Slathered in eons of dementing enrichment before salt and fire would erode all back to pure, the resurrection of Queens, New York-based avant-garde/progressive metal quartet KRALLICE is less a retraction of their post-pandemic years and moreso a realignment with their original roles. While a fifteenth full-length album might appear daunting for those not following along since the late 2010’s ‘Scour Order‘ presents a familiar voice within a veritable kudzu of technical abstraction and atmospheric malaise. Though the knotted wormhole conjured is appreciably challenging brains already geared into the band’s realm should find this guitar-centric return an immersive, vexing experience.

Krallice formed as a duo back in 2007 by way of folks known for their work in Behold the Arctopus and Orthrelm with the intent of creating black metal. As their efforts quickly spiraled outward they’d ramped into a trio for a privately concieved instrumental demo (‘Krallice‘, 2007) and then a lasting quartet per their debut LP (‘Krallice‘, 2008) to follow. The style of that record seemingly took inspiration from the insurgence of maudlin atmospheric/post-black metal at the time (a la Wolves in the Throne Room) as much as it took on more challenging anomalies such as Weakling, naturally imbued with their own progressive rock minded approach via high technical aptitude and elaborate ~longform pieces. The major infamy of the band would escalate within the span of their first four LPs with ‘Years Past Matter‘ (2012) capping off the linear progression of their work. From that point they would reconvene with new ideas throughout the rest of the 2010’s, leaning into technical and challenging musicianship in their pre-pandemic musing.

Between 2020 and 2024 Krallice would release seven full-length albums which aren’t easily summed. With the bizarre ‘Demonic Wealth‘ (2021) they’d begin employing revolving chairs for the musician’s roles, exploring what different dynamics might be introduced ’til ventures into analog synth and progressive rock inspired authorship would transform the voice of the group. Literally, too, as three of the four folks involved would contribute vocals for most of their releases since. Revisiting this period of the band’s growth I’d found ‘Crystalline Exhaustion‘ (2023) was probably the album that’d stuck with me best while ‘Inorganic Rites‘ (2024) served as the fully warped, total reinvention of their efforts. With ‘Scour Order‘ I suppose the suggestion brought forth is that the quartet’ve landed into tour ready realignment without jettisoning the estranged fusion honed within a series of post-2020 ego death(s).

Album number fifteen serves a milling, insectoid level of polyphony up front as Krallice introduce a landscape generally void of synthesizer heading and rich in guitar-forth conversation between their right and left cranial lobes. The first three songs in particular foam at the mouth with their own stringy, ear bending stretches of doublespeak eventually reaching a jogging and unsettling plateau via “Kill the Guardian“. From there the pace slows, the eyes cross harder and the pitter-patter of the drum kit is allowed slightly more room to breathe; Thrilling as it is to attempt to parse statement from the crossfire at hand I’d found myself somewhat disappointed with the relative burial of the rhythm section on ‘Scour Order‘, not that it is inaudible in any sense but that the twang of the bass and the drum’s kicks allowed an inch too much room for the main guitar threads to strobe. This is of course for the sake of overall legibility but a piece like “Unceasing Path” appears mildly defanged when the notes aren’t a-flying.

Landing at a whopping ~63 minutes and eight songs ‘Scour Order‘ finds a natural home on the double LP format, seemingly bisecting itself between its two platters. As “Living Useless Ritual” kicks off Side C Krallice offer a steady re-entry into the density of their patternation and ramp their scalar, at-times dissonant wrath from that point. Highlighted by the slow waning sci-fi synth of “Indecipherable Divinities” and the odd-timed, sometimes shrieking forays of “Her Green Arms” this second disc offers greater run-on dementia while recalling the tendencies the band’d forged in the 2010’s. If you come across folks suggesting this work sounds like “old Krallice” I figure this is a mix of listener complacency and the material generally centering around guitar driven performances and atmosphere. The thirteen minute title track/closer certainly helps to make this case.

Though it manages a long, winding path through its skittering thousand armed needling riffcraft and foam-heavy rattling ‘Scour Order‘ ultimately reads as a retraction of the studio-bound exploration of the band’s post-pandemic exploration. In this sense those seeking a follow-up to the bizarro world that’d peaked via ‘Inorganic Rites‘ will instead feel the psyche of the band torn back roughly ten years in time into “practical” space and long-developed positions. I’d gone in expecting something different, or, at least more synthesizer bound yet the end result was nonetheless decidedly Krallice in nature, a fine representation of their auld signature and the musicianship developed in concert since. The spooling-loose mania of the first disc should be reason enough to check this one out yet the taxing delve of the whole thing should prove memorable for the curious and the ‘ready indoctrinated. A high recommendation.

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