Nov 1, 2022
The Thing About Khemmis’s ‘Doomed Heavy Metal’
Is your doom upon you?
The Thing About is a series of short, simple heavy metal reviews. Scroll down to the headings that interest you most or read the whole thing. The previous installment was about the album And Then There Were None by Livløs.
“Oh, Death,” sings Khemmis vocalist Phil Pendergast on the band’s 2020 EP Doomed Heavy Metal. It’s the topic none of us can avoid, no matter how we try to live. In the end, she comes for us like the old man in Swiss painter Carlos Schwabe’s Death and the Gravedigger (above), to steal our souls and leave us cold and underground. In the meantime, there’s metal. About death. And Khemmis delivers.
The Band
Khemmis is a melodic doom metal band from Denver, Colorado. Its debut full-length studio album Absolution (2015) was one of those surprise successes that left everyone wanting more. Hunted (2016) was that more, but that was where I began to lose interest. Slow and pretty can be dull and soporific. When I heard that the band’s third album, Desolation (2018), shifted toward a more trad and retro vibe, I gave up on them. If the guys of Khemmis hadn’t been able to keep delivering what I wanted before, why bother when they’re offering what I tend to enjoy less?
The Album
The answer is because I might make a surprise discovery of something I like. At six tracks just over 38 minutes — three live recordings, two covers and one original track— Doomed Heavy Metal is plump for an EP, which means there’s more to hold on to, and in love and metal that’s rarely a bad thing. The covers are of Ronnie James Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” off Holy Diver (1983) and Appalachian musician and Baptist preacher Lloyd Chandler’s “A Conversation with Death” (1974). These, together with the live recordings, give new edges to a band whose style and production has sometimes been too smooth for my tastes.
The Packaging
The cover art is by Cameron Hinojosa. Previously, the band’s covers had featured a wizard, but this one shows a young woman holding a sheaf of grain and a sickle in russet tones on the left, Death with a scythe in black and gray on the right. The woman looks fretful yet determined, while Death looks over her shoulder, determined to take what all must give in the end, soon enough if not sooner. More wispy and coalescent, less animation-ish and colorful than the band’s previous album art, it nonetheless fits well into the band’s visual discography, notable for its illustrated style.
The Thing About
The thing about Doomed Heavy Metal is the cover of “Rainbows in the Dark.” I’ve never been a Ronnie James Dio fan, outside of the Black Sabbath side project Heaven & Hell and his appearance on Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime II (2006), but Khemmis’s take on this classic rocks. With more of a pulse than I expect from Khemmis, it stands out and marks the moment in each listen when I realize I’m enjoying the EP — and it’s the first track. When the band closes Side A with its precise brand of honeyed doom in “Empty Throne,” the track is better for sounding different than what came before. Sunn O))) may not need contrast, but Khemmis does.
The Verdict
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” If Lloyd Chandler ever preached upon 1 Corinthians 15:55, he probably focused on death as the result of sin, only overcome through the salvation of Christ. I don’t know if Khemmis’s members subscribe to that particular myth, but through this EP with its cover of Chandler’s tune, the band has offered something to meditate on until the doomful moment comes, and it won me back as a listener.
Rating: 3/5
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