Since forming in1999, Canadians KEN mode has not been strangers to receiving feverish acclaim and devout attention for their intrusive and impacting albums and continually inspiring invention. With the release of their fifth album Entrench the trio from Winnipeg has sculpted their most intensive and compelling, not to forget impressive creative statement yet. With sonic alchemy the band has fused the most incendiary essences of hardcore, noise rock, and their imagination, to create an inflammatory and barbarously contagious incitement which leaves the passions in a delirium of manic and tempestuous glory.
Entrench is as primal as it is destructively elegant, a bestial yet deceptively sirenesque beauty which gnaws upon and seduces passions as well as thoughts with a savagery borne hunger which leaves the senses smarting whilst basking in the innovative and scorching enterprise at work. It is an aggressive temptation which exhausts and devours the listener musically and lyrically but at the same time ignites the purest of feelings and responses in gratitude. It also takes no time in making the strongest persuasion with opener ‘Counter Culture Complex’ emerging from a brief torrent of psyched strings and rapping beats. Upon exploding into a caustic embrace of irritated rhythms, sadistic teasing, and deliciously addictive spirals of sonic venom, the track consumes with a rabid intensity and unbridled passion through the vocals cursing of Jesse Matthewson, his delivery as fiery and unrelenting as his virulently contagious guitar ingenuity. As impossibly infectious as it is violently antagonistic, the track marks the ferocious intent and insidiously imaginative glories to come.
Tracks like ‘No; I’m In Control’ with the magnificent predatory bass growl of Andrew LaCour coursing through the veins of the erosive track like aural mercury, and ‘The Terror Pulse’ spark further ardour soaked flares of emotion towards the release, the latter of the pair snarling with a rabid yet premeditated toxic design driven by the hypnotic and instinct detonating rhythms of drummer Shane Matthewson. Also stalked by the rigorously carved growl of the bass and blistering sonic abrasion from the guitar, the track is noise perfection, a brawling and harshly invigorating triumphant scourge.
The diversity of band and release is another compelling and glorious aspect of the album, tracks such as the sensational ‘Romeo Must Never Know’ with its subdued vocals and reflective atmospheric inducement as potent as the unbridled aggression elsewhere on Entrench, and the riveting and enigmatic rapacious expanse of ‘Figure Your Life Out’, cogent and significant conspirators to the extensive depth of the album and the thrills it creates.
Entrench in a year of already impressive releases stands easily to the fore of the triumphs to date and with further stunning slices of devious conjuring including the irresistible ‘Why Don’t You Just Quit?’ declares KEN Mode as still the bench mark to aspire to, though now they have made that task even harder.
9/10
Pete RingMaster