Style: death metal, heavy metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2011
Home: Texas
Members: Bryan 'B-Ray' Ray ~ guitars/vocals
Gerald 'G-Man' Barnett ~ drums
The Kalling's debut
A World To Come was a low-fi death metal stomp I previously described as what might be created by the ghost of Aleister Crowley or dredged out of the Loch Ness. This is the lost alternative soundtrack to Kenneth Anger's film
Lucifer Rising, not the mushy instrumental about to be formally released by Jimmy Page ... which Anger heard & refused. The Kalling comes just a few decades too late to be of service. The creatively titled
Evil Kalling You was released within a few months of
A World To Come, attesting to the the high creativity & energy of the union of two old hand musicians ... let alone the fact the Kalling's recordings come a decade after their formation & they've had lots of rehearsal time.
Evil Kalling You doesn't diverge too much from its predecessor with thick chunky rhythms at Black Sabbath speed over a drum beat that at times seems to be the main catalyst of forward movement with lots of little touches, with vocals growled, spoken & whispered over it all. While the debut was a concept album of the apocalypse, with the highlight being the haunting eight minute "Death March" that's exactly how its sounds & a metal dirge if there ever one was,
Evil Kalling You is not so much a sequel but now a turn from the physical landscape to the psychological one with a romp through inner demons (i.e. "Internal Meltdown", "Evil Kalling You"), the devil (i.e. "Right Hand Of The Devil") & pain & misery. While the first album was full of sound effects and lots of backing vocals, this takes a much more basic approach, though there is a lot of vocal experimentation (i.e. "Internal Meltdown", "Right Hand Of The Devil") just sans the backing vocals. Though the sound effects were a nice touch & particularly lent themselves to the apocalyptical theme, their loss here gives this its own feeling. The sound of the mind is a slow sparse crawl. The mind might be a cluttered world but deep inside it's a lonely beast. The only real problem is the low-fi quality doesn't have the vocals as upfront as they could be making some of the lines difficult to hear. & there is also a bit of monotony on a few songs that seem to drag (i.e. "Blood Red", "Deadly Storm", "Open Your Eyes"), the irony being that these are the apocalyptical songs which have more in common with the themes of
A World To Come & feel like tracks from those sessions ... so remove them & what remains is a strong concept EP album of inner turmoil, even with an instrumental in "Rebirth" as a moment of strange silence.
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