NC’s Doom Metal Band Kult Ikon Releases Its Debut album, Black Iron Prison
From Raleigh, North Carolina, a group of music artists have been crafting a sound that defies easy categorization. Kult Ikon, the doom/stoner metal trio, have emerged from the shadows with their latest offering, “Black Iron Prison,” released on March 15, 2024. This album marks a significant milestone in their journey.
Kult Ikon’s music is a sonic exploration of the spaces between genres. Their sound occupies a unique niche, blending elements of post-metal and progressive doom into long, mid-tempo pieces that ebb and flow with hypnotic intensity. The band’s compositions are intricate tapestries, weaving together moments of ethereal beauty and crushing heaviness across unexpected structural landscapes.
The album, consisting of four expansive tracks that clock in at a total of 37 minutes and 18 seconds, is a journey through the band’s psyche. Each song is a world unto itself, inviting listeners to lose themselves in the intricate soundscapes. Fans got an early taste of this new material when an early version of “Lost Sea” was released as part of the “Weedian: Trip to North Carolina” compilation. This inclusion in the respected Weedian project, known for its curated collections of regional artists, helped to build anticipation for the full album release.
It’s been mentioned that Kult Ikon’s songwriting process “typically starts with bass and drums before bringing in guitar.” How has this approach influenced your overall sound and musical dynamics?
It’s worth noting that as an instrumental band that also lends itself to the overall sound and musical dynamics. Many of the songs we’ve written are linear and take you from one place and transport you to another. We don’t often come back to sections or riffs. In some ways being an instrumental band poses challenges but opens up the songwriting because it gives us freedom to explore more options as to where we want to take the song.
Since the drum & bass usually have a fairly fleshed out idea and the guitar has a solid foundation to build on. The solidness really allows the guitar to take off and explore ideas that can play counterpoint or more of a support role to what they are doing.
How would you describe your musical evolution since the band’s formation in 2018?
I think the easiest way to describe evolution is that we have gotten tighter as a group, meaning we have a better understanding of what we’re trying to do and how to do it. Obviously when we started there, we didn’t have a road as to where we would be going; we just set a few basic parameters, such as we wanted to write songs that would be slow & heavy.
And by the time we finished the first record we’d succeeded slow and heavy, but we also added to the overall sound a level of introspection. And we think you can hear that on the new album Black Iron Prison.
How did the global lockdown influence your songwriting for the upcoming album “Black Iron Prison”?
For Kult Ikon, it’s hard to say if the lockdown consciously had much of an influence on our writing. But getting together during that period had some unconscious effects on how we were approaching writing. We had finished writing the song Lost Sea and we began to work on writing Overburden. And it took us a couple of months and a couple of failed attempts to get this song written.
At one point we described Overburden as a barrel of trash in the middle of the room on fire. It must have been about three months into the process of writing the song when things began to click, and we were able to build something out of the remnants of the original idea. And to our surprise Overburden has turned out to be a really good song.
I like Lost Sea a lot… a really heavy dream vibe. Can you tell me a little bit about how this track was born and came together?
Lost Sea started with a bassline in the practice space. And we then began to build a song around that idea. We agree that you can hear a dream vibe here and that I think is an example of giving the drum and bass part to the guitar player and letting him impart his influence on those sections. It’s also a good example of the way that we write songs and that we want to create an atmosphere and take chances with the music to create tension and dynamics.
With “Black Iron Prison,” Kult Ikon has not only pushed the boundaries of their sound, but also cemented their place in the doom/stoner metal scene. The music is a great escape and catharsis for listeners. You can find the album here at their Bandcamp page.
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