4 out of 5

Label: Love Lion

Produced by: Ross Harris (recorded by)

Six glorious tracks of heavy, heavy sludge.

KIM’s cover art sets the stage well: depicting a gravely candle-lit “tribute” to Kims of wildly different stripes – e.g. Kim Possible; Kim Kardashain; Kim Jong Un (the latter two with some added graffiti) – this trio + Tim Dixon on bass vaguely nod to different loud rock disciplines while “painting” the sound with an over-arching sense of doom. So shoegaze, classic rock, metal, and post-hardcore get washed in reverbed reverb, vocalist Jessica Calvanico chanting and then screaming in a controlled nerviness that suggest she’s always one step away from freaking out, producer Ross Harris letting the levels bleed into one another but maintaining edges on each instrument… It’s measured chaos; horror movie tension held until closing track Nightmare truly lets it all go on something that approaches doom / black metal territory.

And yet the (black) humor of the cover image is somewhat present in a dose of self-awareness, as the music plays with almost pop elements (Wild One), albeit fully scuzzed up behind waves of noise.

The pacing occasionally leads to tracks wandering for a few moments until they find their hook again – this happens towards the end of opener Nero, for example – and on a generally LOUD record, that can diminish the impact somewhat, as the noisy music tip-toes towards unstructured noise. But these instances are rare (and seem purposeful, just not employed most effectively), and by the time of Wild One’s twisted bop, Kim has fully regained their control of their brutal sound.