Grá
Necrology of the Witch
6 Track E.P
Unexploded Records
Released 2013
Written for www.Brutalism.com
Grá – Stockholm
– Sweden
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/GR
Genre: Scandinavian
Black Metal
In the band own
words:
“The
quintessential subject of "Grá"
lies at the edge of this existence, at the borders of "life". The
necessity, beauty and significance of Death”
Grá was formed in 2010. Their lyrical themes touch on the dark
aspects of ancient Scandinavian spirituality.
In Cordibus
Vestris
For whom the
bell tolls... the intro goes on just a tad too long to be interesting and the
chants a little too predictable to fully engage the listener.
Necrology of
the Witch
The rolling
ambient sounds of typical black metal ignite into a distorted overflow of
rasping vocals, however, the monastic chanting spoils it for me somewhat. So
you won’t get much neck breaking done to this.
Οδεῦovταν πρov τηv
Στῦyα
It’s all Greek to me! but apparently means 'On the way to Styx' The sound of
trickling water and a clap of thunder prevails, storms a brewing! Dark
overtones embellish the track with intrigue to some degree, but little else is
happening.
Grá
Worms and Crows
A deep contrast
to the last 3 tracks as a rip roaring in full throttle thunder storm literally
explodes into action! – Time at last, to get that hair flying. It’s intensely
rhythmic and energetic with a good constant aggressive beat that twists and
turns ferociously into a dark ambience that gallops through its hypnotic core.
Excellent!
Helfärd II
Intensifying
riffs dominate a hollow drum beat with an immense amount of distortion and
gravelly evil vocals ensue. There is a dark melancholic accent of doom hiding
behind the slow melodic grooves but other than that everything is kept very low
key and rather uninteresting with nothing to feed from.
Freezing Moon
This track
however is showing signs of good melodic rhythms with some excellent guitar and
drumming. Vocally incandescent with a
crushing edge of dark building passages laced with doom laden structures that
go a long way to pleasing the aural.
To Sum up:
A rather
disappointing E.P really with there being nothing to pad out the sparseness so it
just rides on the bare bones of what could be potential greatness. ‘Worms and
Crows’ and ‘Freezing Moon’ are the bands redeeming tracks as they do offer some
compositional skill and adaptivity, but the rest of the tracks hold very little
in offering something tasty and interesting to really focus on.
I feel
personally that this isn’t showing the band in their true colours and think it
could do with being less restrained and sullen.
Granted Black metal is anything but jolly, but there seems to be a lot
missing from this recipe, which is a damn shame as there is a lot of potential
for the band to work with here but maybe they should combine more rawness into
the passages and emphasise their moments in a less subtle way. However there is
nothing of real importance here and relatively predictable in places.
2/5
Track List:
In Cordibus Vestris
Necrology of the Witch
Οδεῦovταν πρov τηv Στῦyα
Worms and Crows
Helfärd II
Freezing Moon
Members:
Heljarmadr – Vocals/Bass/Guitar
Dimman – Drums/Backing Vocals
Isengrim - Guitar
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