Grave

Soulless (Century Media)
by Scott Hefflon

From the opening chords, the snarling guitars set the pace of an old choo choo train. Slow, plodding and mean, they repeat a simple riff and let you know that they are going to bludgeon you with sheer power and need no more than these three chords to do so. Despite Grave‘s ever increasing popularity over the last few years, I hadn’t heard them and was hoping and praying to no one in particular that they wouldn’t have a cookie monster vocalist. Evidently some people devour that style because it keeps being dished out and some of it’s sitting on the alterna-charts. I personally can’t stomach it because it sounds like overweight men with gas, but that’s just my opinion. Luckily, the vocals were just as snarling and wicked as the guitar.

“Welcome to Sinland/The Paradise of the Damned” is the welcoming introduction. A distorted, throaty sneer filled with irony and contempt, chants, moans and howls all over brutal stomp thrash. The production on Soulless is sharp, the songs seem to dig claws into your flesh and make you headbang. It also has the ability to grab a portion of your lip and twist it upwards. It must be some kind of Pavlovian instinct or something. After a little research, I discovered Soulless producer Tomas Skogsberg and Sunlight Studios in the credits of Entombed’s latest Wolverine Blues. Now I understand where that tight, clean, shredding viciousness gets its voice.

The songs are littered with ominous bellows, painful howls, tuned-low crunching guitars and feedback/pickslide/screaming solos. The pace alternates between thick, stomp-tempo grind, embellished with drum licks and fills to slamming double bass pit classics with frantic riffs and solos weaving about like speedfreaks street racing. Grave is death metal, make no mistake about it. They also display tight, complex musicianship, without losing any of their raw ferocity or larger than death intensity.