(written by Islander)
High-energy metal can make people pump their fists and bounce their bodies off each other. We see that, we do that. And although hell-raising music doesn’t really cause blood to boil or heads to spin (or Hell to be raised), sometimes that’s also a good way to describe the impact of a fist-pumping album like Grog‘s Sphere of Atrocities.
We’ve commented before about how unusual it is for this Portuguese band of brutal death/grinders, who’ve been plying their deadly craft since 1991, to hold together with 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.
It’s even more unusual that after such a long career they’re still pushing themselves musically, still sharpening their execution and still finding new ways of getting the blood of listeners rushing and their heads wildly spinning. You’ll realize this for yourselves when you dive into our premiere stream of their explosive new album today, in advance of its June 13 co-release by Helldprod Records and Murder Records.
photo by Hélder Soares
Sphere of Atrocities is Grog‘s fifth album overall and their first full-length in 8 years — a long time for fans to wait, but in this case patience has been rewarded.
The album runs listeners through a savage gauntlet of 11 compact songs, and they don’t allow much room to breathe, and certainly no time for quiet reflection. At full speed Grog‘s instrumental pyrotechnics are dazzling — and dizzying. When they downshift the pace, which they do quite often, it’s not for the purpose of letting heart-rates recover, it’s to inflict neck trauma and bone fractures or to send shivers down the spine.
The album opener “E.xit G.lobal O.bliteration” is a prime example of those strategies. It attacks with thunderous percussion, magma-strength bass undulations, madhouse riffing that maniacally writhes and viciously swarms, and rabid guttural roars.
The fretwork is indeed dazzling and dizzying — and demented. And the song still sounds demented when the band slow their speed in order to stomp the listener and gnaw their bones, spicing up the brutality with burbling bass-bursts. When Grog throw open the asylum doors again, all the band members vocally join in, like a pack of screaming demons, and the guitar convulsions (which include bizarre whistling and quivering tones) sound even more crazed.
A twisted kind of refinement is evident in that opening song, and an evident intent by the band to pack these new tracks with bewildering permutations, as well as catastrophic drumwork and hell-spawned vocal barbarity.
The following songs are also electrifying whirligigs, often spinning at centrifugal speed, frequently insane in their moods and insanely intricate in their permutations, and jaw-dropping in the precision of their execution, but like the opener they also include sharp changes in tempo, which are often the prelude to something cold and brutishly bone-smashing or nightmarishly chilling.
And on top of all that, Grog also infiltrate the songs with an array of eerie and unsettling melodies, and occasionally with dual-guitar solos that are exotic and enticing.
The music is produced in a way that allows every performer to stand out — which is ideal because every instrumental performer puts on one tour-de-force display of technical proficiency and bizarre inventiveness after another, and the vocals are ruthlessly barbaric and murderously deranged. It’s good we can clearly hear everything that happens, even if what’s happening is so wild and discombobulating that it’s not easily comprehended the first time through.
In reflecting upon the entire album experience, the word that keeps coming to mind is “alien“. It’s not only that the dexterity of the instrumental performers seems just beyond the capabilities of human beings, it’s also that the music sounds so unearthly, like witnessing the elaborate hyper-accelerated swarms of off-planet species or a peak inside their incomprehensible minds, or dismal visions of the ruin they plan for us.
Those other words mentioned at the outset also come to mind: The music is fist-pumping, hell-raising, blood-boiling, and head-spinning. Head-spinning most of all.
There really aren’t many bands who could pull off what Grog do on this album, or even to conceive of it. It’s a stunning piece of work that deserves a wide audience.
GROG:
Alexandre Ribeiro – Bass & backing vocals
Ivo Martins – Guitars & backing vocals
Pedro Pedra – Vocals
Rolando Barros – Drums & backing vocals
Sphere of Atrocities was recorded, produced, and mastered at Undergrind Studios by Rolando Barros and Grog. The album’s attention-seizing cover art, which represents the lyrical concepts encompassed by the album, is the work of Victor Costa.
It 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.
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
GROG:
grogpt@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/grogpt
https://www.instagram.com/grog_grind
https://www.grogpt.bandcamp.com