If you are not familiar with Brooklyn NYC’s Gravesend then click here for my review of their debut album. It is killer (the album not the review – although it is quite witty and well thought out but I digress). All caught up on the name and the style? Good.
All caught up on the name and the style? Good.
Onto the “difficult” second album – which is clichéd bollocks, something Gowanus Death Stomp is the antithesis of. After the beehive/wasps nest intro of Deranged the trio get straight down to business with 11414. Opening with a riff straight out of the NYHC playbook things get dark and grindy pretty damn quick. Gravesend continue where they left off – blending grimy dirty modern black metal and spiky Grindcore together with a fuck tonne of pissed off Hardcore attitude. Recent single “Even A Worm Will Turn” is as hard and crusty as last week’s Hovis but oh so much tastier. It mixes up crazed blasts and blackened rasps with some big ol’ good time hardcore bops ending with a frankly massive crossover thrash riff which shows that they can drop the pace and keep the intensity.
There are 16 tracks on this album and the shortest is 1:26 so this is no “blink and you miss it” experience. Each track gives itself some space to breath, build, change direction, smack you in the face with an open palm, tickle your nethers and start again.
The title track stomps in commando boots dragging its knuckles across the gravel like a conscripted silverback with an impacted wisdom tooth. This is pissed off intelligent primate music.
The sound alphabetically monikered members A, S and G make also brings to mind two luminaries of the UK punk world – Amebix and Doom as well as Napalm Death, each track is like grit in the eye of modern metal. After a while I start to enjoy when the band slow things down to a more sludgy pace as on Crown of Tar – the dirt and filth they create oozes better out of the cracks at a sombre tempo than at breakneck speed.
I gotta be honest at this point of the review it all got too much. I was listening and typing on a Sunday afternoon and the intensity of the record just started to get too much. I found myself needing some chilled out zen time and Gravesend are just not going to give you that.
Fast forward to Monday morning and I bung the album on my headphones in the gym and this bastard hits the spot like Popeye’s spinach. Now I am not saying I became Ron Coleman due to the riffs and shrieks but the album shot by in a blur just as my arms and chest shot out moving metal circles around. I have no clue what the songs were about or what other acts I would compare them too just that my crocodilian brain responded to them and helped me force my aching 50-year-old body to exercise and maybe hold off my demise by another month or so. The pummelling anger of “Carried by Six “reminds me of the number of friends of I have lost due to suicide and bad mental health and why I slam on nasty tunes and hit the gym.
Let “Gowanous Death Stomp” pummel you, it’s like a deep tissue massage for the ears and soul.
(8/10 Matt Mason)
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