KROHM ARE SUICIDAL IN SEATTLE

Depressive black metal is a definite hit-or-miss of a subgenre. When it’s good, it’s bone-chillingly great. When it’s bad (and a LOT of it is bad), it’s just embarrassing. Remember when Xasthur used to be cool, before Malefic started collaborating with Pitchfork-approved songstresses and ultimately threw in the towel? Yeah, me neither (what happened after Defective Epitaph, bro?).  Alas, Shining have jumped the shark entirely, Make A Change… Kill Yourself haven’t put out a record in four years, Bethlehem spat all over their once-shining legacy with that rerecorded abomination (Kvarforth really just needs to disappear), I haven’t heard a peep from Nortt in ages, and it seems like Leviathan’s on ice while Wrest sorts out his legal woes. What’s a suicidal black metal fanatic to do? After all, someone’s got to chase away all this sunshine, and as depressing as the new Morbid Angel album is, those world-destroying techno beats just ain’t gonna cut it.

At least we’ll always have Krohm.

Alongside Nyktalgia, Hypothermia, Coldworld, Drowning the Light, and Benighted in Sodom, this one-man outfit is providing the world with heaping doses of pure, unadulterated misery, one prolonged, tremolo-laden riff at a time.  The man behind the band, Numias, has done time in death/doom OGs Evoken as well as in a host of underground heavyweights – Funebrarum, Abazagorath, Drawn & Quartered. Krohm is currently based in Seattle, and the music he makes perfectly captures the foggy, cold, perpetually damp and imposingly wooded atmosphere of his surroundings.  Though Numias has only managed to release two full-lengths in the many years since the project began in 1995, those were two damn good full-lengths, and came bookended by a string of demos and a recent split with Italian occultists Tenebrae in Perpetuum. 2004’s A World Through Dead Eyes is sheer suicidal perfection – a cold, hypnotic, Burzumic affair, replete with strangled cries and slashed wrists.

Fuck sunshine. Embrace the dark.

-KK

Kim Kelly (or Grim Kim, if we’re being formal) scribbles for a number of sweet metal publications (Terrorizer, Brooklyn Vegan, Invisible Oranges, Hails & Horns, and tons more), promotes wicked records with Catharsis PR, and road dogs for your favorite bands. Keep up with her exploits & numerous band recommendations on Twitter, or peep her blog Ravishing Grimness.