You can interpret the cover of Skloss‘ debut album, The Pattern Speaks, in a couple different ways. Is the cover image light and matter being drawn into a black hole by its massive gravity well, or is it light and matter bursting from a void? Either option alters all reality around, within, and beyond it.
So does this album.
Husband and wife duo Karen Skloss (drums and main vocals) and Sandy Carson (guitars and backing vocals) create tremendous power that seems to change physics. Gravity feels heavier, colors look brighter, clouds move in strange patterns, trees loom larger, and sounds almost become solid masses. The opening title track is a reminder that patterns exist among the chaos of the universe. Knowledge is there for the taking if you give yourself the time to observe without judgement. The patterns will speak to you. The roar of the song shakes you like re-entry from orbit.
“Mind Hive” is almost the opposite. You’re not re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere – you’re leaving it. Carson’s guitar sounds like jet engines at multiple points in the song while Skloss’ echoing vocals are the thoughts in your mind sliding out and being left behind on the ground as your brain opens to the stars. On “Imagine 100 Dads,” Skloss puts lyrics aside for vocal sounds to create a hypnotic feel that leans the “cover image debate” toward the “It’s light emerging, not falling, from the void.” side…until the second half when Carson’s riffs are so big that they feel like they’re causing sinkholes under your house.
“Dead Bone” is your new favorite stoner / doom instrumental cut and might be the one that makes you think, “How is this just two people?” the most. “Snorkels Ask” mixes the sound of buzzing cicadas with angry hornet guitars. “Upper Attic” is just as fuzzy and suitable for a haunted house run by the ghosts of a metal band killed in a freak accident on Halloween. “Plugged into Jupiter” has us drifting around the giant planet, unsure if we’ll be able to escape its gravitational (guitar-induced) pull or if we’d be better off just hanging out for a while or maybe cruise along the surface of one of its moons.
Wrapping up with the heavy and haunting “Ghosts Are Entertaining” ends the album with another double-meaning. Are the ghosts entertaining guests, or are ghosts fun to watch in general? If it’s the former, then the sonic assault of the song makes you think that the ghosts are having a great time, but their guests might be terrified. If it’s the latter, then the fuzzy roar and cymbal crashes make us imagine we’re all thinking, “This is pretty damn cool.” while standing in the foyer of a haunted house as the ghosts rock out on a drum kit made of tombstones and a guitar made out of a cemetery gate.
So, what is the pattern? What is it telling us? Are we falling into a void or emerging from one? I’m still not sure. Skloss are able to pull us into the gravity well or slingshot us around the sun with equal skill. That might be the pattern: Two people, two instruments, two opposite yet equal forces creating one powerful record.
Remember the E.F. Hutton commercials of the 1970s and 1980s? Their slogan was, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.” When The Pattern Speaks, people transform.
Keep your mind open.
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