Review Summary: gird your loins.
It is 4am and I am on the verge of total delirium; my exhaustion level is through the roof and yet I cannot get off that stupid contraption known as Myspace. I have been searching through the ‘Grind’ sections of MyspaceMusic for nearly 3 hours now and after countless wecamewithbrokenteeth look-alikes I stumble across this inconspicuous band from the Mormon capital of the world (Salt Lake City for all you that failed geography): Gaza.
“I don’t care where I go when I die”
Those are the first words I hear from an anonymous female before their title track starts. Needless to say, it was enough to send a chill down my back and I could tell I was in for a rough time. I have to hand it to these guys; they know how to make one dark album. From a cursory glance a normal, God-fearing man would be instantly put off by their quasi-satanic album cover of a black goat set in a black room. But these guys are not hear to preach the words of Lucifer, oh no.
One thing that really interested me in their music was their lyrics. While mostly indecipherable in their recordings, they use a bare minimum of actual words in their songs (hell, ‘I don’t care where I go when I die’ is practically a bunch of incoherent screams), but they make use of very cleverly crafted one-liners throughout the entire album. To name off a few:
“I love you for all the reasons I could not shoot crippled horses” is taken from their opening track ‘Calf’.
“Jesus is tight but you'd probably find more happiness with a good plastic surgeon” from ‘Hospital Fat Bags’
“There isn’t enough medicine in the world for my headache” from ‘Slutmaker’
To describe the sound of Gaza would be to imagine a severely acid-tripped offspring of Converge and Neurosis, combined with the worst of sludge and grind that produces an absolute mess of a being known as Gaza. The production is very clearly low-budget, even on first listen. With the type of sound that these guys are going for, it is probably not a huge surprise that the dissonance from the guitars, combined with the choppy drum work and muggy bass riffs tend to mesh into one very sludge-like atmosphere.
This album is definitely not for the faint hearted. One must have a very refined taste in all things grind and/or doom to fully appreciate this album. The desperation and apathy that this album sets is enough to make every See You Next Tuesday fan out their whet their pants and have nightmares for months to come, I would know because I was one of them. So for the weary traveller that is traversing the path that is extreme music I leave you with this if you ever come across a small-time grind band called Gaza; gird your loins.
