Band Feature: Khlyst

Anyone familiar with Khanate? Impossibly slow, lots of high shrieking vocals, lots of feedback, and I have to mention again that Khanate is insanely slow. I can usually convince my friends to give all sorts of different bands a try, but where I live, Khanate was found by just about everyone I know personally to be intolerable. Funny how they were on the rise in terms of popularity... Anyways, Khanate broke up, so bass player James Plotkin and drummer Tim Wyskida are now doing Khlyst (James Plotkin plays guitar instead of bass here) with vocalist Runhild Gammelsaeter formerly of Thorr’s Hammer doing the vocals.

I’m a little sketchy on the details, so I’m not quite certain if Khlyst was a project going while Khanate was still around or if it formed after the breakup of Khanate. After hearing the sample provided on James Plotkins own page, you can expect a lot of similarities between Khlyst and Khanate. On the official Khlyst homepage you can view a video of Khlyst performing what looks like an improvised song, with James Plotkin making lots of guitar noise, Tim essentially playing a drum solo throughout the whole song and Runhild throwing some screeching on top. It kind of reminded of some of those noisy endings that rock bands did back in the 60's, only with high screaming.

Khlyst released their debut album “Chaos Is My Name” through Hydra Head late last year.

Very interesting and intriguing, although most people won’t be able to tolerate it.

Khlyst
James Plotkins Site
Hydra Head