Ghold
Bludgeoning Simulations
Human Worth
You know the old saying about first impressions? Well, it can apply to music, too, and there are plenty of examples where those first few notes paint the entire picture for the album you are about to experience. Of course, all this preamble is to set Ghold’s ‘Bludgeoning Simulations’ as just one example.
The discordant piano keys that open Cauterise immediately bring a sense of unease and discomfort to the fold, and the raw, howling cacophony that follows does little to diffuse tensions. If that wasn’t enough to ramp the anxiety, then Place To Bless A Shadow cranks it through the roof. Owing more to noise and dark ambient than to post-metal, it is a haunting, shifting psychological horror movie-made-in-music, with creeping, distorted guitars, atmospheric tones, and whisper-sung vocals that will have you sleeping with the light on for the foreseeable. When it eventually explodes into metallic destruction, it is almost a blessed relief.
While Leaves follows a similar pattern, yet eschews the true crescendo at its conclusion, Rude, Awaken is where Ghold leave us: a clever mixture of their terrifying atmospherics alongside gargantuan wall-of-sound metal passages that sound like an unspeakable cosmic colossus levelling a civilisation. Appropriate, then, that the album is called Bludgeoning Simulations – a brilliant exercise in creating tense, claustrophobic post-metal. Sleep tight, everyone.
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Review By Lee Carter