EP Review: Gadget - Coerced
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Swedish grind veterans, Gadget, return with a new look and their first collection of new material in a decade – notwithstanding the pandemic split with Retaliation, which found the band assisted by numerous friends. One of those pals was Radium Grrrls’ vocalist, Emilia Henriksson, who made her position as replacement for Emil England permanent in 2023.
That Coerced comes ten-years after The Grand Destroyer is not an unusual situation for Gadget who left a decade-long gap between that record and 2006’s The Funeral March; but these things take time and when you’ve a band of the quality of Gadget, then the wait is often worth it.
Also joining the core Gadget musicians of guitarist Rikard Olsson, bassist Fredrik Nygren and drummer William Blackmon is second guitarist and backing vocals courtesy of Livet Som Insats and Infanticide member Kristofer Jankarls, turning the band into a five-piece.
Coerced is the first time this iteration of Gadget has the chance to flex their musical muscles on record and hit hard and hit fast with eight new track that collectively come in short of fourteen-minutes. But you don’t look to Gadget for their progressive approach, you come to them for balls-out grind.
Opener Nonsense builds from a quiet place, like some monstrous creature awakening from a long slumber; feedback hits then: BOOM, the Gadget we know and love is back, with a frenzy of rampant, grinding guitars and blitzkrieg drumming, Emilia barking bile-soaked lyrics into the mic. No Sense of Self continues in the same vein, adding a few flourishes from the guitarists; What Doesn’t Serve You both gallops and grooves, Gnistan is an explosive twenty-some-odd-seconds. Four tracks and less than three-and-a-half minutes have passed.
Funerary Rites adds guest vocalist Johan Lundmark of Prescription Death and Infraction to the descending riffs and Flatline might open with a doomy vibe, but that quickly becomes savage, raw and dripping with disgust.
Closing tune, Violently Silent, is an epic by comparison, breaking the two-minute mark with vicious wave after wave of controlled musical aggression. It’s a big and accomplished piece constructed around sawing, driving guitars and relentless percussion.
Before Violently Silent, comes Coerced’s most unexpected moment: the lengthy, droning experimentalism of False Pulse; ominous and unsettling, with added harsh Noise elements, this is what madness must sound like.
Rikard and Kristofer torture sounds that should not be heard from their instruments, Fredrik and William play active co-conspirators, but it is Emila’s ungodly vocals that steal the show as she howls and screeches like a woman possessed.
I had a right-good time listening to Coerced but, if I’m being truly honest, I didn’t expect anything different from one of the genres best kept secrets.
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