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Released on October 2, 2015 via Season of Mist
Hailing from Savannah, Georgia, metal outfit Kylesa consists of Phillip Cope (guitar, vocals), Laura Pleasants (guitar, vocals), and Carl McGinley (drums). Exhausting Fire is Kylesa’s follow-up to their 2013 album Ultraviolet. This, their seventh release, was recorded at the Jam Room in Columbia, South Carolina. Produced by Phillip Cope who reports having additional engineering duties dropped into his production seat, and spending more hours than ever working behind the board. In that sense, it is not difficult to take Kylesa at their word when Philip describes Exhausting Fire as “an album we really put our hearts on our sleeves for. We’ve always done that, but emotionally, it’s probably the most honest and raw album we’ve ever done.”
“No band sounds like us and we don’t sound like any other band”, concludes Laura. “After all these years of experimenting with different styles and sounds, we’ve really developed our own thing and I can faithfully say that we sound like us. With this album, we’ve successfully made a record that incorporates all the elements we’ve always played with into a record that works on its own.”
With Exhausting Fire Kylesa have left behind metallic intensity and shifted into sludge-lite mode, albeit with added psychedelic overtones. Previous albums such as Spiral Shadow saw an evolution to a more accessible sound as compared to their embryonic work. It also heralded a new direction for the band. Spiral Shadow was perhaps the perfect blend between a primal hard-hitting sound and spaced-out vibes. Exhausting Fire, while still a good album, has veered even further away from their early days. If you are a full on sludge metal aficionado you may well think this is a step too far. While this continuing musical progression didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the album don’t expect wall to wall heavy rhythms or aggressive doom metal.
Benchmarked against their other work, this effort has more filler and less killer tracks. The album starts with ‘Crusher’; quite a name for a track. The expectation was that this was going to be a metallic drone strike on my eardrums. It wasn’t. ‘Moving Day’ has a 90s grunge feel to it and desert rock inspired ‘Shaping the Southern Sky’ relies heavily on effects. The majority of the vocals on Exhausting Fire don’t descend into the harsh or abrasive. Take ‘Blood Moon’ for example, nice clean singing mingling well with the riffs. Cope is more shouty and he manages to take command of tracks such as ‘Night Drive’. The album closes with ‘Out of My Mind’. A hard rocking song with some excellent percussion and a spaced out vibe.
So in summary I couldn’t help feeling slightly underwhelmed. I wonder if this would have been better if the five strongest tracks had been released as an EP? Maybe? It doesn’t pack much of a punch and it was more like Exhausted Fire as opposed to Exhausting Fire. Lets hope they can regroup and fan the spark with their next album without burning themselves out entirely.
