Review Summary: no base reality, just GRIND!
WHAT IS THIS: God Cum Poltergeist, the debut full-length album from CRISIS SIGIL!
WHO IS THAT: A hot new up-and-coming grindcore solo-project-turned-power-duo consisting of frontwoman/multi-instrumentalist/producer Ada Rook (of Black Dresses, Angel Electronics, scads of slept-on features) and drummer Melody Marrow (of Paleolithic Brain Surgery). First thrown together in several jittery fits of inspiration in 2019 with a punchy, crusty self-titled EP, expanded to slightly mixed results into a vehicle for Rook's burgeoning taste for scene-damaged flash-fiction lyricism and chunky alt-metal pastiches with
small towns. a year later, now reinvented in hi-fi in the wake of last year's diverse and pugnacious solo effort UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU.
WHAT IS GRINDCORE: A loose collective of underground styles innovated throughout the mid-late 80s and 90s by acts like Napalm Death, Assück and Nasum and controversialized in the internet era by wiseacres like Thotcrime and Cock and Ball Torture. Take loud abrasive genres, mostly extreme metal and hardcore punk, mash them together at warp-speeds, and ??? profit, tacking on proudly tasteless lyrical fixations on the scatological or pornographic in case of a lack of inspiration.
WHY IS THIS SOMETHING YOU WOULD WANT TO DO: I’ll have to take a rain check on that lattermost point, but as for the rest, I agree with the grindcore set on two big things: firstly, that all other things being equal, a FAST metal riff is better than a SLOW metal riff, and secondly, that said fast riffs are best experienced via small, digestible packages rather than labyrinthine guitar solo delivery systems. Grindcore is all about dispensing with as much downtime as possible between the shreddiest moshiest handbangiest musicks one can muster, often confining a track to as little as a single explosion of a verse. It’s thrill-seeking-via-guitar in what may just be its purest form; no genre can satisfy an adrenaline junkie like grindcore, except for maybe breakcore which
hey speaking of
ARE CRISIS SIGIL ANY GOOD AT IT: They sh
itsure are!
God Cum Poltergeist clinches Ada Rook as easily one of my favorite producers working in metal today, purely for her willingness to really reach into a track's guts, disrupting sonic continuity or getting in the way of a voice or instrument if doing so serves the end result. Check how that downshifting
waap-waap-waap rhythm in "Skybox" gets punctuated with a stuttering cut to the backing guitar, or the laser
pewpewpews in "Plasmageist" and "Meridian Verge" smearing into blurs of squelchy neon goo, or the jackhammering glitches in "Blood Semen Box-Elder" and "Halo Generator Breaking Down"— electrifying stuff, fun as hell on a tactile level and all finding a worthy foil in a typically grind-y riff-rollercoaster format. It's saying a lot that, even on a project so defined by the edit, Melody Marrow instantly makes her mark here as a grindcore dynamo, able to stand toe-to-toe with her formidable bandleader with nothing more than a drum kit. Her blast beats are nimble and ever-shifting in feel and focus, her d-beat tantrums a thing of pure momentum, her core throwdowns possessed by a surgically precise less-is-more sensibility. Aided by the chaos of Rook's production, she turns in what ought to be a star-making performance, and anchors the album experience as a whole in a blood-pumping physicality bound to satiate those who cherish grind's tendencies towards raw, live sounds and hyperactive virtuosity.
SO IS THERE ANYTHING HERE BESIDES THE GRIND: Sure, a bit! Matter of fact, two of Rook's finest hours yet exist in such untrve territory. Halfway-mark-ish pace-breaker "Portal Zero" takes that clown from Sleep Token back to school on how quiet/loud pop metal
should work in 2023, built around similarly angst-driven vocal gestures and poetry but animated by queasy ambience fizzing in-and-out-of-key and a scuttling snap beat they hold off on
just long enough for its introduction to hit like a pair of eyes on the back of your neck; when Rook's screams rip the track open in the last minute, the flash flood of blast beats, tremolo guitars and floaty keys spilling forth in her wake is cathartically overwhelming. Even more impressively, the closing title track swaps Marrow's spastic crust-punk rage for Rook's own souped-up digithrash motorik and builds it out into a beast of unfettered, rabid inertia, all Pokémon-battle synth arpeggios and frenzied amen breaks crowding the periphery while the album's most bracing, direct vocal yet takes the reins. The loose narrative of (best I can tell) a haunted flop house for artsy webfluencers may be of interest to some too, in its fleeting moments of comprehensibility, glancing off some pretty gnarly acknowledgements of the warped perspectives created by living alongside an idealized online self. It ultimately settles as stylish, considered window dressing for a crash course of real-deal metal pyrotechnics.
OKAY SORRY FOR YELLING CAN I GO NOW: You may, but real quick before you do—
God Cum Poltergeist sounds like a million computervomit-stained bucks and rips face all over the shop, so get on it or get left behind! Sure, a few tracks exist mostly as connective tissue or aesthetic reinforcement on an album that already runs comfortably under half an hour ("Wet Dream", for instance, winds up a shade too misshapen as an opener, stretched between metal and non-metal without representing either in a terribly gratifying light). But if keyboards or auteurist production work or industrial excursions or the occasional clean vocal are enough to preclude this thing from the accessible end of the grind canon amongst the likes of
Phantom Limb and
Unsilent Death and
Lightless Walk, then call it a dead scene— I’ve not been more excited to #grind this decade.
