Sometimes life would be so much easier if things were just put into simple pigeon holes, a statement that applies to all aspects of life, let alone music, and its assorted subgenres. Maybe there was a long lost halycon past where there were no complictions, but if you’ve ever had the joy of catching Andrew O’Neill’s ‘A History of Heavy Metal’ live, and the graphs that illustrate the fracturing of metal, you know that’s not always to be. Godthrymm are a band that do not tread a simple path, I’ve no idea where the name came from for starters, and indeed revel in bringing diverse elements to their sound, and given their pedigree, that should come as no surprise.
Opening their latest LP ‘Distortions’ is ‘As Titans’, and from the first crushing chords you could well believe that you were diving into nothing but a deep dark pool of unadulterated Doom: drums are slow and funereal; the bass is low and throbbing; riffs are played at a pace to have heads nodding rather than having hair flying; keyboards add atmosphere without flying into the realms of power metal excess; and when the vocals appear they are mounfully delivered. Spanning over eleven and a half minutes, this is a number to match any of the latest offerings from Candlemass. Things take a change though with follow up ‘Devils’, the galloping bass of Bob Crolla upping the pace to get fists pumping along to with the verses, a stomp counterpointed by the melancholy of the choruses.
The album takes an almost Gothic turn with the dolefully structured ‘Echoes’, the vocals of Hamish Glencross being laced through with a sorrow matched by the forlorn pace of the track, even darker tones being summoned in the tide of sludge that follows in ‘Obsess and Regress’, a number where the stygian darkness is punctured by beams of light in the form of the clean siren voice of Catherine Glencross that are such a contrast to the growls of Hamish. Indeed, like the album, ‘Obsess and Regress’ can’t be easily defined, having almost Prog like elements thrown into the mix, an extra-Hevy Devy coming to mind, if you will. This mixing of styles continues unabated into ‘Unseen Unheard’, the tempo varying from the slog to the sprint, Shaun Taylor-Steels behind the kit escaping the sloth like stereotype of the doom drummer with flurries of thrash like pyrotechnics to wreck the neck of the unpracticed headbanger. The truly epic ‘Follow Me’, a number that should be the centrepiece of any future live show, comes next, and again, elements of Prog, Goth, Sludge, and Doom are all mixed together into this mightly near thirteen minute melange, its ebon depths a contrast to the by near light and airy delicacy of closer ‘Pictures Remain’.
It’s been far too long since I last saw Godthrymm live, Glasgow in 2019 as it goes when they were a three piece, and the addition of a second vocalist and keyboards gives an even greater depth and complexity to their already layered sound. ‘Distortions’ is an album of both subtle nuance and crushing heaviness, and damn me if I don’t want to experience it live.
(8/10 Spenny)
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