On October 27th — tomorrow! — Ancient Temple Recordings and 7 Degrees Records will jointly release a new 7″ split by Seattle’s Great Falls and Brooklyn’s Radiation Blackbody, and today we’re presenting a stream of both bands’ contributions to the split.
The news of this release seized our attention mainly because of the presence of Great Falls. Even though Metal Archives hasn’t yet seen fit to include them, the band’s 2023 album Objects Without Pain is one of the most emotionally intense and stupefyingly heavy records you’ll find this year, and a worthy candidate as we get closer to year-end listmania.
At least for those of us around the NCS hovel, Radiation Blackbody was a new discovery — and, it turns out, a very good one.
photo by Scott Kinkade
Great Falls‘ Shane Mehling (whose GF bandmates are Demian Johnston and Nickolis Parks) told us how this split came about:
Demian and I have known Josh and Joel for over twenty years, from back in our Playing Enemy and Anodyne days. We absolutely love them and love pretty much anything they do. Radiation Blackbody is absolutely one of the most interesting and original bands out there so when we had the chance we pitched them the idea and they didn’t immediately say no.
But it really came together because Ancient Temple and 7Degrees let us make something exactly the way we wanted to do it. This is the fifth release Great Falls has done in 2023 and we’re incredibly grateful to cap it off with old friends and great labels and gross music.
Great Falls‘ track on the new split is “A Story Eaten Alive“, and it was recorded during the sessions for Objects Without Pain. It doesn’t last long, but neither do the blast fronts of nuclear detonations, and that’s the kind of cataclysmic event that these 2 1/2 minutes bring to mind.
With the drums blasting in a high-speed fury and the words screamed just as furiously, the guitar-and-bass work become a mangling wrecking machine going flat-out. The riot occasionally converts into pavement-fracturing stomp-fests, though even then the drumming is electrifying, and the band accent those crushing stomps with weirdly wailing and insanely writhing arpeggios, as well as abrasive blaring tones — and things get even more strange and hallucinatory in the song’s finale.
Good luck if you need to slap some genre labels on the song, or on anything else Great Falls have been putting out. Better yet, just let the song punish and dazzle you, repeatedly.
It turns out that Radiation Blackbody are no easier to pigeonhole, at least based on their song for the split — “Third Part of the Night“. Like Great Falls, this band have a superior drummer, whose crazed cavorting is a big part of the track’s appeal. But it’s appealing for other (head-spinning) reasons as well.
The bass riffing elaborately twists and turns, and swivels and swirls, like a big python moving at unnaturally accelerated speed. It’s a heavy, muscular, and predatory beast, yet also deliriously ecstatic in its fast, eye-popping maneuvers.
There are no vocals to be found here, but they’re unnecessary. The instrumental performances are so inventive, so extravagantly intricate, and so technically lights-out that the experience is thoroughly exhilarating without them. These 4 1/2 minutes flash by without any sense of time passing, and if you’re like us the first thing you’ll want to do afterward is… run through it again!
This new split is being released in a limited edition of 300 7″ copies, 100 with white and black splatter and 200 on black vinyl, pressed through Yokai Vinyl Pressing, and it features the screen-printed cover artwork of Joshua Scott, with layout/design by Demian Johnston. The music was mastered by Scott Miller at Ancient Temple Recordings.
Ancient Temple will release the record in North America, and 7Degrees will handle the European release. Orders can be placed now, and you shouldn’t dawdle because this thing is probably going to sell out fast.
ORDERS:
North America:
https://ancienttemplerecordings.bigcartel.com/product/great-falls-radiation-blackbody-split-7
https://ancienttemplerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/great-falls-radiation-blackbody
Europe:
https://www.7degrees-records.de/shop/7-vinyl/g-7-vinyl/#cc-m-product-16756484424
GREAT FALLS:
https://greatfalls.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/GreatFallsNoise
RADIATION BLACKBODY:
https://radiationblackbody.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063653936864
