I do enjoy to figuratively pop my head into a bush with the sole aim of coming across something interesting. In the musical world, this can really mean anything, but for me personally, materializes through different vibes, from weird genre descriptors to fascinating artworks, odd song titles or wild instrumentation, or anything of the sort, you get it. Today’s premiere subject did that with their name, followed closely by a seemingly random string of characterizing words. So, let’s get into it, shall we?
Kallohonka is a Texas-based, self-proclaimed slug metal band whose new album Laser Blood comes out via Memory Terminal Records on March 13, and today we’re happy to bring you the advanced stream of “Psychic Surgery” from the record. As per intel, the album consists of slugs, bear cvlts, weed, aliens, and whatever whathaveyous that can be derived from and around those things. The press release also goes on to elaborate on how the band was made up of hippy Christian cult members, were conscripted by CIA-run hallucinogenic brain mutation research programs, and a bunch of other not-at-all eyebrow-raising shit about gorging on ursine flesh and singing craven arias to the souls of the phantasmic beasts and so on. So, the lore is there and awesome enough to warrant a proper read for you, my adventurous reader. But before that – and now that the backdrop is set – do dig into “Psychic Surgery” from below! Or let it dig into you, to be more accurate;
For those wondering, kallohonka is a Finnish term (yay) that practically means a pine upon which the skulls of bears are set, looking eastward, after a gathering celebrating the killing of the animal, with its bones buried at the root of the tree. So with that out the way, what is slug metal, then? Based on the above example it’s a spaced out yet driving concoction of noise rock, sludge, punk, and some folk, through an experimental lens. Some could even go as far as to just call them, well, weird. Luckily, we at Everything Is Noise are all about that. As for the song’s background, the brief but self-explanatory quote provided by the band’s bassist James Magruder says the following;
‘I wrote part of “Psychic Surgery” in 2000 for a choir director. I fucking hate pirates but stumbling into liminal oblivion is something I’ve always highly condoned.‘
Kallohonka surely intends to disrupt norms with their output, and are achieving exactly that to a great effect with “Psychic Surgery”, with its upbeat but brooding pace and instrumentation. We as listeners are being led upon a cavalcade of mind-bending semi-astral projections conjured via sound, and not enjoying it would require some serious stick-up-the-ass action from whomever dared to disagree. Kallohonka is perhaps the most unhinged thing I’ve come across for a long, long time, and that’s saying quite a lot, when it comes to our world today as a whole. I for one am willing to bend the knee before our ursine overlords and partake in any measure necessary to get to the state of mind these people are gazing at the rest of us from.
