Oh look, some wonderful friends have appeared to read some shit I wrote. Greetings! Today I’ll be covering the 19 track behemoth “Katharsis” by Washington DC’s own Amulet. Amulet is a duo fronted by Stephanie Stryker and along with her is MJ Phoenix who handles the bulk of the instrumental work and does some vocals as well. This album features some collaborators as well which is nice. Bob Carr adds some guitar work here. James Scott does bass on a track, Rob Early contributes some keys, Emmanuel B. Minko shows up to do some engineering. Oh and check this out, my own personal sleep paralysis demon Dan Milligan is here on drums. How nice, I can’t fucking get away from this dude. Dan is the fucking man and his work can be seen nearly everywhere in the scene so I already have high hopes.
Now when i saw there were NINETEEN total tracks in “Katharsis” clocking in at about 74 minutes I was worried that the album might get a little stale. Then I remembered that my band Decent News put out an album that had less tracks but still had a 70 minute runtime. By no means would runtime be a reason to complain but it would be hypocritical if I did. That being said, by the time is was 6 tracks in I was pretty sold. The duo’s vocals work really well with each other. MJ’s sawzall grime juxtaposed against Stephanie’s soft melodic voice is really fun to listen too. I wish there was more layering of the twos vocals, but that’s just me.
Production wise, everything’s mixed very well. Sometimes it does kind of feel like there was a spill at the reverb factory, but I’ll give that a pass. On the technical side, everything is done very well. Even in songwriting, every song here could have stood out as a single. While on paper that sounds incredible, In practice, when you have 19 songs on an album that are at a technical level good songs, things start to blend together a little. I know most people aren’t listening to albums front to back anymore but as a cohesive piece of work, there’s not a lot of risk taking or experimentation and it feels pretty safe. Personally I feel like this album would be more powerful if it was split in two. Every track on this Katharsis is very vocal driven, and the vocals are excellent. Every song does have a catchy vocal hook that’s hard to shake. Like I have shit to do right now but the chorus to “The Hope That Kills You” keeps distracting me, which right now sucks because I can’t find my keys and I have to pick up laundry. Aside from the Vocals, there are some synth leads and guitar melodies in the album but they’re not an identifying feature of the songs. Alot of the instrumentation feels like it’s only there to support the vocals. I felt like I was waiting for someone to step out of the mix and do a cool interlude into the next section of the song. Your focus is on the vocals the entire time. Please don’t let my own critiques steer you away from checking the album out. My own weird preferences don’t take away at all from “Katharsis”. As I said every track here could absolutely stand out as a single. It’s still catchy, with some great standouts here.
The opening track “Wyrdwork” is a chilling crescendo of reverbed piano and pained cooing that really forces you to settle in. “Erase Me” as some ambient coldwave guitar work in it that is tastefully executed. “Walk Away” is surprisingly more hard hitting than you’d expect in contrast to the rest of “Katharsis”. There really is alot to enjoy here, personally I would’ve preferred a little more variation. Looking back on their previous releases I’m surprised this album didn’t explore more (I highly Recomend listening to “Secrets and Lies” and “Clear Blue Skies” – Chef’s kiss). I give Katharsis 7 whole Demonia Gift Cards out of 10.
UPDATE: I found my keys, I got too high and put them in the fridge
