One Listen Review
1st Listen – 7 Mar 2024
Reviewed – 8 Mar 2024
Kollapse – Ar
Fysisk Format, Vinyltroll Records, Head Records
Released 8 Mar 2024
Ar, the 2nd album by Danish band Kollapse is as challenging a listen as you will hear all year. As such it is not an easy album to digest in the 1 listen format of these reviews, but I will try my best.
When the band state that, ‘we wanted the listener to feel like we are playing and screaming about two inches from their face, but in an understanding and emphatic way’, you can only begin to feel the intensity of the album. Ar (English – Scars) boasts 7 tracks lasting almost 35 minutes. It is loud, it is noisy, it is aggressive, it has ridiculously good production and it is the absolute definition of a ‘mood’ album.
You cannot put Ar on as a gentle pick-me-up after a long hard day. No, Kollapse have released an album that challenges you to a fight and then proceeds to kick the living shit out of you.
There is absolutely ZERO let-up. From the initial introduction of the title track ‘Ar’, layers of feedback with unhinged vocal aggression, through to the dying embers of slightly gentler album closer, ‘Transformation’, the band, especially the superb vocals, ram home their point each and every occasion.
There are a few areas of brief respite, ‘Form’, with its slightly slower pace and the restrained opening to ‘Transformation’, but these moments basically just allow Kollapse to gather themselves before punching you in the back of the head again.
Ar is not a sympathetic album. It is not here to lovingly caress you and it will definitely not be able to impress a non-metal loving member of the opposite sex. Indeed, any attempt to use Kollapse as a tool to seducing a potential partner of this ilk will more than likely see them block you on social media and besmirch your name and sexual prowess to their circle of friends.
No, Ar is an album that will tear open your chest and rip your still beating heart out as you try to figure out what you have done with your life. It will feast on your soul and the only way to comprehend what is going on will be to press play again and digest the album as much as possible.
Yes, Ar is not an immediate album, but it is compulsive. Compulsive albums get multiple listens, when you are in the mood at least.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kollapseband/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kollapseband/
Bandcamp: https://kollapse.bandcamp.com/
The DevilsHorns 
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