KHEMMIS: Doomed Heavy Metal (DOOM): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Almost two years after having delivered a good "Desolation", it's not this hybrid product adding covers, unreleased and live tracks that we expected from the Americans, but a fourth album which will come later. In order to make us wait, Khemmis tinkered with this EP whose title comes from their profession of faith, perfectly summing up the band's approach, which sculpts in the rock of Mount Rushmore an epic and mythological heavy doom.

The two proposed covers are revealing of this expression crushed by a heavy screed of despair. If Lloyd Chandler's 'A Conversation With Death' proves to be astonishing, the appropriation of 'Rainbow In The Dark', which moreover starts the listening in the most jubilant way, succeeds superbly in plunging the heavy metal of Dio in the crucible of the doom. It must be said that Dio's music lends itself well to this anvil-like reinterpretation which, alone, justifies the acquisition of this EP.

Between these two tracks, a new title, 'Empty Throne', slips in between, in the right line of "Desolation", that is to say a Doom both racy and powerful as "While Heaven Wept" forged it. Finally, three live tracks complete the menu, each taken from one of the three albums of the band. The band first draws from their latest opus a 'Bloodletting' performed with all the necessary emotional sap. Taken from 'Hunted', 'Three Gates' shows the hardest face of Khemmis, with its growls that are nevertheless lessened by a clear and dramatic singing. 'The Beveared', for its part, is charged with representing the original 'Absolution', nine minutes carved in stone where this massive severity and these solemn and bass vocals are combined, that is the strength of the Americans.

"Doomed Heavy Metal" can't be ignored even if it has no other purpose than to make people wait for the successor of "Desolation". And then, even if it has to be repeated, there is this cover of 'Rainbow In The Dark' in it, a summary of this epic and granite metal full of emotions... - Official website

KHEMMIS

DOOMED HEAVY METAL

NUCLEAR BLAST

DOOM