Khanate

• Genre: Doom Metal
• Hometown: New York

About

Members of Burning Witch, OLD and Blind Idiot God came together to form Khanate in the early '00s, taking ideas of tempo and dissonance to previously unimagined extremes. With top-volume guitar strums that sounded more like car crashes (and served as percussion as much as anything), unpredictably minimal but cacophonous drums (more crashing) and the genuinely unsettling screaming of singer Alan Durbin, Khanate became legendary for the intensity and fanatical deliberateness of their music. Between the appearance of their totally awesome self-titled debut for Southern Lord in 2001 and last gasp Capture and Release for Hydra Head in 2005, the band gained a reputation as untouchable vanguards of the avant-garde metal scene. Unfortunately Khanate released just three albums and a handful of singles, EPs and limited-edition DVDs before disintegrating in 2006, at which point guitarist Stephen O'Malley devoted his time solely to his other band, the similarly minded SunnO))).

- Mike McGuirk