I got a chance to see Knoll live in 2022 shortly after the manic Metempiric dropped. All in all, only twenty people scattered about my favorite hometown venue—a homely bar with a solid stage attached to a bowling alley. This ragtag group of kids who looked to be no older than high school graduates gave the performance of a lifetime—gut-churning rhythms, sudden breakaways from ripping guitar phrases to crying trumpet blares, a vocalist whose life depended on the successful bleeding of the audience’s ears.1 Knoll represents the ideal of youthful ambition. As Spoken is the result.
Did you know that partially choking yourself and maintaining the lurch of a nutritional expulsion both qualify as valid and effective vocal techniques? If you didn’t before, take note that Knoll’s frothing mouth (and wildly curling tongue), James Eubanks, gargles phlegm through vicious snarl and unkempt hiss throughout the entirety of As Spoken, akin to every voice of Left 4 Dead2 at once rather than a typical grunt or gargle. The caustic shrieks and fiercely overtone-rich retches play as refined deathcore techniques taken to new highs and lows—and free of lazy breakdowns in Knoll’s caustic world. As Spoken does not travel in any traditional waters, nary a chorus nor crowd chant nor guitar solo nor pentatonic lick cross its projection. Its forty minutes instead flutter as an amalgamation of contemporary dissonant and ritualistic styles distilled in an arcane mysticism that feels just as campy as it does deadly serious.
The most intense moments of As Spoken render with an unmistakable physicality. Knoll’s guitar attacks strike as weighted, twisting, winding, the bent passages of “Offering,” “Mereward,” “Shall It Be” hitting similarly to warped compositions of an early Dodecahedron piece but with all brightness stripped away. That is until a muted, waning trumpet cry pierces the murk of “Revile of Light” and again against the rage of closer “Shall It Be.” These contrasts act like snow-capped tops amongst the menacing mountains that surround them, important earmarks in the somewhat self-similar assault. The same is true of the riff-less, glottal punishment of “Utterance” which highlights Eubanks’ already crushing performance in a manner that unsettles and awes all at once. Knoll still knows how to throw hands with “Unto Viewing” and “Fettered Oath” delivering late-album calls to violence that feel like ascended oaths to a rowdier youth. Sometimes the quickest path really is that straight cut, unsewn, and expelling.
As this album’s artistic vision dictates, in fascination of an antiquated and blistered grayscale, its sonic palette flourishes in tones of low and lower. Chords and phrases find emphasis often through skewed doubling and layered hammering. Drums hammer in thumping toms, low pop snare, and dull splash cymbals. These choices render the dry bass as mere rhythmic counterpart rather than stabbing counterpoint as you hear more prominently in acts that fall along a similarly dissonant path (check the Portal-ish pounding of “Portrait”). Knoll escapes rumbling muddy but also evades a sharp clarity in foggy presentation of the math-inspired, jagged runs that litter As Spoke. Against expanding songcraft, Knoll has used this threatening drawl as a tool that gradually dissipates with each passing summoning, casting “Shall It Be” as the most treble-driven, ripping affair that collapses in conclusion as a consequence of its reckless momentum—fickle but fitting.
Finding a throbbing pulse that echoes the relentless march of a contemporary avant-death mongers Aeviterne and a narrative focus that rivals the horror-tinged mathgrinders Fawn Limbs, Knoll has moved bounds beyond earlier efforts. Looking back at Interstice and Metempiric, now, it’s easy to see that Knoll fancied themselves as punks with a frightful and macabre aspirations rather than the full-fledged storytellers that As Spoken required. While the riff and pummel of deathgrind maintains a splotch on the board, this new moody, creaking, and real-time dissolving piece needed a pigment that only time could stain. As Spoken lives loudly even if its trials earn minor scuffs and squabbles from over-reliance on fading ambience to affix intention to exclamation. But you may notice that throughout this written discovery, Knoll exists only in approximations of the sounds that other bands present—their voice rings unique and expressive. And with a little more time to fester and form an evolving vision, Knoll will be a name that extreme metal hopefuls chase.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream!
Label: Self Release
Websites: untoviewing.com | knollgrind.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/knollgrind
Releases Worldwide: January 26th, 2024
