazed, extreme feel of oppressive concrete overload that Sabbath and Godflesh and Nathrakh and Mistress had…” – The Quietus
“KHOST use samples layered underneath massive riffs, slow and very very loud. They are also very very good. The sound is complex and draws you in.” – Louder Than War
“…slabs of twin guitar drone and snail paced gargantuan riffs, marshalled into order by immense overdriven drum machine soldiers, while lulls in the assault are dominated by ethereal voices, found sounds and rather lush and spellbinding ambiences.” – Midlands Metalheads
“KHOST bring the industrial back to this Brummish land of abandoned factories and broken glass… Part menacing, part esoteric, the duo move little and provide no further show or explanation behind their mechanical presence” – The Sleeping Shaman
“The West Midlands of England has yet another grimy, hooded secret. One as cacophonous and electrifying as Birmingham duo KHOST, however, surely cannot be suppressed much longer. Having given us Sabbath, Napalm Death, Godflesh, and Anaal Nathrakh, Birmingham – and KHOST – has just provided metal’s latest evolution.” – Ghost Cult Magazine
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