PULL THE STRINGS – GRIEFBLOOM

(Andy Synn kicks off another new week here at NCS with another new album you may have missed)

While it’s true that some bands spring from the proverbial womb fully formed, generally speaking mosts bands take a little bit of time to achieve their final form.

Influences both internal and external, issues of place and time, evolving line-ups and changing circumstances, all have an impact on a band’s development, and it’s difficult to predict exactly what confluence of factors will inspire a band to produce their best work.

And in the case of Pull the Strings, it was the shift from a pure solo project – masterminded by multi-instrumentalist Alan Brucke (also of Mind Prisoner) – to a collaborative duo (with the addition of the equally talented Gabriel Yadon) which has ultimately allowed them to achieve their full potential.

The duo themselves are clearly fully aware of this, even going so far as to state that Griefbloom “sounds like an entirely different band”… something which is pretty instantly noticeable as soon as the gloomy glimmer of “Ego Death” comes drifting, dream-like, out of the speakers, and then thoroughly affirmed by the shimmering, sorrowful strains of “From Winter to Winter”.

Reminiscent more of the likes of An Autumn for Crippled Children and/or Agape-era Lantlôs than the DSBM-leaning work of the project’s first two albums, the band’s sound – further enhanced and expanded by the use of extended-range guitars and bolder, more colourful synthetic embellishments – still retains the same raw energy and passion, if not even more so, but simply feels more vital and vibrant, as if the duo’s creative collaboration has freed them both from their self-imposed artistic chains.

Perhaps the most effective and impactful change, however, is in the vocals, which now employ a more anguished and agonised scream to express the album’s core themes of grief, sorrow, and loss, cutting through the likes of the gorgeously gloomy “Thereafter” (where they even shift into a more raggedly melodic, semi-clean howl of despair) and the desolately doomy “Lost Guardian” in an all-too-human display of pain and pathos.

That’s not to say that the guitar work isn’t also of note – the electifying, interwoven tremolo lines and scintillating arpeggiated notes of “Halo Aflame”, for example, combine both power and nuance in equal measure, while the thrumming, tightly-wound riffage and haunting harmonics of cathartic closer “All the Heavens Wept” wouldn’t sound out of place alongside the likes of Anomalie or Agrypnie at their best – it’s more that the changes here are in some ways a little more subtle, though ultimately no less striking in their impact.

Make no mistake, it’s more of a slow-burner than a barn-burner (even if the band aren’t afraid to employ some impressively intense blastbeats when necessary), but it’s also a real grower as a result, and one that rewrads your time and attention by giving back far more than you put into it.