originally written by Jim Brandon
Kylesa’s last album, To Walk A Middle Course, is sitting around here somewhere in my collection, and it still doesn’t really stimulate me very much despite having a few cool moments, which showed a respectable amount of promise. So as I dove into my reservation grid and pulled up Time Will Fuse Its Worth as my next endeavor, I prepared to struggle through another review of a rather average album. Once again, this proves to be a year of totally unexpected surprises, and Kylesa’s latest is yet another one of them.
As much as I greatly admire Yakuza, and love Samsara, I think my Chicago neighbors have more than met their visceral yet progressive match with their labelmates Kylesa on this one. Prosthetic seems to have become a haven for bands such these, who try so many different influences in conjunction with each other to form atypical types of unnamable subspecies. In the case of Time…, Kylesa have sharpened their grooves, propelled themselves into a very song-oriented direction while still maintaining their ardently experimental edge, and assembled some really nasty riffs on this album. Huge, pummeling riffs with some of the most aggressive grooves I’ve heard this side of Losa. For some reason, I also feel as though I’m listening to the heaviest and most extreme version of Jane’s Addiction imaginable at times–Nothing’s Shocking-era, specifically. It’s really quite interesting.
There’s a same sort of THC-washed feel to this stunning piece of work that is also so prevalent through much of the doom and stoner scenes. The mixing of three corrosive vocalists in a punishing female/male trade off of balancing harsh melodies, and some seriously acerbic screaming is an ever-present focal point. Laura Pleasants is the most caustic of the three, and when aligned with the bounding, plunging lurch of grooves Kyuss never had the chance to write, voice and rhythms combine to add a primordial sort of sophistication to the events that are at once elegant, and entirely ruinous.
While I mentioned how Time…is very song-oriented, I’m not talking standard verse/chorus bullshit here. The versatility of the riff attack comes into play most prevalently when the band locks into a sturdy yet fluctuating rhythm, which plays more like a moving photo of a sonic landscape, where some parts seem similar yet with small differences in hue. It’s repetitive enough and catchy enough to stick in your head, and then continues to branch out into more atmospheric directions with an unyieldingly malicious tone brushing everything, bringing more extreme influences into play without coming across as an overindulgent mish-mash of styles thrown together for the sake of sounding ‘different’. This is most definitely a well thought–out effort, and one that does indeed break boundaries in a purposeful and, when necessary, brutally heavy way.
Occasionally they bring an almost Misfits sort of mid-paced punk swagger to the forefront, other times there is a grating urgency not far removed from slower death metal employed on certain tracks, and the instrumental interludes are tastefully and always resolutely performed. All of it flows together into one cohesive, yet entirely separated and heartlessly calculated disc. Proper opener “What Becomes An End”, the sinister “Identity Defined”, and “Where The Horizon Unfolds” are stellar highlights to this excellent album, and I owe Kylesa a great apology for heading into this with such indifference. Time Will Fuse Its Worth is a release to be reckoned with, and I highly recommend it to anyone with a sweet tooth for punishing grooves. Outstanding.
