There’s doom, there’s drone, there’s sludge—and then there’s Khanate. Formed in 2000, the inimitable supergroup—guitarist Steven O’Malley (Sunn O))), Burning Witch), drummer Tim Wyskida (Blind Idiot God, Insect Ark), bassist James Plotkin (OLD), and vocalist Alan Dubin (OLD, Gnaw)—slithered with the dreadful weight of a massive diseased torso, building a pitch-dark sound from distortion, feedback, and mind-numbingly slow tempos. The four albums they released in the following decade are all atavistic slabs of self-loathing, self-flagellating abjection.
Khanate have always felt like a band crawling through an abyss out of time, so while it was a surprise when they dropped an unannounced fifth album 14 years after 2009’s Clean Hands Go Foul, it made sense that they’d picked up in the exact wasteland where they left off. On 2023’s To Be Cruel (Sacred Bones), O’Malley tortures his guitar more than he plays it; Wyskida hits his drums with enormous blows so widely spaced that he might be in sync with the slowly shifting tectonic plates below; and Plotkin holds on for dear life as his bass threatens to swallow the record whole. All the while, Dubin shrieks koans of surreal despair. “Let’s die!” he urges on “Like a Poisoned Dog.” “Let’s all . . . the horror of a smile.”
Each of the record’s three tracks hovers around the 20-minute mark, dragging on till every bit of flesh has been scraped from O’Malley’s fingertips and your scalded eardrums. This is music to endure, not to enjoy—or rather, the enjoyment is in the endurance. Khanate have defined—and perhaps discovered—one of the purest and most defiled poles at the extreme end of the world of modern music. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to have them shatter your puerile essence in person.
Khanate Jon Mueller opens. Fri 5/30, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $39.34, $52.21 balcony, $328.17 six-seat opera box, 17+
