Qoheleth – Contaminants of War [Album Review]

We’re back, baby! And there couldn’t be a more fitting release for us to come back with than the one and only Qoheleth!

I don’t know where the last 4 years have gone, but finally being back in the right headspace to ramble about and share some wonderful new music that nobody else is mentally corrupt enough to blissfully listen to multiple times… it feels good. Almost as good as Contaminants of War.

To begin with we need to backtrack all the way to 2021, when the world was somehow a little more fucked and we were blessed with Warmonger and the complimentary Contaminator. Warmonger was the last full length from Qoheleth, which took their ambitious noise rock experiments into a huge tangent of tangents. Almost falling back to their root sound, the music felt cleaner cut yet more fragmented, openly ignoring beats, structures and adopting strange ideas of how melodies should work. All of this interspersed with surprisingly enjoyable, calm and cautious sections, almost making half of the album sound like a series of interludes bringing guest poetry to life. Warmonger still stands tall as a(nother) masterpiece in the catalogue, but this is where the project sheds a new light.

EP Contaminator was a series of noise which at first appears to be unfinished takes thrown out and labelled as “Experimental (if you hate it you just don’t get it!) Rock”, but the band left hints to the ties held with Warmonger. Each track in the EP corresponded to one of the album’s tracks, and although impossible to neatly place, you could freely mess around to overlay the two in a weird concoction.

That weird concoction has now been released in its own form; Contaminants of War. This new mix combining the two releases unlocks a new beautifully haunting side to the project. Where Warmonger may have seemed a little too “normal” for the band at times, here we have pieces being slammed together that sound like they fit yet in a psychotically abominable way, except they don’t and they shouldn’t, but it does. The beat-ignorant percussion and schizophrenic guitars still shine through the obnoxious additions, yet somehow everything feels fresh again. The warming atmosphere is still present, but it almost becomes a CBT listening exercise to pull apart what makes the songs sound so right from the abhorrent distractions. These new versions are more than just re-packaging what you already had, but warp an already great album into a mind-buggering half hour that further tests the limits of where music ends and unlistenable digitised trash begins.

At least that’s how I see it. Some of you still listen to Kerrang. Weirdos.

Listen to it all, the new CD has some sweet bonuses too, check out the links below for the full details.

Rating: 10.2/8

Jake Hancke – 07/09/2023

Contaminants of War is available to pre-order on BandCamp

Check out more details from the Philip K Discs Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

You can find more on Qoheleth via their BandCamp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram