A veteran of Nairobi's metal scene and frequent collaborator with experimental electronic artist collective Nyege Nyege, Martin Kanja speaks many extreme dialects. As Lord Spikeheart, the singer and producer has created an incredible grindcore with his now-defunct experimental band Duma, along with intense industrial, crazy noise and many other genres of abrasive music. The through line throughout his work, which combines global touches of metal, electronic and traditional music, is tension. He gravitates toward arrangements that are jagged and dense, seeking catharsis in conflict. Kanja's debut solo album surpasses the power of his previous work by several degrees, while showing his talent for integrating different sounds. Listening to it feels like wading into the Mariana Trench, hurled by currents through the wet darkness.
Adept is a renegade metalhead's ode to all drums. Backed by producers and singers with roots in digital hardcore, noise and rap, Kanja welds blast beats and club grooves into a nightmarish rhythm machine. She happily steers this massive frigate, perhaps eager to finally be seen as a star. On Duma, his ferocious vocals mostly drove and emphasized the percussion, taking a backseat to bandmate Sam Karugu's layered beats. Here, his repertoire of roars and growls dictates the form of chaos, constantly pushing the songs forward or sideways.
The settings are even thicker than its marble sounding boards Duma. Distorted wails, ghostly chants and shrieking screams whip through low-end valleys. The drums thump and pound against each other like monstrous fangs. Roaring river systems pass through layers of deformation and static. From trap opening to closing, negative space is rare. Kanja and crew pack these songs like a metal turducken.
The disc is not just an exercise in bile synthesis. it is both dynamic and confrontational. While some songs, like the trap-infused “33rd Degree Access,” burst wildly out of the gates, others painstakingly build to their peaks. On the record's most poised track, “4 AM in the Mara,” Spikeheart and co-producer DJ Die Soon let the tension simmer for nearly two minutes before dropping a fat bass. “Red Carpet Sleepwalker” swings from a haunting wave of distorted Fatboi Sharif vocals to trance synths and later gabber drums stacked with screams, finally dissolving into drumless babble.
Likewise, “Sham-ra,” one of three songs produced by BBBBBBB's mischievous producer Saionji, opens with gurgling synths, a contemplative pulse, and bursts of drone suggestive of a waterside temple. After whipping into a storm of bass, staccato growls and spiky static, it simply morphs: first a roaring death march, then hum and simmering chatter. The record smacks of more than a cicada spawn.
