| Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.
Exile On Mainstream is thrilled to welcome back Markus E. Lipka, the driving force behind Eisenvater with his new band, KARLA KVLT. Together with his son Johann Wientjes on drums and his daughter-in-law, Teresa Matilda Curtens, on bass and vocals – both also in Melting Palms – the trio delivers a raw and monolithic album that is unique in style and approach.
The alternative music scene in the 1990s vibrantly questioned traditional listening approaches and came up with some of the most interesting concepts in that sense. While it was bands like Melvins, Unsane, Swans, and Cop Shoot Cop on the US side of the pond, on the European side, one of the bands was Eisenvater, and the guitar-based orchestra Rossburger Report that evolved from it. Eisenvater’s live shows remain legendary, transcending gatherings, which among lovers of the extremes have a cult status and are of the kind that everybody claims to have been there.
Music is always also the search for transcendence. It transports emotions, captures them, and mediates between the comprehensible and what lies beyond. This can especially happen in collective musical experiences like concerts or rituals. Music can help the artist themselves in shaping their identity and resolving or addressing inner conflict. Here, it is about the transcendence and transformation of the ego – ultimately, the prerequisite for art, especially when it is collectively created. This is the beginning of an exploration of KARLA KVLT – both musically and thematically. For the band, founded in 2023, this is the foundation: the radical dissolution of the ego. Art does not emerge according to a precise plan. It arises when one lets go – of thoughts, expectations, ideas, and even personal desires. As long as the mind is involved, the ego blocks the possibility of a collective experience. This letting-go, this intuitive approach, is what defines the music of KARLA KVLT. Thunderhunter is the invitation to become part of it.
The beats and riffs are unfathomably heavy, the vocals bell-like, fragile, and intense. KARLA KVLT’s music is dense, immersive, but also beautiful – like a plant fighting its way through a concrete slab, like the tides, following a precise and unstoppable rhythm that can be as destructive as it is capable of revealing beauty in the next moment, offering a view of something new.
Based on drone, doom, sludge, noise, and post-rock, the band creates monolithic and hypnotic tracks, their Thunderhunter album recorded in 2023 in a strictly D.I.Y. manner in Hamburg. They manage to bring together seemingly incompatible styles like sludge doom and dream pop. Both concepts come together in KARLA KVLT in an amalgamation of brutal beauty, and Exile On Mainstream is overjoyed to release Thunderhunter, the debut album of this new band.
Thunderhunter will be released on LP w/ bundled CD and digitally on February 21st. Preorders are live at the Exile On Mainstream webshop HERE.
Be on the lookout for videos/singles from Thunderhunter to post early in the new year alongside news of live shows across Europe and more.
Thunderhunter Track Listing:
1. Karma
2. Temple
3. Swallowed
4. Magna Mater
5. Mun Kvlta
6. Hekate
7. Thunderhunter
KARLA KVLT:
Markus E. Lipka – guitars
Teresa Matilda Curtens – bass, vocals
Johann Wientjes – drums
Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.
Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com
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