Ken Mode – Void
KEN Mode – Void
Artoffact Records
Release Date: 22/09/23
Running Time: 38:23
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 10/10
It is Sunday in Crow Cottage and after the previous few days of ridiculous heat, we are faced with a new and pressing problem. The humidity. Dark Juan has been parked on the sofa for several hours now, clad only in a pair of ratty camouflage shorts and not a lot else (calm yourselves ladies and gentlemen, I’ll get to you all in time), dying quietly as the heat and humidity oppress your favourite bon viveur and raconteur and press him further into said sofa. It robs you of energy and enthusiasm, until all you can manage is a blank-eyed, utterly passive stare into the middle distance. Dark Juan longs for the mists and mellow fruitfulness of autumn. The streets are quiet because everyone debauched themselves thoroughly and with carefree abandon last night, and Dark Juan did in fact have to intercede with a person who was old enough to know better because they were disporting themselves in an unseemly manner outside my grandson’s bedroom. This was entirely unacceptable and therefore words were had. Thankfully, violence was not required to be employed and the inebriated gentleman was quietly led away by his friend. Dark Juan was really quite vexed at him.
Don’t annoy Dark Juan. Last night’s gentleman was lucky Dark Juan is a role model to two teenagers. If they weren’t around my response would have been different. However, no blood was spilled and that is a good thing, yes?
Depending on what floats your boat, anyway. What happens in the real world is entirely different to what goes on in Dark Juan’s head.
The Platter Of Splatter™ has been decorated with a maple leaf or two and is spinning in an apologetic fashion, for we are playing a Canadian band upon it, this being Winnipeg, Manitoba based KEN Mode – KEN being an acronym for “Kill Everyone Now”. This comes from Henry Rollins in his Black Flag days, being the state he used to put himself into before performances with those august Punk legends.
You will no doubt remember that I reviewed KEN Mode’s last album, “Null” (https://www.ever-metal.com/2022/09/20/ken-mode-null/ ) and that Dark Juan really quite enjoyed it, being as it was a sharp, emotional slab of sheer pain. The record we are listening to this time is a companion piece to “Null” called “Void”. Where “Null” was all acid-spitting vituperative snarling and fighting will, “Void” is different. “Void” is the sound of someone who has given the fuck up and is just lying there, unresponsive to anything because they are so drained. They are in a waking coma of horror and sadness so profound they have shut down and all they can do is stare into nothing and feel their thoughts slow to almost zero. The record opens with ‘The Shrike’, and it is immediately apparent that the style of music is somewhat different. It is by no means as extreme, but this doesn’t mean it is robbed of power or meaning and KEN Mode’s penchant for screaming at blank walls hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed. ‘The Shrike’ is a rumbling Alt/ Noise Rock song that is as brutal (especially in the vocals of Jesse Matthewson) as it is heartrending. The band have dialled down the out and out aggression of the previous album and introduced an admixture of wounded hearts and damaged emotion. ‘Painless’ has an almost jazz edge to it in the middle eight and the bridge has fractured, demented guitar twins with spasmodic, jerking saxophone and drummer Shane Matthewson flails at his kit like a man possessed or off his tits on whizz.
‘These Wires’ is a much more introspective affair, as if the protagonist has run out of rage and the only thing left is lethargy and sorrow. A simple, mournful piano underpins a grumbling, fuzzy bass, until the guitar kicks in. To this Hellpriest this song is noteworthy as it appears to reference stalwart British noiseniks earthtone9, with the harshness and dissonance of the guitar work and that sharp underpinning Alt/ Jazz edge.
“Why would anything feel right again?” Is just one of the many concepts here that are also fucking insightful lyrics, who out of all of us have not felt like that at some point of our lives? Dark Juan knows he has. And Dark Juan also knows when you are all lying as well.
The music on “Void” is not the all-encompassing, earthquake-roaring wall of noise that KEN Mode employed on “Null”, but while it is still overpoweringly massive in sound, the music ebbs and flows and breathes. Gentle passages intersperse the distorted aural hellscapes and allow the music to breathe and soothe the troubled spirit before the next bout of dissonant agony hits you. Kind of like those eerie moments of calm you experience in between the pain when something catastrophic happens.
‘We’re Small Enough’ changes tack again, with keyboards that hark at the epic quality of Synthwave, giving the song an extraordinary 80s feel and sound that is only enhanced with the guitar work complementing rather than dominating the sound and giving the whole tune an almost cinematic quality, like it could be the theme tune to an 80s made for TV drama involving a superintelligent vehicle of some kind paired up with a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective person who is there strictly to teach to the microprocessor-equipped smartass how to be more human and to bash other people. This dovetails neatly with ‘I Cannot’ which is an out and out atavistic scream to the heavens to stop fucking causing pain and suffering because the protagonist of the song is at the end of his fucking rope. Which again is something every single one of the people reading this nonsense has done at some point in their lives.
It’s a really difficult album to quantify effectively, is this one. You have the likes of ‘I Cannot’, which is a flailing, furious but terrified beast of a song which is analogous to a person in floods of tears and in severe emotional distress holding a loaded and cocked firearm at the head of the person who has wronged them, but then you have the cold and arctic beauty of ‘He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer’, which confuses the senses as it is an unusual mix of Gothic Rock and Post-Hardcore – part Bauhaus and part Unearth, if you will. The icy emotionality of Goth and the insane rage of Hardcore combine to effectively convey that peculiar mix of feelings you have when something catastrophic happens – cold fury, hot tears, towering rage and the bleakest lows all happening at once and frequently at the same time.
This is what “Void” sounds like. This is why you should buy it. Dark Juan must admit that on his first listen I was not overly impressed. I mean, it was perfectly serviceable Post-Hardcore Noise Rock, but I was not paying sufficient attention. Upon subsequent spins of the record, Dark Juan was a good boy and listened properly and was blown clean out of his shoes, both with “Void” being a companion piece to “Null” as well as being an album that stands alone. KEN Mode have done it again. They have made Dark Juan bow in supplication to their musical genius.
Damned Canadians.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan pour nos adorables francophones canadiens) awards yet another 10/10 for an incredible record that is a more than worthy companion piece to “Null” and needs to be listened to in sequence with it for maximum effect.
TRACKLISTING:
01. The Shrike
02. Painless
03. These Wires
04. We’re Small Enough
05. I Cannot
06. A Reluctance of Being
07. He Was A Good Man, He Was A Taxpayer
08. Not Today, Old Friend
LINE-UP:
Jesse Matthewson – Vocals, guitar
Shane Matthewson – Drums
Skot Hamilton – Bass, backing vocals
Kathryn Kerr − Saxophone, synth, piano, percussion, backing vocals
LINKS:
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