(written by Islander)
We get a lot of first impressions of music before ever hearing a note. In the case of Gryla‘s second album, we see a primitive rendering of a naked Christ under the bleak light of a black sun, about to be stoned by angry men under the observation of a gnarly logo. We see the album’s name, The Redeemer’s Festering Carcass. We see a photo of the sneering performer, who appears just as angry as the assaulting figures in the cover art.
First impressions are followed by second impressions, the music itself. And even though you’ll have some idea of what’s coming if you’ve heard this Norwegian one-man band’s first album (2024’s Jaundiced Hag of the Wood), you’ll have a better idea from the song we’re premiering today — “Banners Soaked in Crimson Essence“.
In line with the first impressions, fury burns through the song — through vicious roiling and slashing riffage, beats that violently hammer and leap in punkish defiance, and blistering screams.
The music sounds both haughty and feral, in chords simultaneously rasping and shining. The riffing also boils and swarms above both a potent bass throb and drums that clatter and strike with electrifying effect. The lead guitar ecstatically darts, swirls, and pulsates like a heart as the riffing exuberantly rises and falls.
But before the end, the drums vanish; ugly growls intervene along with a strident vocal sample; the radiations of the music generate dismal and oppressive moods, building tension; and then, when the drums return in a mid-paced canter, the tension releases and the riffing gloriously rises, crying out in either triumph or agony (you be the judge), with a final explosion of superheated fire and ferocity at the finale, and one last jaw-dropping example of how much the drumwork adds to the song’s pulse-pounding impacts.
The riffs really are golden — as hook-filled as they are vicious, brazen, and stricken.
The publicist for Gryla‘s label Iron Bonehead Productions has shared some other useful impressions about the album as a whole:
The work of one prodigiously young Torbjørn Kirby Torbo, GRYLA honor early domestic touchstones like Gorgoroth and Dødheimsgard‘s respective first albums as well as Kvist‘s lone album and Sorhin‘s ’90s recordings whilst twisting the knife in different-yet-honorable ways.
For one, Torbo‘s skewed melodicism nods to the various schools of dissonant BM the past few decades; for another, there’s often a clanging, minimal-is-maximal punkishness that reminds of Bone Awl‘s influential tapes or Carved Cross more recently.
The Redeemer’s Festering Carcass will be released by Iron Bonehead on March 21st, on LP and CD formats. On or after that date, check the links below to order it. And after the links you’ll find one more previously released song from the album, “The Redeemer´s Festering Carcass pt2“.
IRON BONEHEAD:
https://www.ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/ironboneheadproductions
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