Khemmis w/ Necrofier, Wretched at Sister – Albuquerque, NM

After eleven years of releasing albums and touring the world, Colorado’s Khemmis have become a pillar of the modern metal scene.“When we started this band, we had no expectations, no assumptions—wejust wanted to play heavy metal,” says guitarist/vocalist Ben Hutcherson. “The older I get, the more I appreciate how rare it is in life to have relationships that last this long andoffer a sense ofstability and reassurance in a world that increasingly is horrifying andunsuitable for human life. And so, in many ways, this band is a home.”Some artists strive for a legacy; Khemmis felt born with one. Uponreleasing their 2015 debut Absolution, the Denver-based four-piece felt like old souls whose towering, spiritual doom metal connected with metalheads the world over. This was further cemented by 2016’s Hunted, which won the band international acclaim and was declared Album Of The Year by Decibel. 2018’s rollicking Desolation, 2020’s devotional Doomed Heavy Metal MLP(featuring a fan-favorite cover of Dio’s “Rainbow In the Dark”) and 2021’s searing Deceiveronly reinforced theband’s monolithic sound and diehard following. It makes sense, then, that the Khemmis behind Khemmis–—Hutcherson,fellow vocalist/guitarist Phil Pendergast, drummer Zach Coleman, and newly-appointed bassist DavidSmall—is different in many ways. While the band has often feltsynonymous with the Denvermetal scene, Pendergast and Coleman have since moved away toWashington and North Carolina respectively.And yet, Khemmis today feel more like the band they’ve always wanted tobe than ever.