(Sludge, Post-Metal) Kessef - The Meaning of Stam - 2016, MP3, 320 kbps

There are very few rock bands that do what Kessef does, and as well as Ke$$ef does it - constructing a dark, nihilistic space of violence, and to do so in a way in which that space remains human, hurting, even, perhaps, hopeful. Most bands fall off the cliff on either end of that equation, either too nihilistic to ever seem human, or too light-seeking to ever seem completely desperate. This magical balancing act, one that requires the most out of the bands, both as musicians (required to create a compelling artistic object) and as people (expected to pull at their very core every time they approach their craft).
It is for these reasons that to try and speak of Ke$$ef as an Israeli band would be a grave mistake. Not because its members aren’t Israeli - they certainly are - but because the struggle for life and death that lies at the center of Ke$$ef’s music transcends both place and identity. As such, the band aligns itself along the crushing, unrelenting tradition that includes such contemporary sonic artists as diverse as Crowbar, Wreck and Reference, The Melvins, and Neurosis. If music is the way into the most compelling of human horrors and sorrows, if it can serve as a tool of inspecting the storm at the heart of existence as well as of allowing for the odd ray of light, then Ke$$ef is music as its most brutally honest, arrestingly beautiful, and best.
Machine Music

Pelleg / Shaul / Roy / Gil