Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Kowloon Walled City - Container Ships (2012)

Since I stumbled across their 2021 release, Piecework (an album which was my top pick for that year), I have been slowly working my way through the back catalogue of Kowloon Walled City.  I soon settled on 2012's Container Ships as my next regular play, finding the angular and brittle nature of the sound that I enjoyed so much on that latter release in full flight on this release from nearly a decade earlier.  The pacing of songs at this point in their careers is not as consistently slow as it was on Piecework but the bleakness is still very obvious at this stage in their songwriting.  The bouncing sludge of 50s Dad as track two on here, soon injects a shot of uptempo and disorganised chaos to proceedings.  The futile edge to Scott Evan's vocals is perfectly at odds with this faster pace, emphasising the awkwardness and discomfort of the character in the song.

With the bass churning away throughout Container Ships, this soon becomes a very dense sounding album.  Changes of pace end with resonance to them that permeates the space around the listener.  This adds further tension to what is already an emotionally taut record.  The sense of loom and menace that is built over the course of the intro to the title track cannot be denied.  It is a perfect soundtrack to exploring the graveyard of ships that is depicted on the cover of the album itself. Whilst undeniably burdened with a megaton sludge weight, it is the contrasting post-metal sections to tracks that really emphasises the brilliance of Container Ships.  The charge of the sludge metal never gets to explode to its full potential - which I would normally class as an inhibiting factor, but it works brilliantly here.  I liken it to bombs being exploded underwater.  You see the water being cast far and wide, hearing the sound of the explosion itself also, yet the violece of the act seems somehow surpressed as it is hidden from view.  The majority of the tracks on Container Ships are sludge bombs submerged in, or floating on the top of post-metal seas.

This is not to say that this album lacks agression.  Instead the more fierce elements to the record feel more personal.  Indeed they seem to hit harder by the simple acknowledgement that anger does not necessarily mean outbursts of violence.  The expression of frsutration, futility and fear itself comes through on this album.  Whilst the post-metal elements offer this expression they by no means temper the sense of hopelessness that the tracks exude, even on the faster-paced tracks.  This is why I find most of what I have heard to date from Kowloon Walled City resonantes with me so easily.  There is variation on a theme with KWC that by no means represents a compromised position.