KTHRTK help you get it all out of your system with their hard-hitting new album Dreams Are The Only Safe Place To Hide — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Anyone who loves metal will tell you that there’s a lot more to it than just screaming. But even aficionados who can’t get enough abrasive vocals will be taken aback by how much range multi-instrumentalist Doug Berns carves out of the screaming/growling paradigm on the debut full-length from his melodic deathcore project KTHRTK (say “cathartic”).
Though Berns spent the entirety of his career playing bass in Afrobeat and soul bands (he was a gigging member of both Antibalas and EMEFE), he’s been a self-described “closet metalhead” since he discovered Iron Maiden’s iconic Aces High at 13. And, while he steeped himself in funk, soul, jazz and Afrobeat, Berns latched onto classic proto-metal groups like Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Dio and UFO. Before long, his tastes grew to include harsher, more technical fare like Meshuggah, Death, Fit For An Autopsy, Tesseract and After the Burial.
“I love the stuff I’m most known for playing, but the music I’m making with KTHRTK has been in my heart my whole life,” he says. “It maybe took me a while to recognize it, but now I’m in a place where I don’t feel the need to filter it through anything else. Especially since the message is so important to me.”
It comes as no great surprise, then, that Berns achieves a synthesis of styles on Dreams Are The Only Safe Place To Hide, which contains elements of metalcore, math metal, technical death metal, symphonic metal, groove metal, nu metal, alternative rock, etc. What is surprising is the way KTHRTK infuses every aspect of the music with tunefulness. Even the sub-bass rumble and kick drums (from technical/avant-death metal drummer Alex Cohen) seem to “sing” within the framework of the music.
Starting out as a revenge fantasy, the album progresses through a cycle of emotional states before landing in a place of healing from betrayal. And, as incensed as the music gets, Dreams Are The Only Safe Place To Hide presents anger not as a one-note expression but as a complete, lifelike range of experience.
Says Berns, “Anger can get really one-dimensional and lose its meaning very quickly. But anger can be extremely useful — it can give you a sense of purpose when you’ve lost the will to go on. And it can kind of put you back in touch with yourself, which is very powerful. There are also different shades to anger that I don’t think get enough attention. It’s not just a one-note emotion. The way I present anger on the record is my way of encouraging the audience.
“I want this record to lay out the experience of going through the stages of trauma. I ordered the songs that way, so that listeners get immersed in them all: Paralyzing depression, confusion, fury, melancholy and — ultimately — acceptance. By the time you’ve gone through that progression, you realize you’ve undergone a full restructuring and strengthening of self. I came out of my ordeal as in-touch with myself and as confident as I’ve ever been. I want the people who hear this album to know that, no matter where they are in the process of understanding themselves, there’s always hope. Hang on for dear life and you’ll come out the other side. This music is living proof of that.”
Grief, bitterness, shock, paralysis, depression, the lust for revenge and, ultimately, triumph all find a voice within Berns’ vibrant, furiously determined vision of what metal can be. If you’ve never thought of extreme styles like death metal or metalcore as catchy, you’re in for a pleasant surprise with KTHRTK. “This is great workout music lol.”
Check out Dreams Are The Only Safe Place To Hide below, watch the videos for Funeral and Step Into The Light above, and follow KTHRTK on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
