Taken its name created by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., from the 1999 mythos novel, Nightmare’s Disciple as the sister of Cthulhu, Kassogtha are a progressive death metal band hailing from Switzerland in Geneva who launched back five years ago. They have released their 2018 debut entitled A New World to Come, and they’re coming back in full swing with their latest follow-up, rEvolve.
Released on the Klang Machine label, Kassogtha’s second album takes you to orbit with exhilarating levels that are in full speed. The band considers; Dylan Watson on drums, Martin Burger on guitar, Mortimer Baud on guitar and vocals, Valerian Burki on bass, and the snarling and angelic voice of Stéphanie Huguenin.
It takes on the blistering, crunching, and head-banging, ticking time-bomb effects that the quintet get into. And for Baud and Burger to lead in the attacks from lead sections and following riffs, Huguenin transforms herself into a Jekyll and Hyde vocalist with Baud lending her, a helping hand by reaching the finish line and proving themselves they’re more than just the Beauty and the Beast form in the prog and symphonic metal genres.
When you hear a track like ‘Before I Vanish’, it sets up the hours and times before your body leaves the real world and going into the afterlife. It becomes a dangerous climatic approach whilst hearing the over-driving arrangements with epic formats that just spells Amberian Dawn’s River of Tuoni all over this bad boy.
You feel Stéphanie’s remorse, pain, suffering, and nearly crying out to the gods as she pleads for mercy whilst channeling iamthemorning’s Marjana Semkina in the final section of the song. As a listener, you can tell that there’s no turning back. One moment she can transform into a vicious, snarling beast, howling at the moon, but inside she’s trapped inside this monster that she can’t get out of.
Then she sails across the Red Sea’s in middle-eastern tones with Watson’s tidal-waving effects on ‘Drown’ as she’s comes back with more vengeance, and having revenge pumped up in her veins. You think that she’s backing down, guess again. She’s trained herself, and she’s ready to attack by kicking a huge amount of ass like there’s no tomorrow.
But it’s time get down and get bloody on ‘Complacency’. Here, the band make Stéphanie transform into this slithering snake who hypnotises its prey to think it’s a goddess but becomes part of the silver platter that awaits them! Kassogtha knows how to make the sounds very alternative, but add more bits of fire into the song as the terror begins.
It becomes a bloody gore fest as the creature returns back to its cave for the next victims to be her prey once again as she sings menacingly with the band following her back into its cave with pounding bits and pieces, one by one, followed by a machine gun attack that Watson does on the bass drums. He adds that section by raising hell in the last segment of the piece.
On ‘Awake’, you can just close your eyes and imagine yourself being inside Stéphanie’s head, trying to be free from the Hyde personality that is taken control of her body. It becomes a duel between the two as she sings the angelic voice once more in the midsections, the monster fights back and pins her to the wall, knowing that she made the deal and there’s no turning back now.
The duelling guitarists get down to business for the battle that is happening. And we as listeners trying to understand if she’ll ever be free from all of the chaos that’s going on. It’s not just Steven Wilson’s influences that’s in the song, but combining the essence of Within Temptation, and Mastodon thrown into the mix, and the way that Burger and Baud have done, is to give Stéphanie that big, massive push by coming out of the monster’s cave and be free from all of the nightmares that she to put through.
Kassogtha have really trained themselves to bring us that full ammunition that is brought onto their new album. Not only they worked hard, rehearsed, and brought their songs to life, but the way to worked together as a team by bringing their Frankenstein to life in all of its glory on rEvolve. So be prepared to embark on this dangerous ride that is waiting for you. Because you get on Kassogtha’s roller-coaster ride, there’s no turning back now.
