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Arguably, no one has shepherded the reconciling of metal’s dingy dive-bar core and its avant-garde fringe like Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, leader of local black-metal outliers Liturgy. Since founding the group in 2005, the Columbia University grad, notorious for his band’s self-described transcendental black metal and a divisive manifesto he penned on the subject, has sent purists into a tizzy over his hyperacademic approach that daringly fuses brutal post-hardcore and a shoegaze-inspired wall of noise into the oftentimes self-serious subgenre.
Now he’s playing provocateur once again, not with raging guitars and blast-beat pummel, but with herky-jerky synthesizer-driven action and hypnotic rhythms. Under the guise of mythical character Kel Valhaal, Hunt-Hendrix introduces his classification-defying solo electronic project with key mashing, knob twiddling and occultish rap-chanting on its debut, New Introductory Lectures on the System of Transcendental Qabala. The record picks up where Liturgy’s ecstatically complex 2015 epic, The Ark Work, left off, influenced by Three 6 Mafia’s Southern rap, King Crimson’s prog rock and dizzying techno beats. On bass-heavy standouts “Tense Stage” and “Ontological Love,” black metal meets rap and futuristic, glitchy synth. It’s a thumping and throbbing sonic feast that will undoubtedly please—or infuriate—Liturgy, electronic- and noise-music enthusiasts alike.
Kel Valhaal plays Trans-Pecos with Psalm Zero, Gnaw and Kevin Hufnagel Sat 16 at 8pm. $10.