ALBUM REVIEW: Regeneration – Guhts
GOJIRA, BJORK, SUBROSA, CULT OF LUNA, ISIS, YOB, JULIE CHRISTMAS, PJ HARVEY and DEFTONES. No, it’s not the headliners for your new favourite music festival, it’s the list of influences for New York avant-garde post-metal project, GUHTS. After a storming debut EP in 2021, the core duo of Amber Burns and Scott Prater added Brian Clemens and Daniel Martinez to their ranks for their first full-length album, Regeneration.
White Noise opens the record with warbling strings and keys, wobbly guitar melodies and a punishing deluge of drums that instantly gets its hooks in. There’s something haunting and creepy about the thickly layered instrumentation that sets you on edge as a listener, like an aural haunted house, but Burns’ strong vocals command your attention. You’re here now and you’re in it. At almost eight and a half minutes, White Noise demands a lot of the listener but those who stick with it will find themselves continually rewarded with shifting movements and motifs that stuff as much of GUHTS’ genetics in as possible. When the guitars get heavy, it’s as if they’re trying to dismantle the room they’re in with sound alone.
Those low tunings and anvil-fisted chords feature heavily throughout, like in the closing half of Til Death, or throughout the rip-roaring Handless Maiden, but there’s a lot of softness about GUHTS as well. Generate in particular is mainly rooted in clean vocals and twinkling instrumentation, calling to mind the likes of SLOW CRUSH and adding yet another feather to their creative caps. It does feel though that within an album so rooted in building tension toward a heavy close, the track almost meanders, its delicate nature not quite having an obvious route toward that cathartic resolution. It does eventually get there, but at over seven minutes, you wonder if they could have sourced direction a little sooner.
But GUHTS are growing and if you want to see just how impressive that growth and evolution has been, compare Eyes Open to the opening track of their debut EP, Blood Feather. The track has gone through a stunning metamorphosis, one that hears better performances, cleaner production and tighter songmanship.
But it’s Regeneration’s closing track The Wounded Healer that absolutely steals the show. A powerhouse performance from all involved, their command of tension and passion is masterful, building the song up from delicate bells and soft melodies to a full blown assault on the senses. There’s a mystery and dread that lingers in its early moments as Burns sings of “haunting memories”, and by the time she’s shrieking “SILENCE MY HEART” over ten-tonne guitars and erupting drums, you’ve fallen so deeply for this track, you’ll be hard pressed to shake it for the rest of the year. Fans of OATHBREAKER and AMENRA, or even THROWING BRICKS, will find a lot to love in this closing track.
Regeneration sees GUHTS plant their flag proudly in the battleground of raw human emotion and they deliver some killer blows. With a little more refining this could have been troubling the ‘modern classic’ conversation, but as it stands, it’s just very, very good and whatever GUHTS goes onto next is one of post-metal’s most exciting prospects.
Rating: 8/10
Regeneration is out now via New Heavy Sounds.
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