SHORT BUT SWEET: KRALLICE COVERS ORPHAN

Orphan was a two-person sludge-punk band from Brooklyn consisting of drummer Speck Brown and bassist Brendan Majewski. Last year they released an album called Decapitated Lovers, and early this year a split with Dope Body to which they contributed four songs. In January, Majewski took his own life at the age of 37 (you can find an obituary here). In April, a group of New York bands played a show at Brooklyn’s Union Pool in honor of Majewski’s life that included covers of Orphan’s music (reviewed by Brooklyn Vegan here). One of those bands was Krallice.

In our humble opinion, Krallice’s 2011 release Diotima has been one of the brightest musical spots of this half-done year. You can read NCS contributor BadWolf’s eloquent thoughts about the album via this link. Suffice to say that Krallice is in the vanguard of U.S. bands who are re-imagining black metal, melding a high level of instrumental skill with innovative songwriting to produce some truly striking music.

Now, Krallice have followed Diotima by releasing a three-song EP — Orphan of Sickness — consisting entirely of Orphan covers, and they’ve made it available for free download. There are actually two download versions available. One consists of mp3’s and a second includes the same songs in the CD-quality AIFF-C format (though you’ll have to sacrifice 150 MB of disk space if you want that version).

The EP’s title was well-chosen, because the songs have an air of rampaging sickness — a flashfire viral contagion that cuts you down like a scythe through mature wheat. I’m totally decapitated by the instrumental vehemence of these three songs. (more after the jump, including a stream of the music . . .)

Colin Marston wields his guitar like an industrial drillbit boring through layers of sheet metal, the pitch rising and falling but ever-penetrating to the core, trailed by a plume of scattering sparks. The drums roll and boom, by turns, a rapidly moving avalanche of bounding weight in free fall. And if you want to get your ass totally kicked by a filthy bass arpeggio, check out the intro to “Boat Driver”. Actually, everything about that song is filthy. It’s loaded with demented, groaning howls of distortion, bursts of blast-beats and double-bass, and the inhuman vocals of a man being flayed alive. It’s fucking great.

If this sounds like it might be your kind of thing, have a listen. And below the song streams, we’ll provide the download links — plus a stream of one more recent Krallice cover.

“BBH”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/01-BBH.mp3|titles=Krallice – BBH]

“Fetus in Fetu”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/02-Fetus-in-Fetu.mp3|titles=Krallice – Fetus in Fetu]

“Boat Driver”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/03-Boat-Driver.mp3|titles=Krallice – Boat Driver]

To get the mp3 version of the album, use this link. And to get the much larger file of CD-quality tracks, use this one. (Thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for these links, and kudos to our man BadWolf for giving me the tip about this free EP.)

And while we’re on the subject of Krallice, the current issue of DECIBEL magazine includes, as the latest installment in their Flexi-Disc series, yet another Krallice cover. This time the song is “Traditional”, originally performed by the band Rohrschach. Check that out here:

Krallice “Traditional (originally by Rorschach)” (dB009) by Decibel Magazine

Brendan Majewski