Album Review: Grid - The World Before Us
Reviewed by Chris Taylor
Sludge infused Post Metal is a combination I didn’t know I needed before I checked out Grid, with their new release The World Before Us.
Celebrating ten years as a unit, Grid’s music has been evolving throughout their career. Beginning as an instrumental post metal unit, they have been adding more elements to each of their releases until we come to The World Before Us. An epic sci-fi theme is present to accompany the wider scope in music, as well as a larger focus on vocals both clean and monstrously guttural.
Despite the many layers that the instrumentation offers, the juggling of the two vocal styles are a clear highlight. Whether clean or guttural, they are both effective in portraying the narrative. The stunning Architects of Our World showcases this perfectly, with the cleans playing the role of humanity, and the gutturals the terrifying powerful deities. Think the protagonist from Rush’s 2112 conversing with the Priests of Syrinx (only if the priests were a tad more monstrous).
The juxtaposition is epic enough, but it would be remiss not to also mention how well performed these vocals are. The brutal guttural vocals in particular are some of the most infectiously heavy vocals heard all year.
Grid have been an instrumental unit for many years, giving them plenty of time to refine their skills at writing epic riffs. This has all been carried over onto The World Before Us. The music between the vocals is as impressive as it’s always been. Long passages of looping riffs, rich with reverb and delay, weight drumming and fuzzy downtuned riffs create a rock solid foundation and sense of gargantuan scope. The lengthy solo during Our History Hidden, with its simple yet effective melody, over the top of chugging and thick rhythm, sounds like what would have happened if Adam Jones featured on the first Mastodon album.
When an album has more than a couple interlude tracks it runs the risk of feeling disjointed. With two tracks that could be considered interludes, and an outro track mostly consisting of synths and noise at only four minutes, it would have been so easy to have this album feel half cooked. However all these songs and passages between them weave together so seamlessly to the point where this could have been released as one epic forty minute piece of music and there would be no complaints.
The World Before Us is such an intelligently written album. Its songs progress from one idea to another with such ease and the way the whole package links together is nothing short of genius. This is an album that should be listened to in full without pausing. It knows when to go heavy, when to go epic and when to breathe. One can only imagine what additional elements Grid will add in the follow up but whatever form that takes, I’m all here for it.
