KHLYST - "Chaos is my Name"

Ah, the comforting commotion of a tortured pig-demon in the musical throes of death. KHLYST’s excessively and expansively strange Chaos in my Name is a hybrid of Sunn 0)))’s minimalist metal and swine house slaughter. Moans and whispers swirl amidst droning notes; mechanical harbingers of death whirl, walls of white noise, until metallic pings, clangs and demonic shrieks shatter the hypnotic lulls.

Chaos in my Name is an altogether unnerving experience, a 36-minute, 8-chapter murder epic narrated by a pig. Indeed, the vocalist’s screams and cackles are authentically piggy; fittingly, though, distinctively brutalized piggy, the wails of a pig whose defenseless eyes are being jabbed mercilessly with kitchen utensils while its bleeding, glass-slivered backside is barbecuing behind the broken and jagged furnace window into which it’s been forced. Fits of panicked percussion and furious distortion explode then vanish, stretching the tension, jolting spectacles in this perverse symphony of violence.

Initially abrasive – well, always abrasive – Chaos is my Name is a grower, multiple listens overcoming those averse reactions, the album becoming a welcome if questionable sidekick, like the devil on your shoulder.

This will disturb your parents: KHLYST – “IV”

Make Chaos your company at the Hydra Head Records store.