(The Swedish grindcore veterans Gadget are returning with a new EP set for release on May 8th (on vinyl via De:Nihil Records), and what we have below are DGR’s enthusiastic thoughts about it.)
While it isn’t that long in terms of grindcore bands, given their “jump in and jump out just as quick” nature and the way so many grind projects are ephemeral blasts of sound that seem to appear and burn to the ground just as quickly, five years is a good-sized gap for new music from a project. Sweden’s Gadget haven’t had it easy either.
A period of lineup changes saw the group without a full-time vocalist for a bit and their first release post-2016’s The Great Destroyer was a split with Retaliation that saw Gadget contributing four songs, each with a different vocalist. The fire was still there and each song punched in at sub one-minute-and-thirty seconds. That was five years ago, though.
One of the highlight songs that did emerge from 2021’s Gadget/Retaliation split was “Intenso”, which featured vocalist Emilia Henriksson stepping behind the microphone for fifty-seven seconds of manic and relentless energy that was everything you might’ve wanted out of the blastbeat-driven firestorm style of grind that is composed entirely on the high-end, high-tempo side of things with little room for groove or chest-thumping low-end.
Emilia would eventually take over the vocals segment of the band in 2023 and be joined by Kristofer Jankarls on guitars as well as vocals for a double-headed attack, cementing Gadget in stable form for the three years since. 2026 marks the newest release for this lineup in recorded form, an eight-song and thirteen-and-a-half-minute blast of music known as Coerced.
Coerced’s eight songs are actually closer to seven, with one big static-interstitial laying late in the track list. “False Pulse” is five minutes of ominous pulsating noise that works well within the confines of the Coerced, arriving after five other songs of absolute fury, but it also makes up nearly half of the EP’s run time in a fun bit of statistical grindcore ridiculousness. When all of your songs are sub one and a half minutes, even something as daring as taking a breath works as if you’ve wasted precious seconds when you could’ve been firing more blastbeats forward with the fury of a thousand suns.
Opener “Nonsense” for instance is a minute and twenty-six seconds, but half of that time is dedicated to the band fading in, sounding as if they’re arriving from the periphery of sound itself and the moment they actually land in front of you is when they’ll actually start playing. Once “Nonsense” starts in earnest, so does Coerced. The rotating vocal front and endless wall of guitar and drumming is absolutely explosive, and for most of Coerced you rarely notice the songs themselves stopping – you’ll get a quick breath and then it is right back into the center of the whirlpool.
“No Sense Of Self”, “What Doesn’t Serve You”, and “Gnistan” make up a three-pack right after Coerced’s introductory fireworks for about two minutes worth of music all built around a core of guitar and drumkit destruction, with vocal work that tags in and tags out with such quickness that Gadget’s vocalists seem to be teleporting into place. How they find any time to step up to the microphone is impressive. One will stop briefly after delivering the opening lyrical assault and the other is right there to follow up with any additions and amendments.
Gadget are a grindcore band that has mastered the art of frenetic energy and Coerced is a massive lesson in it, which is why “False Pulse” – mentioned above – works well near the end of the release because Gadget have already unleashed so much upon the listener in six minutes that any change in dynamics is water in the desert. “Funerary Rites” even returns into the musical collective again to fulfill anybody’s completionist desires. It is a song that has been kicking around a bit in the Gadget historical archives, having been initially unleashed in 2020 with Infraction’s Johan Lundmark stepping up for vocals. “Funerary Rites” is just as fire-spewing as ever and clicks in perfectly to the wider Coerced puzzle.
Gadget begin shifting gears slightly in the last part of Coerced’s run time, as the songs do extend in length but they also feature the odd-directioned and angular groove, making for a suite of music that does dare to slow things down a bit from the initial land-speed record the band are trying to set. Granted, that happens for a whopping twenty or so seconds during “Flatline” before you’re fed back under the treads of an earth-mover for the rest of the song, but “Violently Silent” conjures up that rhythmic spirit again for a hypnotic guitar riff for the entirety of its two and a half minutes.
“Violently Silent” sounds as if the Coerced EP has burned itself down to the smallest wick left by the time it hits, and that slower – by Gadget standards – tempo is the machine grinding itself to a halt after one final blast of energy. “Violently Silent” keeps the violence inherent to its sound close to its chest so it is still as teeth-gnashing as a grindcore band can crank out, but it also lends itself to a solid dynamic loop of Coerced bending over backwards to get the listener back to the start in the aforementioned “Nonsense”. Otherwise, Coerced is a record that starts as if it has been lit on fire and by the end of it you are watching a human-shaped pile of ash fall apart in front of you with inertia carrying it through its final steps.
Coerced is an explosive release to say the least. You’d never guess that there’d been five-year gaps between the last two Gadget numbers or that any sort of lineup shifts had happened in the background. The music on Coerced is about as close to a controlled demolition as you can get, every element of each song dangling right on the edge of disaster and the band remaining as tight as ever as they mow through song after song with nary a stop in between.
Coerced’s closing three songs makes for an interesting peek into Gadget’s future as something more angular than traditional grind, but the mix of the two within this EP’s bounds make for a fantastic listening session. The block of songs up front is an excellent demonstration of flame-spewing grindcore, an expulsion of energy with songcraft repeatedly taking blows to the head, with the back third slightly groovier and more deterministic in its approach. As has been the overriding statement with any Gadget release so far, Coerced is a great listen, and here’s to hoping that they take after one of their songwriting hallmarks and make the time until their next musical detonation far, far shorter.
https://denihilrecords.bigcartel.com/product/gadget-coerced-onesided-lp
https://gadgetgrindcore.bandcamp.com/album/coerced
https://www.facebook.com/GadgetGrindcore