Album Review: Gridfailure - Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery II
Reviewed by Carl Black
Gridfailure is a solo project/outfit in every sense of the word. A one-man army laying waste with numerous co-collaborators to make up the numbers and divide the labour. It sounds more like a dictatorship than a band. The only people happy in a dictatorship is the local dictator. Happy to do whatever and whenever they like. With no one to bounce ideas off or get second opinions from, who can tell what masterpieces have been canned? Or how much self-indulgent tripe has made it to the listening public. But with this album being part two of a five album concept - about earth becoming inhospitable and humans are forced from the surface (ha ha what farfetched nonsense right... Right?) - one has to admire the ambition.
My review, unusually begins ten minutes into the album. This is three “songs” in, as the first two are incoherent sounds with a light strumming of an acoustic guitar. All very nice but this must be the longest intro tape since Public Enemy at Reading Festival in 1992. When we get a song, it's hard work to say the least. Hard to stomach industrial noise with over processed drums and distorted screaming. And then we are back to wind sounds, thunder and noise. And the next song and the next and the next.
It becomes very apparent that this work is very much an art project. Like a film score or soundtrack. Nothing wrong with a film score, but I, like my film scores whilst watching the film, not as a separate concern. With only two tracks as passable songs, this one is very much for the purists. The desire and spirit is there, but I think I’ll wait for the movie that I’m sure will accompany this 5-part odyssey, with all its post-apocalyptic terror. On second thoughts, I’ll just watch the news.
