Knoll: The Future Of Extremity
First thing’s first, let’s get it out there, KNOLL are young, very young. The line doing the rounds about the Tennessee-based deathgrind act is that they’re ‘college-aged’, although vocalist James Eubanks clarifies; “that’s partially true, we’re all college-aged, but one of us is actually a senior in high school.” Anyone who has heard the band’s music will attest to how remarkable this fact is. KNOLL are playing some of the most ferocious and intense extreme music on the planet right now, so to have a member who’s just eighteen years of age, whilst the oldest is twenty-three, is an indication of the band’s maturity and enormously exciting potential.
When we catch up with James, it’s eleven in the morning in Tennessee. The sunlight floods into his home (which he shares with KNOLL bassist Lukas) and makes a stark contrast to our end of the Skype call; rainy, locked-down Wales. Despite this being the first long-form interview he’s done for KNOLL, James is perfectly at ease, smiling continuously and in possession of a very American sort of confidence and politeness. Given all we’ve seen on the news of late regarding his home country, it’s a pleasure to talk to someone who reminds you of all the positive attributes of our neighbours from across the pond.
At the risk of hyperbole, given the age frames we’re talking about here, it’s not much of a stretch to call KNOLL extreme metal prodigies. Their debut album Interstice is a staggeringly accomplished debut, a labyrinthine vortex of noise-inflected deathgrind that’s as about as heavy and extreme as music in 2021 gets. It places the band squarely in the lineage of artistically-minded grindcore acts such as DISCORDANCE AXIS, PIG DESTROYER and FULL OF HELL, the latter of whom it comes as no surprise to hear James cite as an influence. He also enthusiastically talks of the impression NAILS’ You Will Never Be One Of Us left on him. “I first heard that in my bassist’s car, and I thought ‘what is this.’ I immediately took it home and learned their entire discography front to back.”
Asked for his take on all that has happened in the last twelve months, James is upbeat; “I feel like it’s been the best opportunity to hunker down and do all of the stuff we normally wouldn’t get to do as a band if we were touring. When shows were happening we’d have to split our practice time between rehearsing our set and writing, now we’ve just been able to get all the release stuff out of the way.” This part of our chat helpfully illuminates James’ and KNOLL’s work ethic and drive. “We’ve been writing a ton,” he continues, “around when COVID hit was when we finished the writing of Interstice. After that we immediately started writing other songs. We’ve got a release coming in June, then planning another for December, then we’re hoping to record a record again so we can hit 2022 really hard.”
KNOLL’s future looks bright. However, for the moment, we have only Interstice with which to judge them on. The album’s punishing brand of ambitious, experimental musicality is matched by its cryptic themes and aesthetics. The lyrics are especially dense and complex, something James puts down to the influence of both FULL OF HELL and the Australian black metal band PORTAL. “The Lovecraftian imagery they use, a lot of metaphors for very real things, a lot of the crypticism, big words, I think that’s awesome.”
Interstice’s cover art was created by Ethan McCarthy, best known as the frontman of sludge metal trio PRIMITIVE MAN. We both immediately agree that Ethan’s band are one of, if not the heaviest bands on the planet. “They were the first doom band I ever saw live, just crushing,” James enthuses. “We worked with a lot of people we looked up to on the record, but reaching out to Ethan was especially intimidating. But when we did, he was just the nicest dude, really flexible and really talented.”
There’s a number of comparisons to be made between KNOLL and PRIMITIVE MAN, least of all their thematic similarities. PRIMITIVE MAN’s brand of harrowing nihilism carries a real weight behind it, a mode of despair that never feels cheap or throwaway, a form of searing anguish that KNOLL’s music also shares.
Asked about his personal philosophy, James refers to something we have already touched upon in our conversation. “Cosmic nihilism,” he laughs. “A lot of the themes on Interstice are about cosmology and general human insignificance. That’s definitely a big theme of ours.” And the album title? James explains. “An interstice means, literally, a gap. What we like to call the ‘mundane forces’ that surround this record, they’re represented here as noise. The album is meant to be viewed as a singular blip in time that interrupts these forces. It starts and ends with noise, almost as if it’s coming out of something, as if it’s interrupting something.”
Interstice is certainly an interruption. It’s an all-out assault on the heavy music landscape, a quintessential example of a young band setting themselves sky-high goals and matching them with considerable aplomb. It’s a wonderful thing to witness, and one performed by a group who possess real emotional intelligence. The horror and despair of KNOLL’s music comes from a place of deep feeling, like PRIMITIVE MAN, they are not howling into the void due to any sense of empty pessimism, they are crying out because they care, perhaps too much. This is what gives their immensely heavy music substance, and the reason that they will go on to do great things.
Interstice is out now via self-release.
Like KNOLL on Facebook.