Album Of The Week: Kylesa Ultraviolet

Thanks to the thundering two-drummer onslaught of their live shows and the basement-punk fury of their 2009 album Static Tensions, Savannah's Kylesa were probably already my favorite active metal band by the time they released Spiral Shadow two and a half years ago. But that album only deepened my love of this band, since it took what they were already doing and pushed it toward a hugeness that I hadn't allowed myself to imagine. The band's big trick was the way they fused bleary post-hardcore catharsis and speed with the bleary-eyed grandeur of doom metal. But somewhere underneath all that fuzz and frenzy, there was also at least a trace of triumphant old-school Southern-rock melody. Spiral Shadow took that part of their sound, ran with it, and linked it to the expansive '90s indie rock that the band members probably liked to blast on van rides. "Don't Look Back," still the band's best song, was like a Built To Spill track constructed on top of a supercharged Motörhead engine. And now on Ultraviolet, their sixth album, Kylesa have pushed that sense of melody and atmosphere even further, to the point where it's overshadowed all that was metal about their sound.