ALBUM REVIEW: Gris Klein – Birds In Row
It is always dangerous to deal in absolutes, but if someone were to contend that BIRDS IN ROW are the best post-hardcore band of the past decade, you wouldn’t hear many protests here. Enigmatic and experimental, the French trio embody the genre in its truest form, rejecting boxes and boundaries in pursuit of something fresh, fearless and wholly individual. 2018’s We Already Lost The World marked perhaps the most obvious peak in their journey so far, and now they seek to climb higher still with their third full-length album Gris Klein.
With an underlying concept encouraging listeners to simply love each other, Gris Klein is, in a word, mesmeric. Its 43 minutes drip with passion and power alike as the band weave punk, screamo, post-metal, alternative rock and more into a rich and vibrant tapestry where not a stitch feels out of place. A lot of it feels like quite the natural continuation of the fare established on its predecessor, but at no point does that equate to tiredness or a lack of inspiration. Through chaos, cacophony, melody and expanse, BIRDS IN ROW’s urgency never wavers, with the results as arresting in the fury of tracks like Daltonians and Nympheas as they are in the more sweepingly atmospheric moments found in the likes of Water Wings and Grisaille.
Perhaps where this album thrives most of all is in its two longest tracks. Recent single Noah is one of the best songs of the year full stop. Stretching past the six and a half minute mark, its moody post-punk builds and builds in intensity as the band’s unnamed vocalist delivers an increasingly incensed and excoriating condemnation of our world’s attempts to solve philosophical questions with economic answers (“How ridiculous we look, here, clapping our hands as the waters rise”). Trompe L’oeil takes a good six minutes of its own too, this one initially leaning into a despondent alt-rock feel as the band sing of the loneliness of mental illness before taking a wild left-turn into a sweltering maelstrom of angular guitars, anguished screams and propulsive tom-driven drum work.
That isn’t to say the long ones are the only highlights though. Water Wings seizes listeners from the outset – a breathtaking opener that lays out the marriage of screaming fury and melodic beauty which defines much of the album to follow. Grisaille also benefits greatly from its dynamic variation, its initial savagery subsiding into something more emotive and mournful only to end once again in cathartic frenzy. Elsewhere, Cathedrals forms a diptych with the aforementioned Noah to take the album’s intensity to fresh heights; Rodin makes for arguably the record’s noisiest and most electronically affected cut; and closer Secession brings things to a melodiously frantic climax before allowing listeners a final minute or so to reflect over a repeated, reverb-drenched guitar line.
Ultimately, what makes Gris Klein such a triumph is that for all its creativity – artsiness even – it never comes across as pretentious or self-indulgent. There is something deeply pure and primal about what BIRDS IN ROW do here which sets them apart from many other experimentally-minded punk and hardcore bands. They aren’t afraid to push forward, but their choices always serve the overall flow and feel of the record, and as much as that may have characterised all of their work to date, it really is remarkable that they’ve done it so well again here.
Rating: 9/10
Gris Klein is set for release on October 14th via Red Creek Recordings.
Like BIRDS IN ROW on Facebook.