2 out of 5

Label: Hydra Head

Produced by: Serge Morattel, TVO

Knut was doing their thing around the same time as a lot of noteworthy mathcore / sludge-metal / hardcore acts from the late 90s – Botch, Cave In, Converge – but they never seemed to achieve quite the same level of notoriety. While the group definitely put out some highlights, the reason for that – to me – is that they otherwise weren’t all that distinctive. They sounded… like a mix of those other groups. And that’s especially the case on this EP, which manages some rocking moments but is almost frustratingly nondescript elsewhere: no flash in the vocals, in the playing, or in the singing.

Knut’s sound brings together some of Botch’s intensity with Cavity-esque sludge. Their change on this is to marry it to more conventional song structure, and that can be pretty cool in brief flashes: Dissolve, kicking things off, is solid and accessible, and The Will To Please offers some good guitar and bass interplay that’s more rock than hardcore. In the former case, though, the track doesn’t much evolve on that – it hits at one level and volume and proceeds like that the whole way through. …On through the following songs as well.

This reliability can work okay on album, especially when there are more ‘Will To Please’-type tunes to add a bit more identity; on an EP, it means there’s no real standout, and not enough runtime to make it memorable.