ALBUM REVIEW: Communion – Grave Lines
London’s GRAVE LINES return with their third record Communion and continue their creation and growth of what they call ‘heavy gloom’. Bringing together elements of gothic, punk and experimentation onto a bed of doom, they are tough to pigeonhole and it’s hard to describe their sound, as they put on display a broad range of influences and directions throughout these seven tracks.
Gordian gets things underway with a hearty punk aesthetic over doomic riffage, while vocalist Jake Harding barks a vitriolic diatribe. Suddenly everything slows to an even more telltale doom drawl, somewhat belying their mission to avoid overdone tropes of the genre to an extent, but the track still ends with a swan dive into a pitch pit of feedback-drenched noise, distortion and anguished howls. Argyraphaga possesses much more of a groove and sounds like something you would expect to hear from similar multi-genre dwellers OHHMS. Much faster and more ferocious than the opener, and with one of the meanest low-slung riffs on the record, we soon get a cataclysmic implosion of barbed roars, razor sharp feedback and thunderous instrumentation to see the track through.
Elsewhere on Communion, GRAVE LINES employ new tactics again, like on Tachinid; stuck somewhere between the realms of industrial drone and dark synthwave, Harding delivers a spoken monologue. Lines like “Enslaved and piled in mass graves / Clones of dead realities” echo over this horrifying soundscape, and just as it seems it’s all building to a natural next step, they twist and turn again into Carcini which lives much more in the desert doom sphere. The band’s chameleon-like ability to flit and switch between styles seems jarring at first, but it is moreover something to be admired, because it’s all done to an impeccable degree.
Lycaenid is by far the longest track on the record at over 11 minutes long (the next closest is a shade under eight minutes) and is a masterclass in building textured, introspective prose into crushing, vicious cacophony. The bendy riff that comes in around the four-and-a-half minute mark is delicious and lays the foundations for a middle third that encapsulates everything from epic doom to gothic majesty. Then the song closes with an acoustic coda that is as uplifting and beautiful as anything you’ll hear on Communion, and adds yet another string to their bow. A highlight of the record and one of the songs of the year.
While it would be easy to say that Communion is lacking a clear central thread and that GRAVE LINES haven’t found ‘their sound’, this record demands repeated listens and as you become more familiar with what they are doing, you will realise just how well crafted this record is. By paying homage to everything that made heavy music what it is today, be it BLACK FLAG, BLACK SABBATH or even BAUHAUS, there is something in this for everyone, without being cloying or pandering to subgenre tropes – that’s something to be celebrated from wherever you prefer to sit in the community. Long live heavy gloom.
Rating: 8/10
Communion is set for release on July 15th via New Heavy Sounds.
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