Review Summary: Stare into the sun…
Not so long-ago metal fans became a surfeited bunch. I mean we’ve seen
everything right? Heard every variation of
everything? Innovation is just a concept these days, rather than a realisation. Words and dreams left dangling in the distance of a long-forgotten time when something “new” in music was actually possible. An impossible carrot, swapped with the ever-present stick. But maybe some of us haven’t given up
hope. The hope. Any hope that just around the corner, next week, tomorrow even, our minds will be blown, and innovation will be shown to us anew.
The Grove | Sundial isn’t that album. Sorry.
Don’t let me mislead you. Warforged’s sophomore is
good. It perhaps even surpasses the debut,
I: Voice in some respects, but what it does not do is dismiss the criticism of the first album’s…inconsistency. It could be argued that
The Grove | Sundial’s being is just as all over the place, and yet Warforged have released a record all the more appreciable because of it. Over-indulgent? Yes, but enjoyable all the same. Perhaps I’m simply being too jaded. I know this is some of the year’s tippy-toppy death metal and yet, the goal post is so far removed from the pinnacle, there is so much new death metal out there that Warforged are yet to hit the top or at least we as a jaded musical community expected a comprehensive, cohesive attempt at madness. Cohesive madness? No really. “No Land Man” is the threshold to which we measure new Warforged music. You see the track is really well put together. Smattering double bass work draws out an atmospheric swelling. Tones ebb in the back of a lunging collection of riffs and awakening instrumental section. Things are
looking good so far, but it’s not without bringing to bear the issues critics had with the album that precedes it. As the song continues, more and more ideas get thrown, literally thrown into the fray. While “No Land Man” gets intrinsically heavier, the acoustic climes that act as the song’s pre-solo just
exist. A mass of notes attempting to bridge the dissonant reach of guitar riffs and soaring string melodies. It all sounds
nice though, separate from the boundaries to which this art is framed. That’s all that matters.
Gentler introductions and clean vocals dominate the listener’s memory of “Sheridan Road” (the album’s second released single) and while the musicianship and clear lighter dichotomy is a refreshing stopgap between the clear death metal trajectory the album leans into there is a lot to be desired in those initial cleans. It’s a shame, because there’s a lot to take in here. The Opeth-ian faux growls, winding rhythmical progressions and varied screams are a metal fan’s bread and butter and the five-minute track time feels like a fleeting blip, leaving the listener with a sense of longing by the time the much shorter “Self Destruct Seminar” arrives. You can’t help but check as the track stops/starts through its closing moments. Is something wrong with my headset? No. Well, why is there silence, then riff, then silence and then “Bliss Joined To The Bane”? It’s because Warforged made it so, and they definitely got you to look.
I’ve been harsh in my criticism of
The Grove | Sundial thus far. I know it. But
The Grove | Sundial doesn’t deserve to be painted with a brush of greys and negativity. That brush would have to be broad indeed to convince anyone that Warforged’s latest is worth any sort of dissentious descriptor and only a true pessimist would consider taking the time. Perhaps I haven’t been clear;
The Grove | Sundial is massive, not because of its scant forty-five-minute run-time, but because it manages to fit so much into its nine forward-thinking, progressive tracks. “House Of Resentment” is categorically filthy, or at least until some minimal jazz-like clean structures interrupt a sea of distortion and growls birthed from the abyss. The track’s hook was thrown to the wind like an anchor off a moving ship. Chaos ensuing as it lands, sticking and catching everything in place violently. Despite the variance, the album’s better parts come from simpler climes. “The Place That Breaks Your Bones” and the closing “Painted Heart” don’t exactly follow the path the rest of the record has laid out—but that’s possibly more to the point of Warforged’s larger musical vision, preventing the listener from getting too used to a particular sound or style while the music runs rampant in any direction that’s both present and future in the making. Undoubtedly, this is going to cause headaches, there’s a lot to pull together in sequence, but
The Grove | Sundial isn't a sequence. It’s two halves, yin and yang. Chaos and anti-chaos, brought together by meshing the uncomfortable over the normal. And yet, these final closing moments manage to bring it all together in melody and heaviness, allowing the ethereal simplicity of climbing notes to bolster simple riff shapes. If you haven’t made much sense of
The Grove | Sundial so far, it’s likely that these last few moments are the clarity, the ending of the storm and feel like a glint of sunlight through an endless sea of clouds.
Largely I get why a band like Warforged could end up being so divisive in a community that’s heard just about everything. And yet, I can clearly see just why
The Grove | Sundial would transcend the usual anti-hype of a band throwing everything at a wall and having most of it stick.
The Grove | Sundial isn't a casual listen, but it’s not an immersive record either. There’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t put “Sheridan Road” on a party playlist and feel guilty, but the vacant stares will come just the same. Innovation may be a dying glimmer in the eyes of metalheads everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we need to forfeit the attempts at bridging the gaps between everything and nothing. Warforged’s
The Grove | Sundial is exactly that.
