ALBUM REVIEW: Worship – Rank And Vile
Portland’s RANK AND VILE are just one of many excellent bands that have come out of the US’ impressive and incredibly vibrant grindcore scene in the last few years. But to classify the Oregonian quartet as nothing more than a straight forward grindcore band doesn’t do their eclectic and energetic sound justice. Incorporating elements of death metal and hardcore into their muscular musical brew, their style is a lot more varied and interesting than that of your average grindcore band, and their new album Worship is solid proof of this, ducking and weaving between a range of influences without flinching away from the core intensity that informs the band’s music.
Churchstate bursts into life on a wave of grating guitars, tight, punk-inflected drumming and searing vocals. It goes straight for the jugular and grabs the listener’s attention immediately, serving as a short, sharp shock of caustic grind with a few chunkier death metal flourishes thrown into the mix. Bishops doubles down on this blend of chaotic aggression and muscular rhythms, ratcheting up the speed at points to a dizzying pace, with only a few bleak, melodic moments and meatier hooks towards the end of the song breaking up the unflinching intensity. Splatter leans a little more heavily into the band’s death metal influences, with the guitars and drums taking on a steadier tempo to allow the vocals to play a more prominent role in the music, carving through the mix with a harsh, throaty growl that complements the biting, disjointed leads extremely well. Worship is another juggernaut slab of deathgrind with an emphasis placed more significantly on death, with a few spartan hardcore sections added to create a more focused, domineering feel.
Destitution allows the underlying hardcore influences of the previous two tracks to take a more central role in the music, with leaner guitar work and sludgy bass providing a far more powerful and catchy sound that accentuates the more ferocious elements whilst still remaining punchy. Communion has a much denser, more groove-laden sound, with dissonant hooks and crushing rhythms lending this a coarser edge that tinges this with a hint of slam in amongst the grindcore, proving to be not only one of the heaviest, but also one of the most acerbic offerings on the entire album. Hexed, a keyboard driven instrumental piece, is a great industrial segue between the album’s two halves; it leads seamlessly into the following track Flayed, which is another fast and fierce piece of punk-inspired death metal with some incredibly punishing guitar work, frenetic drums and snarling vocals crafting another brief but belligerent monolith.
The next three tracks, Trigger, Torchbearer and Lobotomobile, all embrace the fleeting, fierce approach of the preceding track, blending together elements of death metal, hardcore and bestial grindcore in small bursts of cacophonous energy and abrasive musicianship. They create a flurry of monstrous and rabid activity that, in spite of their shorter running time, leaves a significant impact upon this latter portion of the album, drawing from the band’s myriad musical pallet and injecting a lot of ideas into a short amount of time. Cleanse adopts the visceral death metal style of the other longer tracks, with dancing leads and acidic vocal deliveries alongside savage gutturals and intricate drumming once again showing that this band are more than capable of developing slick, memorable death metal as much as they are skilled at making searing, caustic grind.
Worship may on the surface possess the sort of visceral and searing sound that has come to characterise a lot of modern grindcore from the States, but there’s a lot of different elements peppered into the mix, some of it quite overt, such as the industrial leanings of Hexed, which show that RANK AND VILE are concerned with drawing from a wider musical pallet than many grindcore acts, throwing in some punchy and weighty death metal and hardcore hooks to make their music even more memorable and lively. Hopefully, Worship will mark the first of many brilliant releases from a band that could very well become one of the leading lights of grindcore going forward.
Rating: 9/10
Worship is out now via Modern Grievance Records.
Like RANK AND VILE on Facebook.