Having just stood alongside many like-minded people, including many I consider friends, and witnessed the ferocity that only a band like Whoredom Rife can summon live, it is with great pleasure that only a matter of hours later, I stumble across a band who, on paper, could give them a good run for their money. Enter from stage, er……south…GRAVEIR!
Now unleashing their third full-length, this rowdy bunch from Brisbane, Australia, have created something so sonically pummelling, so abrasive and as deathened as it is blackened, it’s impossible not to want to stand before them and witness this in all its ferocious splendour.
‘The Festering Triad’ succeeds where may others have fallen short. It creates a feral nastiness deep within its rawness – yet manages to sound gargantuanly produced and with voluminous sonic girth. The expert drum display from the off, in opener ‘Lord of Misrule’, is drenched in clarity and precision, whilst sounding like you are stood right next to the kit (piloted by a fellow named XI).
This record really opens out in the caustic barrage that hits through in tracks such as ‘Revanchism’ and ‘A Thief In The Heart Of Man’, and it’s the guitar/bass attack with all the descending lines and dissonant flourishes that gives the tracks both life, and death. The vocals, from the appropriately named Gloom, seem to switch between the hoarse barks taken from the bowels of Polish black metal, as well as sounding not too dissimilar at times to the late, great At The Gates frontman, Tomas Lindberg.
There is nothing particularly new here – but there often isn’t nor does there need to be – this is aggressive, barbaric and wonderful. They keep pulling them out at Apocalyptic Witchcraft and here, on The Festering Triad, they appear to have gone and done it again.
Best Paired With: A Hooded Top, Nausea and dusty chalk pentagrams.
Reviewed by Jaff.
The Festering triad by Graveir is out now on apocalyptic witchcraft recordings.
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