Review: Ketch “Anthems of Dread”

Ketch “Anthems of Dread”
Aesthetic Death

Arvada is quite big city where live a little less than 120.000 people. Its beginning was connected with discovering gold in 1850 and one of the greatest gold rushes in history of USA (Pike’s Peak Gold Rush known later as Colorado Gold Rush) that began in July 1858. But the city grew rapidly during the latter half of of the 20th century as a suburb of nearby Denver. So it became a real city in 1951 in fact.

Anyway, one of Metal bands which exist in the city is KETCH. The band exists since 2014, but for the most of members it’s not the first band. Especially David (Csicsely) – drums and Zach (Salmans) – vocals, who are experienced musicians. Their music cooperation began in 1998 when Black Metal band ACHERONIAN DIRGE was born. They were there twelve years until death and funeral of this act. But KETCH’s music has nothing to do with this sub-genre of our beloved music. That’s easier to find connection with Death which guys also, let’s call it, participated in – David in NAXHYMN and Zach in CENTIMANI’s gigs. But it’s still rather far connection. So what they play?!? Well, they call their music Doom/Sludge Metal. And that’s Doom indeed!

So the tempo is definitely slow here. But music isn’t funeral and crushing like a roadroller. It crush, but in the way which stereotypical is expected from Doom Metal band – two funeral and trot out riffs on as high tuning of guitar and even more funeral vocal. Of course Jeremy doesn’t change riffs as often as he probably used to do it in his previous band (Death/Grind ONE PER COFFIN), but it’s still very well hearable. They’re also often stretched over time (as it should be in music like that), but also create some specific melody. It happens that we have some delicate technical displays. David drums also variously. There are no changes of tempo and stuff like that. But there happen quite a lot here. Dave’s bass purr glumly and from time to time it’s very easy to notice this. So to cut long story short, guys offer us really developed playing in which we can hear some thoughtful idea. There’re influences of both some gods of the sub-genre and other kinds of Metal. I think that this last one are connected with the fact of earlier career of three of five members.

As I mentioned Zach is experienced vocalist who don’t border himself in one kind of singing. And even if here his growling is just like it should be in Doom Metl I can see some touches – especially off Death Metal. It’s not so easy to notice them. Mostly he uses this characteristic funeral, deep growling. But he don’t do it in the same way all the time and sometimes turn it into a little other kind of vocalize.

All of this create very nice whole in my opinion. There’re some things to improve surely (by the way, if musician will think that it’s nothing to improve on its abilities and so on then this person is just a goner), but in general music is interesting enough. That’s especially clear when we’ll take a look on the fact that “Anthems of Dread” is their debut album – earlier they released only a demo entitled just “Ketch”. So if you like Doom Metal you should grab this stuff!