Kroh
s/t

British duo Kroh has something of an odd name and a rather odd looking album cover as well, a debut album that is an odd one out perhaps. It looks interesting at face value, the house we cannot see any details about, the road, the strange colours, it looks exciting and unorthodox. I am intrigued by such things, I like the pursuit of excitement in music and this might be what this guys do. Although I have to admit that the main man of the band has a CV that features band names that sounds all but exciting, one has to wonder what can be made through this side project when seeing such things. But at least it looks different from what is commonplace within the musical world, I think it looks exciting.

Their music is probably best called stoner rock, maybe a bit of sludge elements are thrown in there as well. It is rocking pretty hard, it is pretty dirty as well. It think it is a bit unpolished, almost has the same gritty feel as a documentary movie production. None of the musical elements, the instrumentation, vocals, production, are really good as a standalone feature. As a whole it comes together in a while different light though, it becomes something that is more than just the sum of its frankly poor elements. The sound is really poor, the vocals are not good, the performances is a bit lacklustre, but the whole thing sounds intriguing as a unit. That is an interesting production I would claim.

And in this case interesting means rather good, the sound is gritty and interesting and the overall feel is one of a drama and of exciting. The sound is a bit naked, a bit dirty and this all means that a bucketload of good stuff comes out of this album. It is quite easily accessible, you can take it in immediately and then you don’t really grow bored with it. It is a likeable album, it is short and to the point and it doesn’t sound like everything else so all credit to them for that. Then I still feel that there is something amiss for it to really reach those magic higher levels that the best albums reach, it is good but it does not really grab me.

I think this is a good, if not impressive, debut by these guys. Well worth taking the time to looks at, especially if you are into the little grittier stoner rock or sludge. Still, it is not quite there, the combination of poor elements into something good is impressive but it still feels like they don’t quite fulfil their potential. I can’t point my finger as to why that is though, maybe it is just that it lacks slightly overall which makes the whole suffer somewhat. But no matter that, it is still a strong album but maybe not as strong as it could have been.

HHHHHHH