Send "Krallice " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 It must have been during the fifth or sixth listen when I finally realized that the appropriate reaction for Diotima-- the third album in four years from New York black metal supergroup Krallice-- was laughter. That's a surprising response to a record that lyrically keys on the transience of existence, the failures of our best efforts, and the high costs of man's lowly sexual instincts. But my chuckle was the delirious sort, based on my own addled exhaustion. That's how Diotima works: Unapologetically extreme and intense, it's the most relentless album from a hyper-dexterous band that's never been one to take it easy. Though it's not the longest Krallice album (that's Dimensional Bleedthrough, slightly), Diotima forgoes the long-short-long tack of previous Krallice efforts, creating marathons out of marathons that demand complete attention and destroy attention spans.During "Intraum", from 2008's Dimensional Bleedthrough, Krallice took a break from their four-piece hustle. Guitarists Mick Barr and Colin Marston ricocheted through quick, countering riffs until the sound sublimated into a restless seven-minute drone. It's an off-ramp ahead of the album's appropriately titled 19-minute closer, "Monolith of Possession", a long-form roar whose pummeling is precise and seemingly perpetual. Halfway through, you realize just how much that pause meant. Nearly 10 minutes into "Telluric Rings", Diotima's penultimate track, you can hear Krallice reaching for the same rest-stop trick. It stands to be a well-deserved rest, too, as "Telluric Rings" is the fourth and final consecutive track on Diotima to race past the 12-minute mark. What's more, it's written as a lyrical sequel to the preceding "Litany of Regrets", meaning that, when Lev Weinstein's drums finally snap out here, it ends a mostly seamless 22-minute cavalcade. But don't rest easy: Marston and Barr noodle and slink for about 80 seconds, summoning a dark radiance with sheaths of distortion. Weinstein blasts back in, and the track's last 90 seconds offer a raze as energetic and complete as any in the band's discography. So brutal and mean, the track's closing blur is a perfectly executed nexus between grindcore and black metal, as cathartic as it is crushing....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Back in 2007 guitarist Mick Barr had an idea that was so simple in theory that when people heard the end result many were wondering why he hadn’t tried it sooner. Best known as the guitarist for Orthrelm and the creative force behind Ocrilim, Barr has always excelled at, sometimes even annoying listeners with a style that utilizes hyper fast tremelo picking and repetition to the point where it starts to resemble a dentist’s drill rather than a guitar. With Krallice, his project with Dysrhythmia/Behold…the Arctopus guitarist Colin Marston, Barr simply placed that decidedly avant-garde technique within a straightforward black metal template. On paper there‘s not much to it, but sometimes the simplest concepts can yield extraordinary results, and that was certainly the case with 2008’s debut Krallice, which felt half-traditional, half-revolutionary: the template was familiar, but we had never heard anything quite like it before. 2009’s daring, extremely challenging Dimensional Bleedthrough saw Krallice evolving and expanding its sound even further. The addition of bassist Nick McMaster was a crucial one, as he went on to make significant contributions to numerous aspects of the band’s art, his songwriting and massive roar of a voice bringing in an undeniable death metal influence, with his lyrics and album artwork enriching the overall experience even further. McMaster’s involvement freed up Marston from worrying about playing both guitar and bass, allowing him to develop his own ideas on guitar, and the way he and Barr interwove their riffs on the record was fascinating to hear. Most importantly, with four committed members, including drummer Lev Weinstein, Krallice now felt a fully-formed band rather than merely a “project”. Now fully committed to touring as well as writing and recording, it felt like there was even more untapped potential in this band than ever before....full text |
| Metalinjection |
| I've always thought of Krallice's music as a duel, envisioning the guitars feinting, parrying and maneuvering in abstract aural dimensions at ludicrous speed. About a minute into the first brief and unnamed track on Diotima, I realized this mental image would have to change. Diotima sounds like it was composed for a chamber orchestra. Although performed and recorded with all the accoutrements of metal in this modern age, Diotima unfurls with a symphonic complexity, displaying a concordance and consonance that were largely absent from the band's first two albums. Mick Barr and Colin Marston do not merely match wits and endurance but work together to create songs that ebb and flow in memorable tides of sound. Riffs still rain down in teeming sheets of black metal ardor, but we are able to discern greater shape and movement in the writhing storm. Nick McMaster's vocals dominate Diotima, delivered with a satisfying deathly roar. This expression of rage offers a new, aggressive dimension to the music and creates a richer contrast to Mick Barr's black metal excoriations. We don't hear Mick Barr's voice until well into “The Clearing,” where his first words impart a fathomless depth of agony and regret. His vocals are used sparingly throughout the album, adding raw slices of splenetic rancor. Following along with the printed lyrics augments the listening experience; the words inject poetic and philosophical arcana into the album's fabric....full text |
Krallice lyrics
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