KTHRTK

Veteran NYC bassist Doug Berns might seem like an unlikely candidate to put a fresh twist on heavy metal, but with his project KTHRTK (“cathartic”) Berns finds harmony in aspects of extremity we would never think to look for them. Alongside guitar master Sean Salant and drumming technician Alex Cohen, he just might have found it.

Berns has always led something of a musical double life. While steeping himself in funk, jazz and Afrobeat, he simultaneously latched onto proto-metal groups like Black Sabbath, Motorhead, 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. With KTHRTK, Berns draws from a host of heavy forms, including symphonic metal, deathcore, groove metal, math metal, nu metal, etc.

As pummeling as KTHRTK’s downtuned 7-string guitar riffs are, Berns sees each element of the music as a “voice” within a larger orchestral fabric of sounds. KTHRTK’s debut album Dreams Are The Only Safe Place to Hide showcases Berns’ uncanny ability to invest not just his screams, but also the cymbals, drum heads, bass rumble and guitar distortion with tunefulness. No surprise, then, that KTHRTK presents anger not as a one-note expression, but as a full-frequency range of sensation. Bitterness, grief, betrayal, paralyzing depression, melancholy, confusion, fury, the thirst for revenge and triumph all find a home within Berns’ powerful, holistic vision of what metal can be.