This fucking album. 😮💨. Knoll has found a way with As Spoken to craft the audio equivalent of, “You guys wanna go see a dead body?”. At first, the question elicits disgust, fear, and incredulity. But the closer you get to the destination of someone’s final remains, you begin to feel nervous excitement, curiosity, and even desire. This is exactly the mind-fuck ride on which Knoll takes you with this album. It’s a car crash of mangled limbs and here I am with my camera waiting to make memories to relive the horror over and over again.
As Spoken is a fucking masterclass in the ebb and flow between the frenetic and the deliberate. The first nine seconds of this album will be the only solace experienced. “As Spoken” lunges for the throat with glistening fangs and an unquenchable desire for blood demonstrating what it most likely is to be on the verge of death. Then the sludge and dissonance of “Offering” cascading into the dangerous buzzsaw of “Wept Fountain” begins to encapsulate Knoll’s ideology.
A display of unique identities occurs during “Revile of Light” as the song begins at breakneck speed akin to a plane plummeting towards the earth. Then the goddamn saxophone kicks in (not the first of the horned instruments we’ll hear) and the plane becomes a rudderless ship crawling out of control towards the shore; the saxophone mimicking an alarm-like call for help while the double bass drum gallop ensures there is no stopping this fucking carnage.
“Mereward” is akin to black tar (not the drug, mind you) as it is an inescapable black hole of dense death-fluid and despair. The song begins with a riff reminiscent of Crowbar if they cranked the evil to 11. The song slows to a funeral dirge imagining us all being carried by six but buried in a shallow, marshy grave. [Editor’s note (I’m the editor but this sounded professional): Knoll released a short movie to coincide with “Mereward”. Enjoy at your own peril]
If it was even possible to pinpoint a specific moment of disturbance on As Spoken, it would have to be “Utterance”. This song brings to mind “The Tell-Tale Heart”. In place of a thumping, beating, disembodied heart beneath the floorboards, Jamie Eubanks’ vocals embody Pazuzu seeking a victim to possess. There is no redemption in this performance. This is powerful, demonic, and will make your skin crawl. It is perfection personified.
“Fettered Oath”. And that saxophone again. Fuck. Hit play on this song and it’s as if the molecules of your body are set to explode. For fuck’s sake, the saxophone. Knoll self-identify as “avant garde”. A fitting and untethering descriptor that allows the band to push, pull, stretch, and destroy all traditional forms of what we have been built to expect.
There is a notable frigidity to this collection of onslaughts. As though each singular passing song was the totality of an icy maelstrom with razor sharp icicles and toothed wind ripping the flesh from bones. An unholy matrimony of black metal, grind, noise, and powerviolence. A graveyard of so-called innocent victims who got exactly what they fucking deserved. To quote, “No, no, no this is beautiful, this is art”
- Fav song: “Mereward”
FFO: black metal, scaring your neighbors, grindcore, powerviolence, powerful violence, demonic possessions, finality, noisecore
Follow this fucking link to listen and while you’re there, fucking buy something from the band:
Windmills, Spinkicks, Headbangs, Push Pits 
Leave a comment