ALBUM REVIEW: ETC – God Alone

GOD ALONE are the freshest kind of post metal, it’s clear from your first listen. With black metal style vocals alongside progressive musicianship that pulls into electronica, there’s a solid foundational knowledge of how to write striking music. ETC, their second record, is an evocative listen that will intrigue and turn the heads of many.

There’s a clear confidence in the work just through the order of the tracks on this record. It opens with the seven-minute track Tinfoil In The Walls, which plays with proficient guitar parts that string out melodies that might feel like jazzy, fluid math rock. The vocals pull the song into some unexpected places for the uninitiated, screaming in some distant place, but adding a texture that will click with the right listener.

Confidently bolstering straight into a nearly 11-minute second song Kung Fu Treachery after the fairly chunky opener is a bold move. You’ve got to be really confident you’ll maintain the audience’s attention on those bigger tracks enough that they’ll be engaged for the remainder. It’s a niche crowd that GOD ALONE are looking for, but there is a hearty crowd of people who will revel in what they’re making here.

It’s clear from the constant tonal shifts and masterful chopping and changing that record is not a lacklustre musing into genre blending. Clearly, it’s an exciting exploration into the album’s themes of nothingness. While that might seem bleak, the idea of nothingness and the ultimate abstraction, GOD ALONE take that idea and have huge fun with it. Title track ETC has some smooth vibes that cut through into broken electronics, with a really fun feel through the drums and the chanting vocals. It’s somewhere between trance and progressive math rock; hard edged and complicated, and cutting straight through into chunky, bopping synth sounds. The descent into more distorted, thick doomy sounds is a lovely devolution in sound to a much more aggressive final act.

There’s not just one routine method to GOD ALONE. TskTskTsk involves many styles to evoke its sound; clean, bright strings, distant screaming vocals, warbling keys, chunky basslines, 16-bit loops, and choppy and engaging drum lines. All the elements are intertwined in a way that seems random, but they are so well placed and put together that the song’s abstract nature circles round to order. Whatever the method, it’s great fun.

15BM 1989 is clearly their synthwave experiment. Still heavily inflected with strange time signatures, and JOY DIVISION-style vocals just talking away in the background, the lush bass and stringent synth heart are really good. As you can now expect from GOD ALONE, nothing stays the same for long, and before the halfway point things have erupted into chaos before falling dramatically into a tranquil jazz moment. This too becomes a mass of heavy riffs and dark, guttural vocals. There are so many styles and momentary changes that when things trail off and the band go full pelt into the maddeningly complex onslaught of the ending, it’s quite an experience.

Peony is somewhat reserved on the surface; it is something like listening to a hoaky horror film. It has a smooth, unassuming intro with a screaming, terrifying middle that makes for a tense, symbolic work. There are stabs of crushing doom throughout, and a heart-wrenching, dragging vocal amidst a swinging, metallic loop finalises the record.

This is a difficult record to sum up, but not a hard one to be utterly engaged with; GOD ALONE are absolutely phenomenal on ETC. It’s a journey into heavy, complex themes in a way that is not only technically masterful in a musical sense, but manages to take hard to blend genres and emulsify them as smoothly and deliciously as ice cream. A must for any experimental rock and metal fan, GOD ALONE should be one of Ireland’s most talked about bands, and definitely one you should keep on your radar.

Rating: 9/10

ETC is set for release on October 21st via Prosthetic Records.

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