AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GROG — “VEGETATIVE TECHUMAN”

(written by Islander)

The battle-hardened Portuguese metal veterans in Grog have been plying their deadly craft since 1991, remarkably holding together the same lineup for the past 20 years despite the usual upheavals in personal life and the world at large, not to mention the constant upheavals in the realms of heavy music.

Grog aren’t trend-chasers, but they’ve not stood still like statues either. All those years of experience have fed into a notable precision of execution by these sonic executioners, and a twisted refinement of their songwriting — but without abandoning the mauling and bone-smashing brutality of their core death-grinding assaults.

Where all those years have led them is now captured in Sphere of Atrocities, Grog‘s fifth album and their first full-length in 8 years. It’s set for co-release on June 13th by Helldprod Records and Murder Records, and what we have for you today is a lyric video for the second song disclosed from the album so far — a weapon of extreme sonic destruction named “Vegetative Techuman“.

In just slightly more than three minutes Grog fly their listeners at jet speed through a mind-boggling labyrinth populated by dangers around every turn. The guitars rapidly veer from intricate bursts of maniacally darting and weirdly screeching fretwork to dense swarms of eviscerating viciousness and passages of dissonant and delirious exuberance — with all the madness locked together by gut-plundering rhythmic jolts.

And speaking of the rhythm section, the drumming is as relentlessly variable as the guitars. It thunders and scampers, blisters at the rate of an overheating machine-gun, and cracks listener’s necks like a well-timed whip. And the bassist refuses to back down from all the wild instrumental pyrotechnics going on, contributing his own technically proficient machinations.

Perhaps needless to say, the vocals aren’t all the same thing either. They quickly vent the jagged barks of a big mastiff, screech like a strangling demon, and madly bay at the moon.

Well, the “Vegetative Techuman” trip isn’t completely at jet speed. At about the 2 1/2 minute mark, marked by a momentous introduction, the band shift into a lower and slower gear, transforming the music into a brutish stomp laced by jagged and jabbing tones and grisly musical moans.

 

Credit for making the lyric video goes to Ivo Martins (@i.v.o.m.a.r.t.i.n.s). The album’s attention-seizing cover art, which represents the lyrical concepts encompassed by the album, is the work of Victor Costa.

Sphere of Atrocities will be released by Helldprod Records and Murder Records on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats. For more info and to pre-order, check out the locations lavishly linked below. And also check out the lyric video for the album’s first single, “Pineal Turmoil“.

GROG:
grogpt@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/grogpt
https://www.instagram.com/grog_grind
https://www.grogpt.bandcamp.com

HELLDPROD:
info@helldprod.com
https://www.helldprod.com
https://helldprod.bandcamp.com/album/grog-sphere-of-atrocities
https://www.facebook.com/helldprod
https://www.instagram.com/helldprod

MURDER RECORDS:
info@murder-records.eu
https://www.murder-records.eu
https://murderrecords.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/murder666records