(Andy Synn sinks his teeth into the new album from Great Falls, out this Friday)
It’s no secret that sludge-slinging noisemongers Great Falls were one of my highlights of this year’s edition of Northwest Terror Fest (FYI – tickets for NWTF 2027 are now on sale).
And while I was already at least passingly familiar with their ugly, unapologetically abrasive sound – all rough-hewn, splintery riffs, scraping, angular rhythms, and venomous, throat-scarring vocals – it was the raucous energy and raw intensity of their live performance which made them such a major stand-out.
The question now, of course, is whether – six albums deep into a 15+ year career of bleak, binge ‘n’ purge catharsis – they can still bring that same energy and intensity when the big red recording light goes on.
Those familiar with the band’s previous works will be pleased to know that The Bite… picks up right where Objects Without Pain left off, continuing the band’s slow but steady lurch into even darker, more dissonant waters with the groaning, grinding, gut-roiling sludge-punk prowl of “A Small Weakness”, six minutes of coiled tension and contorted aggression, laced with passages of visceral, howling invective and moments of bleak, shivering ambience whose minimalist emptiness contrasts harshly and shockingly with the song’s more maximalist excesses.
That’s not to say that album #6 is a carbon-copy of its predecessor by any means – especially since short, savage scorchers like the discordant, lurching “Pinned Against Time” and the caterwauling chaos of “Buildings Full of Rope” are almost a throwback to the band’s wilder, younger years – it’s more an acknowledgement that the band (vocalist/guitarist Demian Johnston, bassist Shane Mehling, and drummer Nick Parks) have been on this trajectory for a while now, and show no signs of deviating from their self-imposed downward spiral.
Nowhere is this more apparent than during the desolate, drone-infused squall of “Hailstone Numbers”, which simultaneously showcases Johnston’s vocals at their most visceral and vulnerable while also allowing the raging rhythm section of Mehling and Parks to cut loose with a performance that’s as disgustingly dense as it is devilishly dynamic during the song’s spitefully aggressive second half.
Indeed, while Johnston’s jagged, jarring riffs often get the majority of the praise – and there’s no question that his distinctive playing style, somewhere between the colossal weight of Crowbar and the barely-controlled chaos of Converge, remains a major highlight of songs like the carcinogenically catchy “Nicotine in the Spine” and the metamorphic madness of “Worse than Sleep” – it’s worth noting that Mehling’s tumultuous, tightly-wound bass-lines (as heard on the latter especially) and the almost art-rock style progressive percussion provided by Parks (his performance on “Debt Ethics” in particular feels like it should see him being referenced right alongside the early, and best, work of Mastodon‘s Brann Dailor) are just as key to this album’s success.
Sure, it’s unlikely to lead to a similar mainstream “break out” (especially since arguably the most “accessible” track here, grime-soaked seven minute closer “What No One Can Give”, is a gloomy, drawn-out dirge of sickeningly sludgy proportions) but it still reaffirms Great Falls as undeniably one of the most uncompromising artists – and what they do is art, in the most difficult and demanding sense of the word – currently active in the Pacific North West (and beyond).