Kvelertak

With a name that translates roughly to "stranglehold" in Norwegian, this sextet has spent the last six years cultivating a sound that feels like a mixture of black metal and the Stooges, Cave In and Converge. Fittingly, the frontman of that last act, Kurt Ballou, produced Kvelertak's latest album, 2013's...

By Tom Murphy

April 25, 2013

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With a name that translates roughly to "stranglehold" in Norwegian, this sextet has spent the last six years cultivating a sound that feels like a mixture of black metal and the Stooges, Cave In and Converge. Fittingly, the frontman of that last act, Kurt Ballou, produced Kvelertak's latest album, 2013's Meier, which bears artwork from a like-minded musician, Baroness's John Baizley. With an oddly and refreshingly balanced combination of rawness, melody and heaviness — not to mention aggression and psychedelia — Kvelertak also manages to invoke an American Southern-rock vibe without beating that retro aesthetic into the ground. With songs propelled by a momentum that's broken only by moments of lingering atmospherics, like the eye of a storm, this outfit sways as much as it rocks.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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