Cream Abdul Babar / Kylesa split CD

Cream Abdul Babar / Kylesa split CD

"Before listening to this CD, I had never heard Cream Abdul Babar or Kylesa. I have a friend that always tells me how great Cream Abdul Babar is, but I just never got around to checking them out.Luckily, this CD came with a nice info sheet, an, on top of that, I decided to do some research of my own.

The first four songs on this split come from Cream Abdul Babar, which seems like a crazy name for a band, so I assumed they must be a little weird. However, I was really pleasantly surprised by these four songs. The info sheet says these guys have been compared to Deadguy, Unsane, and Neurosis, and I can really see why. CAB has a massive sound, and just bashes you over the head with it.With seven members, it's not difficult to believe that these guys are capable of producing some insanely heavy music. The first track does indeed remind me a bit of Deadguy, and is just wonderfully violent.The second track isn't entirely unlink Unsane, but the opening riff closer to Helmet’s song “Unsung,” than anything. The next two tracks are slower and do have more than a few similarities to Neurosis (incidentally, one-time Neurosis engineer Billy Anderson also recorded this CD). These songs have a slightly lo-fi production, which wonderfully compliments the style of music Cream Abdul Babar plays.

The next five songs, by Kylesa, have the same title, and are five different parts. However, they all sort of run together to form one big song. I just can’t get into Kylesa at all. The music is just too brooding and monotonous. It is definitely heavy, but not at all exciting. Some of the songs/parts are just tracks of noise, but I can tell many people would be into these five songs, because there are many fans of noisy, trudging music. It’s just not for me at all. Kylesa’s production is quite decent though, considering the sound they are going for.

Another thing I like about this split is that it is nine tracks. I like splits that are a tad longer. I often feel ripped off from a split CD that only has two or three songs from each band." - Rob McFeters / Lambgoat