ALBUM REVIEW: Harbinger Winds – Gridfailure & Megalophobe

GRIDFAILURE & MEGALOPHOBE are an unusual couple of projects. Both have a sense of drama and and enjoy playing with a sense of dread, but a heavy experimental jazz influences renders their next pairing of ideas ever stranger, with Harbinger Winds being their most avant-garde album to date.

The first thing to note on Harbinger Winds is that it’s not strictly music in any conventional sense. Rather, it’s an uncertain journey into realms of discontent, all interlinked and yet their own brand of intentionally unpleasant. A Cadaveresque Breeze boasts an assortment of hushed, rasping voices and unintelligible whispers, a constant whizz like a dentist drill amongst the dreaded drone of unknowable instruments. Bellows too relies on haunting almost-voices, as intermittent static and disconnected plucking strings play tricks with your mind.

There are elements of what you might consider music within pieces like Something Foul, which feels like the music is desperately trying to battle through against the titular fiend that manipulates any notes and ideas into disturbing, irregular and incoherent backgrounds for its constant screaming.

Everything about this album is uncomfortable. There’s not a moment of content within Harbinger Winds, with each note and stylistic choice being tailored for a fearful experience. GRIDFAILURE & MEGALOPHOBE have made something with a real sour edge to it, like biting into an apple to find it’s gone rotten.

The album might feel like a meandering fumble from one evil soundscape to another, but it is very cinematic. Intermittent feels like hearing the demos for a Cronenberg or Carpenter horror film, the tapes distorted and warping. The descent from clean notes and easily heard spoken word in I Have Friends Up There Redux feels like the gradual, maddening deterioration of the house in the Kojima demo for PT. The sonic unravelling is fair genius, and nothing so decadently rotten has been produced in such a cinematic way on an album quite like this before.

For anyone with an inclination towards truly bleak and disturbing soundscapes, be it within cinema, games or various genres of music, this will be of interest. There are depths of madness that are bold and yet equally subtle, but it’s unclear if Harbinger Winds will be completely to anyone’s taste. It might be the kind of album you dip into to create a sense of disquiet to your reading or gaming session, but not one for close listening with friends.

Rating: 7/10

Harbinger Winds is set for release on September 9th via Nefarious Industries.

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