Here we have a split album between Midwestern black/shoegaze outfit Chrome Waves alongside one the most interesting bands around, New York City-area’s Gridfailure. The latter features David Brenner on his own, doing everything, while the former features James Benson on vocals, Jeff Wilson on bass, guitars, programming, synth, and vocals, plus guest Roman Pinter of Nott providing saxophone. Each band provides both originals and a cover, and while sonically they fit quite well together, they are also both very different indeed. First up is Chrome Waves and three songs which last nearly 25 minutes in length. The bulk is taken up by opening number “A Fair Wind”, which is an interesting introduction to the band. Here we have shoegaze and black metal crashing together into something which shouldn’t really work but somehow does. The vocals are in the background and are really just another musical sound, a harshness on top of music that in some ways is pleasant and fairy gentle, but with a strength and power coming from the black metal style guitars. It is cold and frosty yet made me think of walking into an icy cave wearing plaid slippers, a very weird visual oddity. The use of saxophone at different places during this number definitely adds to the ambience being created, but just as one thinks they know what is going on they come back with “Spring Moon” which commences with acoustic guitars, resonant piano and vocals which are more straightforward. In many ways these two songs are preparing us for the last, their take on Joy Division’s “The Eternal” (can that song really be 40 years old now?). It is deep, it is gothic, it is powerful and certainly intriguing.
From there we move into Gridfailure and “Day Terrors”. Dave is incredibly prolific, and I think I have reviewed all of his output in recent years, yet often find myself at a total loss on how to describe his music. Here I am again, and what struck me most is that although Chrome Waves contain loss and passion in their sound, they seem positively happy and buoyant when compared with the industrial post-apocalyptic noise that is Gridfailure on a roll. It is stark, it is brutal, bleak, and totally uncompromising. This will never be played on a mainstream radio station, and most people hearing this will run a while as he mixes and blends instruments and sounds so they often become unrecognisable and frightening. We get six songs from Gridfailure, each as deconstructed and powerful as the last, leading also to their cover version, which in this case is “Temple of the Morning Star” from Today is The Day’s classic 1997 album of the same name. Okay, so the battered acoustic guitar which can be heard from approximately one minute on is identifiably playing the riff, but the original never sounded anything like this as it is ripped apart and made far more frightening and intense than the original.
Two different sounding bands with a similarly disturbed outlook on life, this is well worth discovering.
Rating: 7/10
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/chromewavesofficial/
https://www.facebook.com/gridfailure/
