AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRAVA — “THE GREAT WHITE NOTHING”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 202024
 

(written by Islander)

The 2022 debut album from the Faroese/Danish sludge/post-metal metal trio Grava was an unusually compelling union of visual and musical art. If you’ve seen the cover of Weight of a God (here) and then listened to any of the songs, you already know how well the image matched the crushing music and the album’s utterly bleak conception.

That cover was conceived with one track principally in mind, a song named “Crusher” about a man condemned to be trampled to death by a work elephant in front of a crowd of onlookers, told from the point of view of the condemned man, who sees the beast as the manifestation of a god — a perception that connects to the album title.

All the songs on Weight of a God portrayed different instances of a human being meeting death, seen through their eyes at the last moment. Grava continue telling such harrowing tales on their follow-up album The Great White Nothing, which we’re about to premiere in full, one week away from its release by a trio of labels.

Once again, the cover art (again created by Johannes Larsen) vividly connects to some of those terrible stories, and to the album’s title, as explained in introductory comments provided by vocalist/guitarist Atli Brix Kamban: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: GRAVA — “ALIGHT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 042022
 

The cover art for the Danish band Grava‘s debut album Weight of A God is the kind of thing that immediately seizes attention and is not soon forgotten. Bathed in a deep apocalyptic red, but also dark as night, the image of an enormous bull elephant about to crush a prone form as cloaked figures dispassionately gaze upon the scene is striking. It’s also a visual match for the crushing music and the album’s utterly bleak conception. To quote from the press materials:

Lyrically, the band portrays scenes of death through the eyes of the dying, unearthed from the great tomes of history. Here you’ll encounter the final moments of shipwrecked men as
the icy waves fill their lungs and drag them to the deep (“WAVES”) and the howls of the 6000 crucified slaves that stood up to the power of the Roman Empire and lost (“APPIAN WAY”) or the unfortunate prisoner who was trampled to death by a work elephant in the East Asia of yore (“CRUSHER“).

While the cover image may correlate most directly to the song “Crusher”, it’s also a representation of the album’s themes as a whole, and connects even to the album’s title. Continue reading »