Usually when I go to a show, I make a half-assed attempt to listen to the bands on the bill that I am unfamiliar with. Such was the case with the San Francisco band Early Graves when I saw them open for Skeletonwitch last month at the Ottobar in Baltimore.
At the time of the show, Early Graves only had two albums in their discography, We: The Guillotine and Goner. So I listened to a few tracks from those albums. I liked it alright; they kind of had a blackened thrash-core thing going on.
What I did not know before the show was that they had lost their original vocalist, Makh Daniels, in a tragic van accident while on tour in August of 2010. Daniels' voice was deep and rough. Their new vocalist, John Strachan, has a slightly higher pitched and "thrashier" sounding voice. The vocals don't make a completely different band but they are distinct.
What also did not know, though I could have suspected it from the songs I heard, was that Early Graves' live performances completely destroy a venue. Everything about their performance that night--from the punchy drums to the crushing riffs and searing vocals--was a flaming ball of utter awesome aural devastation.
So it was with palpable excitement that I awaited the release of Early Graves third effort, Red Horse. I bought the digital copy from iTunes and devoured all 32.6 minutes of it twice in a row. Here is my quick and dirty impression of the album.
Hardcore and thrash are subgenres of metal that can be easily married. A bad marriage results in something barely listenable, but Early Graves merges styles with finesse. Songs like the title track "Red Horse," with its literal galloping drum beat, possess the right amount of catchy melodic riffing framed by an appropriate structure of visceral brutality capable of branding the chords into your frontal lobe.
Other tracks like "Days Grow Cold" churn through each measure like a guitar-powered locomotive, that pauses briefly to let you reflect before rocketing off again. The track ends like an acoustic balad. Very surprising.
Another track, "Death Obsesssed" wormed its way into my psyche. I found myself playing the song repeatedly before moving on to the next track. There's something sinister and looming in this song--maybe like death itself--and yet endlessly relentless. This song represents everything that I love about hardcore metal--raw vocals, desperate lyrics, riffs that grab you by the throat and drums that make you want to bang your head.
My favorite song on the album, "Quietus," is also the longest track. The first two and half minutes plow forward ferociously like much of the rest of the album. Then the song spirals into this melancholic, almost doomy section. The music builds to a soaring crescendo and closes out the album on a thoughtful note.
On the whole, I found the eight tracks on Early Graves' Red Horse to be thoroughly satisfying and packed with heavy hardcore goodness. As much as one can view hardcore as "catchy" Early Graves has figured out the formula while maintaining music that inspires a respectable mosh pit.
This album is masterful and brutally beautiful. Go check it out.
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| Early Graves @Ottobar 2012. Photo by M. Spiro |
What I did not know before the show was that they had lost their original vocalist, Makh Daniels, in a tragic van accident while on tour in August of 2010. Daniels' voice was deep and rough. Their new vocalist, John Strachan, has a slightly higher pitched and "thrashier" sounding voice. The vocals don't make a completely different band but they are distinct.
What also did not know, though I could have suspected it from the songs I heard, was that Early Graves' live performances completely destroy a venue. Everything about their performance that night--from the punchy drums to the crushing riffs and searing vocals--was a flaming ball of utter awesome aural devastation.
So it was with palpable excitement that I awaited the release of Early Graves third effort, Red Horse. I bought the digital copy from iTunes and devoured all 32.6 minutes of it twice in a row. Here is my quick and dirty impression of the album.
Hardcore and thrash are subgenres of metal that can be easily married. A bad marriage results in something barely listenable, but Early Graves merges styles with finesse. Songs like the title track "Red Horse," with its literal galloping drum beat, possess the right amount of catchy melodic riffing framed by an appropriate structure of visceral brutality capable of branding the chords into your frontal lobe.
Other tracks like "Days Grow Cold" churn through each measure like a guitar-powered locomotive, that pauses briefly to let you reflect before rocketing off again. The track ends like an acoustic balad. Very surprising.
Another track, "Death Obsesssed" wormed its way into my psyche. I found myself playing the song repeatedly before moving on to the next track. There's something sinister and looming in this song--maybe like death itself--and yet endlessly relentless. This song represents everything that I love about hardcore metal--raw vocals, desperate lyrics, riffs that grab you by the throat and drums that make you want to bang your head.
My favorite song on the album, "Quietus," is also the longest track. The first two and half minutes plow forward ferociously like much of the rest of the album. Then the song spirals into this melancholic, almost doomy section. The music builds to a soaring crescendo and closes out the album on a thoughtful note.
On the whole, I found the eight tracks on Early Graves' Red Horse to be thoroughly satisfying and packed with heavy hardcore goodness. As much as one can view hardcore as "catchy" Early Graves has figured out the formula while maintaining music that inspires a respectable mosh pit.
This album is masterful and brutally beautiful. Go check it out.
