KEN mode: VOID

KEN mode have always maintained a healthy listenership that goes beyond the tribalistic boundaries that sometimes exist throughout the more hard-nosed sound worlds.

From their aptly titled 2003 debut, Mongrel, through to their 2013 breakthrough, Entrench, and 2018’s underground classic, Love, KEN mode’s subtle allure and ability to manoeuvre into shapes unlike of any their peers has seen the band draw in everyone from the skaters, metal heads and punks.

The story of the Winnipeg, Manitoba four-piece (consisting of brothers Jesse and Shane Matthewson, Kathryn Kerr and Scott Hamilton) has always been underpinned by guardrail-scraping noise and themes that excavate through the soils of despair. Even for those who aren’t considered to be cultish KEN mode heads, every release is one that is met with intrigue, which is always a good sign.  

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The despair is underlined even further on VOID – the companion piece to KEN mode’s 2022 release, NULL. Both written and produced at the same time throughout the pandemic, and recorded by Andrew Schneider in 2021, in the lead up to the release of VOID, Jesse Matthewson spoke of the album exposing the fight against mental illness during the pandemic where many people’s coping mechanisms had been taken away.

Perhaps there’s no better example of this than Reluctance of Being. A song that completely stops you in your tracks, Reluctance of Being contains the kind of swarming, black pit sonics to match its morose themes, as Matthewson screams, “I’m never gonna be okay / I can feel my senses dull”.

Meanwhile, the heaving monolith that is opening track, The Shrike, is a blasting fireball of menace projected through the studio walls. From the first fifty seconds, there’s a feeling that the band have peaked too early.  

Not so, of course. The screeching guitars of Painless sound like fingernails frantically ripping down the chalk board, as Matthewson spits thick clots of bile that oozes from the speakers. On These Wires the change of pace is welcomed, with the themes Reluctance of Being almost mirroring. (“Why would anything feel right again?”)

KEN mode has always found inventive ways to produce their art, standing firmly as outliers, and with a track like the melodic blur of We’re Small Enough, the slick instrumental breaks up the carnage. Which is exactly where we land with I Cannot – a grinding sludge assault that overarches with anxious saxophones and rumbling bass weight that burns with rage.

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Then there’s He Was a Good Man, He Was a Taxpayer: quintessential new-era KEN mode, building with new atmospheric waves of dread. A complete, searing body blow, and it’s exactly the aesthetic KEN mode should be striving for in the future (“Now that I’m gone, you’re free”).

Once again, KEN mode throws us off the scent with Not Today Old Friend. The piano-led closing track that is yet another feather in their cap in what is a surprising end to VOID; once again, KEN mode giving us a refined variation of the curve ball they’ve pitched for years.

In a discography that now runs nine albums deep, VOID is perhaps the release that sees KEN mode revealing their truest self. Many of their influences, whether it be the blackened post-punk of Bauhaus or the sinewy, off-kilter noise of Unsane and Killdozer, can be heard throughout this fragile echo chamber. And 20 years since their debut LP, with VOID KEN mode cuts as close to the bone as they ever have.

VOID is out Friday via Artoffact. Purchase from Bandcamp.