Underground Sounds: Khandra – All is of No Avail

Label: Redefining Darkness Records
Band: Khandra
Origin: Belarus

It’s not a huge offering of music, but ‘All is of No Avail’ leaves you fulfilled anyways. The Belarussian duo Khandra drops this first EP, but apart from that, there’s virtually no information available about this band from Minsk. This is a bit of a shame because these 2 songs are one of the most powerful declarations I’ve heard in a while.

In a sense, this record is Khandra saying that they’re here, but not who they are and why. Well, you can’t have it all and this sort of music thrives on mystery.

We start with ‘Where Death Has Settled In Life’, which comes on with the big, echoing sound that I always appreciate so much in a band like Primordial. The bold statement of the grand gesture to announce starting the rites. That’s just before the band completely unleashes a barrage of sound. Like the heavens opening, the sound falls onto the listener. There’s a sense of vibrancy, of writhing guitars that almost feel alive and impossible to grasp. The sound is densely atmospheric at other moments and very easy to digest.

The melody line grabs you by the throat on ‘Presence is no longer relevant’, while you bask in the warm bath of sound. Again, there’s a certain grandeur to the way the sound unfolds. The mix and recording of this record are of an amazing quality, yielding a crisp and polished sound. That’s even more charming actually because the grim necrosound would wreck all the subtleties in the music. This song has a lot of these clean melody parts, which makes it almost catchy. Music to embrace in the colder days, when will there be more?

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