Kabul Golf Club - Le Bal Du Rat Mort (2012)

Finally sat down, grabbed a submission and mustered enough strength to do a proper review. Between preparing a fine amount of interviews for the blog and some rather bad and insane personal happenings, doing this write-up has been a tough ordeal. Still, the fact that this is posted now just shows that I still have some fuel left to run on.

Today will be washed in weird noises, wailing guitars and maniacal melodies. "Kabul Golf Club", a four-piece haling from Limburg, Belgium, brings forth the shredding sounds of noise-imbued mathrock. Formed in 2010, the quartet slowly worked on their material, eventually releasing an EP called "Le Bal Du Rat Mort", a fourteen minute monster born in February 2012. While this record was being brewed, the band members also played and contributed to other projects, some of them being "The Rott Childs", "The Powerkrauts", "Enemy Of The Sun" and "Kindred".

What we find inside this release is a wave of disturbing and eerie tunes, attacking us through five songs. The very first sounds you get to hear instantly drag you into the madness of "Kabul Golf Club", coming in the form of a track named "Bits of Freedom". The introduction song, as well as the very number of the tracks and their duration, immediately signal that this will be an extremely fast experience. And indeed, the entire record is a rushing and furious ride, the band being continuously remorseless. Most of the tunes are at a truly fast pace and they just fly through your head. At other moments, however, the speed drops a little, but the overall chaos, noise and high-pitched sounds make up for the lack of tempo.
Don't be fooled though, those slower sections just carry an unexpected surprise for you on the next corner. One second you are entranced by a horrific melody slowly creeping up on you, but already the coming moment is upon you, bursting with a loud detonation of screeching guitars and crashing drums. The vocals fit exceptionally well in these song sections, since they resemble a sort of raspy shriek which definitely adds to the eeriness of the entire experience. This is something I really liked about "Kabul Golf Club". There is a fine dose of ambience on this record and the band has great skill in portraying a certain type of mood around the listener. Overall, I find their music to be quite eerie and lunacy invoking, which is something that not a lot of projects manage to do successfully.

The EP has been released in collaboration with a label named "Uproar For Veneration", which is also a booking agency and a fanzine. Distribution of this release has been handled by "Rough Trade". This  Dutch distributor has been focused on the countries of the Benelux and has been doing an awesome job for quite a while now. Production, mixing and mastering has been done by Micha Volders who has previously worked with other bands such as "Fence", "The Rott Childs", "Little Trouble Kids" and "The Sore Losers". "Le Bal Du Rat Mort" comes in CD format, housed in a nice gatefold package adorned with gloomy and dark imagery. The overall design is rather simple and straightforward, quite fitting to the tunes in general. You can order the CD, and get connected with the band, on their official website, found here.

In the end, "Kabul Golf Club" gave us an interesting ride. The album picks you up in a wild manner, utterly fast and unstoppable, so you end up listening to it multiple times in a row. At this point the band has several concerts lined up, as you can see on their facebook page found here, so they are pretty much alive. Definitely keep an eye out for them and any potentially new material that might crawl out from under their hood, since it would be a true loss if you would miss out on these guys. Hope you enjoyed the read!