Release year: 2024
Label: Zoharum
If you want weird, you got weird. Polish Królówczana Smuga’s sixth album is a veritable cornucopia of, well, just about everything.
The label’s promo sheet mentions as influences and key elements keywords such as folklore, alternative, rap and metal, and call Konwulsanki “freak horror folk.” In a way, it’s apt. In other ways, it isn’t at all. But one thing is for sure: Konwulsanki is a confusing album.
Essentially, I’d say you can single out three pillars for the album’s sound: industrial, metal and Eastern European folk. That doesn’t mean you can label Konwulsanki an industrial folk metal hybrid; the album’s sound is layered like an onion, with constantly new and weird elements and combinations of them being presented.
The album kicks off with what might well be its most conventonal track, Oj Ładna To Je Łada. An atmospheric intro of acoustic guitar abruptly explodes into furiously blasting, industrialized drums and sawing guitars, over which a hoarse voice screams violently. Ah yes, extreme industrial metal! At this stage, the album seems deceptively easy to pigeonhole.
But things get weirder fast.
Later tracks introduce even naivistic melodies, as from some children’s cartoon, but jumbled up and slightly distorted; unease is the keyword here. Electronic and industrial elements such as synths are heard in the background. The percussion takes on elements of danceable industrial.
And then there are moments of equally skewed folk. Sometimes these moments in themselves are not so skewed, for example the acoustic guitars and percussion of Żurawinowy Jam are pretty straight in and of themselves, but in the larger context they too take on a decidedly off nature.
Especially combined with the visual aesthetic of the one man project – just google how the guy dresses – the project and album take on decidedly jesterlike elements. There’s a certain mischievousness within the weird experimentation and conflicting elements.
The combination of weird experimentation, metal and folklore reminds me of a dubious classic: Hungarian black metal pioneer Tormentor’s weird and oft-reviled Recipe Ferrum! 777 album. Musically, the two are not very similar, but I do find similarities of spirit. Like Tormentor’s album, Konwulsanki is playful, weird, eccentric, overflowing and just plain hard to wrap your head around. The listener is aware that there’ an ever-present element of joke (the aspect of the jester, again) on the album – and sometimes has the gnawing suspicion he’s the butt of it.
I’ll freely admit that Konwulsanki is a well-made album that speaks of some skill and vision. At the same time, I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I find this an extremely annoying album above all. It’s constant to and fro, jumping from one musical element and style to another, gets on my nerves. And a lot of the time the eccentrity feels a bit self-serving: to be eccentric for the sake of eccentricity.
Konwulsanki is a weird album, and undeniably has a pretty unique sound. People heavily into experimentation, weirdness and unusual cobbling together of vastly different musical elements will probably find this worthwhile. People like me, who like their music a bit more straight, will most likely mainly get annoyed.
Only Death Is Real 