4 out of 5

Label: Season of Mist

Produced by: Matt Bayles

So many awesome metal/punk references come to mind during ‘Entrench’ – Unsane, Daughters, Fiction, Botch, Harkonen – but KEN mode never comes across as a mish-mash or pretender to the throne.  The band absolutely makes their own unique thrash, bubbled up and filtered through the awesome influences and then enhanced with the passionate vibe of a band, and not just hardcore fans jamming together.  …Which is surprising since the group has apparently had a rotating bassist while brother vocalist / guitarist and drummer remain, but perhaps the zeal the duo offers is so intense (as it is when listening to the disc) that that third bandmember can’t help but step up to the plate.  The songs on ‘Entrench’ are varied enough between heart-stopping riff attacks (opener ‘Counter Culture Complex’) or more moody, slower numbers (‘Daeodon’) to avoid the sound-alike slump a lot of metal discs fall into, and singer Jesse has an impressive mastery of his vocals to switch things up mid-song from screamo shouts to ranges of hardcore grumbles.  Now, surprisingly – awesomely – the thing here to write home about are the lyrics.  The life sucks, people are stupid concepts aren’t new, of course, but the intelligence and thought behind the lines and effectively balanced use of ten-dollar words, outside references, or swear words gives the tirades a contemplative shade of grey that’s rare… in all genres.  It’s my favorite form of pissed off – the guy who’s angry, but willing to sit and logic out why he’s angry.

Ah, but four stars.  And it’s for a shitty reason, because it’s indirect: sequencing.  In the middle of the disc we get the 7+ minute ‘Romeo Must Never Know;’ a slow-build track.  It’s a good song, but it’s surrounded by tracks that hit you generally at near-blazing to blazing speeds, so it just kills the momentum.  Because you swear it’s a final track.  And it would’ve been a great final track!  …The closer ‘Monomyth’ is fine, but it’s open-ended, more ambience than a song.  So, frankly, I would’ve ditched that and shuffled ‘Romeo’ to the end.  We also have the Bayles factor to contend with on ‘Entrench,’ which threatens to undersell the band’s fever pitch.  Bayles works better when there’s less to play around with, so the mainly guitar-bass-drums setup sounds pretty dense at times, but Matt still drops the high-end stuff way low in the mix and it makes you wonder if moments of some tracks – like the post-opening breakdown on ‘No, I’m In Control’ – could’ve sounded harsher and heavier with a different producer.  Though to be fair, this is my only KEN mode album, so they might always sound like this.

A billion bands put out a billion albums every day and there’s always one great one that you’re never going to hear.  So I wander to various choices by cherry-picking reviews, or seeing what new project a producer has worked on…  I might dis on Bayles, but he is the hardcore guy, and I’m damned glad I checked out ‘Entrench’ due to his association.