(Andy Synn traverses the dreamlands in search of the meaning and measure of Kadath)
My history with the musical cult known as The Great Old Ones is a long and storied one indeed.
Way back in 2014 I selected their stunning second album (and still their finest hour, in my opinion) Tekeli-li as one of the best albums of the year, and not long after that I was enraptured by the band’s headlining performance at The Black Heart in London (a show which, despite them moving on to bigger stages, remains their most iconic performance in my mind).
In the years since then I have written about the band multiple times, offering my thoughts on both their live shows and their subsequent recorded output – 2017’s bigger and more bombastic EOD: A Tale of Dark Legacy and 2019’s more furious and ferocious Cosmicism – and remained a faithful acolyte through it all.
And yet there’s always been a part of me wondering, and worrying, if they’d ever be able to recapture that same sense of magic – that immersive, otherworldly atmosphere – which permeated their early work(s).
But… perhaps the stars have finally aligned once more?
Well, the truth is that while the grand conjunction of elements and instruments here is not quite as perfect as on their 2014 magnum opus – and I’ll discuss the reasons why a little later – multiple listens (and, let me be clear, multiple listens are certainly necessary to fully unpack and appreciate Kadath, which doesn’t reveal all its secrets immediately) have confirmed that it is certainly the band’s best work in around a decade.
And one of the reasons for this, the reason it skirts close to the same brilliant heights as their previous apex, is due to the fact that – much as Tekeli-li was closely tied, conceptually and creatively, to the story of “At The Mountains of Madness” – this record’s structure and flow is tightly bound to the tale of “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”, making it feel more like a cohesive musical narrative, separated into chapters, than the more disparate collections of songs which formed their last two releases.
But whereas adapting “At The Mountains of Madness” called for an icy, inhuman sound – heavy in both eerie atmosphere and bone-chilling dread – the more hypnagogic nature of “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (one of Lovecraft’s more overtly fantastical tales) requires a different approach in order to capture its more phantasmagorical psychopomposity.
This is immediately apparent during outstanding opener “Me, The Dreamer”, whose immensely hooky riffs and rhythms remind me quite a bit of Abigail Williams at their best (make sure to keep a careful ear out for the nimble, nuanced bass-work if you’ve a mind to) while the prominent use of spectral, psychotropic melodies (especially later on in the track) gives the song a noticeably Nachtmystium-esque feel (albeit with a more appropriately dream-like, rather than a drug-induced, vibe).
That’s not to say that The Great Old Ones suddenly sound like an entirely different band – far from it, as the weighty layers of guitars, all carefully woven together into a rich, reverberant tapestry of sound, still possess that same distinct aura and atmosphere which is the group’s calling card – it’s more that the overarching concept of the album has enforced a particular feel to the music which, rather than limiting their creativity, has enabled them to explore a new side of themselves.
I’ll grant you that the inherent constraints of the “concept album” format do cause a few issues in the way they dictate the overall flow and final positioning of the songs – placing the two instrumentals (“The Gathering” and “Leng”) back to back makes the former somewhat superfluous, while the sheer scale and scope of the latter (whose classically-influenced structure makes it that rare song which really does tell a story entirely without words) ends up slightly overshadowing the following final track – but the benefits still far outweigh the costs.
In particular, the first four songs – the thrilling forward-momentum of “Me, The Dreamer”, the wending, winding, waking nightmare of “Those From Ulthar”, the spellbinding strains of “In The Mouth of Madness” (whose core melodic motif and sinister, Schammasch-esque grandeur make it one of the best tracks of the band’s career), and the heart-racing intensity of “Under the Sign of Koth” – flow together so perfectly, each one unique yet also clearly part of the greater whole, that it’s almost impossible not to get swept up in the band’s mesmerising sonic storytelling as they follow every twist and turn of Randolph Carter’s journey through the dream-lands.
And then there’s the way the whole thing ends… as while the aptly-named “Astral Void (End of the Dream)” does suffer a little, in terms of pacing and placing, from being forced to dwell in the humongous shadow cast by its phenomenal predecessor (whose majestic finale would, in different circumstances, perhaps have been the perfect way to end the entire record) it ultimately rallies itself, and seizes upon a sense of frantic desperation which – much like Carter himself – enables the album to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
So while Tekeli-li may still be the band’s “masterpiece” – in the original, and truest, sense of the word – it’s with Kadath that The Great Old Ones have finally proven that their ascension to the ranks of the masters was no mere fluke… all it required was the right inspiration.
This is enthralling.