Kollaps — Mechanical Christ
Avoiding an all out, cacophonous onslaught, Kollaps mix their aggressive, noisy industrial assaults with slight bits of slow moving, crawling drum beats to serve as bridges between the chaos. Deep, boiler room reverb adds depth and expanse to Mechanical Christ while conversely closing the walls in and adding a suffocating vibe. The chaos level is increased when Kollaps pulls the rug out, removes the percussion, and the lack of a trusty guide leaves the listener to wander aimlessly through the noisy confines of Mechanical Christ. While the album is both expansive and suffocating, there is something comfortable about it. The pounding, metallic industrial is modern and crushing, but also hearkens back through time to all the heavy, machine beats that have come before. Vocally, Kollaps keeps it interesting by varying the approach, between spoken and screamed, clean(ish) and grimy, but always acting as an extra instrument. It's the subtle way that Kollaps keeps the listener guessing that makes Mechanical Christ more than the sum of its parts. Sure, on the surface it's a fun industrial record built on reverb, metallic clanging, noise, and feedback, but outside of that, it's an unexpected journey of sound that weaves in and out of expectations and unfolds and grows with each successive listen.
Kollaps makes their Cold Spring debut with their second full length, this year's Mechanical Christ. A powerful take on industrial, Kollaps uses traditional genre tropes and integrates them into a bigger, more expansive whole to create something that is somehow both full and large, as well as compressed and suffocating. A very solid addition to Cold Spring's catalog, Kollaps' latest is a sumptuous slice of sound.