GORGING SHADE – INVERSIONS

(Andy Synn refuses to throw any shade at Inversions)

So my weekend definitely did not go to plan.

Late Friday night my mum was taken to hospital due to severe and unexplained stomach pain, and then early Saturday morning was rushed into emergency surgery to prevent her from, well… dying.

Thankfully the surgery was successful and she’s now recovering well, but she’s not entirely out of the woods just yet, which means I’m going to be spending quite a bit of my time away from home for the next month or so.

As a result my posting schedule may be a little irregular for the foreseeable future, but hopefully I’ll still be able to bring you one or two gems a week that you might otherwise have overlooked.

Gems like Inversions, the long-gestating debut album from Atlanta’s Gorging Shade.

While this particular release hasn’t been widely covered as of yet, there’s been a bit of underground buzz about it ever since it’s release a little over a week ago, which is what originally helped bring it to my attention.

A lot of that buzz, however, seemed divided over whether to call Gorging Shade a “Blackened Death Metal” band or a “Dissonant Death Metal” band.

But the thing is, ultimately, that neither of those descriptors are really true.

Oh, sure, there’s a touch of atmospheric dissonance to the band’s sound, and perhaps a faint hint of blackening around the edges, but listening to the writhing riffs, rippling bass-lines, and complex, creative drum work present on songs like intense yet introspective opener “The Mass of Entropy” and the unpredictable yet irresistible “Disease of Feeling, Germed” quickly reveals that Gorging Shade are more of a “Technical Death Metal” band… albeit one much more on the “proggy” side of the spectrum… at heart.

Now, to be clear, the band’s particular brand of technicality – limned with melancholy melody and interspersed with passages of bleak, brooding ambience (both of which are especially prevalent during outstanding first half highlight “Clepsydra”) – shares more in common with the unorthodox, progressive approach of artists like Anata, Augury, and Lykathea Aflame than any of the more shamelessly shreddy or ‘core-influenced styles of “Tech Death”, with certain cuts (not least devious, insidiously dynamic penultimate track “The Actor and His Setting”) even hinting at a more Krallice-like sense of genre non-conformity.

But that’s what helps it stand out from the crowd – not only is it the product of a group of incredibly talented musicians (who also perform together as the instrumental Prog Metal group Canvas Solaris, which perhaps explains many of the album’s proggier proclivities) but it’s one which frequently chooses to take the less-travelled, but ultimately more rewarding, path.

And while there’s still a little bit of room for improvement (which is less of a criticism and more an acknowledgement that there’s the potential for certain elements – particularly the moody, noir-ish atmospherics which I’d love to see incorporated even more closely into the band’s overall sound – to be pushed even further) the truth is that Inversions is undoubtedly one of the best debuts of the year, from a band technically, creatively, and totally in sync with one another, from start to finish.