By Rob Thompson
Sweden's premiere doomsters Kongh present their re-released, critically acclaimed debut album Counting Heartbeats. The album, which was nominated for a P3 Guld Award (Swedish equivalent of the Grammy Award); contains over 50 minutes of additional playing time in comparison with the original version and will only be available as a limited (1000 copies) de-luxe double digipack. The re-release features two bonuses, never available on CD before: the 25 minute song ‘Drifting On Waves’ from the 2008 split LP with Ocean Chief and the ‘demo 2006’ - band's first ever recording.
If you’ve never heard the name Kongh before you immediately think of King Kong, a heavy creature which is wrathful, indignant and unhurried. For me this summarises musical style on offer here to a tee. An unsubtle blend of progressive, doom and sludge which bludgeons the listener into submission. Sludge provides the foundation on which all else is built; the prog element fuses with the doom to create something which to my metal ear is subtly different to the likes of Pelican and ISIS. However, a word of warning: don’t expect speed and don’t expect short tracks. Long slow crunching heaviness pervades every track with vocals which are tortured growls. Of course, all of this is excellent stuff.
The album starts with ‘Pushed Beyond‘: clean guitars provide a lead into the drumming and then the doom commences in earnest. There’s some variation here and there with a few buoyant sections and a psychedelic guitar lead but this soon gives way to a more aggressive sludgier style of playing. Next up is ‘Counting Heartbeats‘, which sees the usual growling vocals which are complemented by more melodic sections; this is especially noticeable at about three minutes in where the bass takes centre stage. As before this break is only a temporary respite as the disparate riffs give way to the heavier elements once again.
‘Adapt The Void‘ uses some retro bass work which remains fairly powerful and prominent; this underpins the entire track. The aggression and heaviness rises and falls but the sludge always remains. ‘Megaprimatus‘ follows along a similar theme and ‘Zihuatanejo‘ has a Middle Eastern vibe to it also employing some post-rock sections. These offset the shouted vocals and heavy sections really nicely. It’s interesting to contrast this track against the ‘2006 demo‘ version. For me the demo has more drums and is slightly faster but its all fairly similar stuff. Again ‘Adapt The Void (Demo 2006 version)' isn’t all that different from the newer version apart from the fact it’s cruder and less sophisticated.
With ‘Turn Into Dust‘ Kongh surprisingly use a ethnic, almost tribal drumbeat which strangely works really rather well with the stoner vibe they invoke. This song rumbles on into ‘Thunders Collide‘. The droning ‘Drifting On Waves‘ follows laying down some pretty heavy bass lines, slide guitars and some killer leads too.
In summary, Counting Heartbeats is a challenge and it does take a few listens to eventually “get it”. But it manages to set benchmark in metals more doomier genres. If you like Black Sabbath, early Mastodon, Yob and Cult Of Luna then you simply must check out this release. For sure, this is excruciatingly heavy stuff but it somehow manages to sound fresh and gratifying; never boring. With this release Kongh can now claim to be almost as enormous as their more hairy namesake.
