According to a poster for a gig next month, Gnasch are “crushing sludge from Bristol, known for drowning legendary bills in sheer misery.” This is enough to make me a lifelong fan before I’ve even heard a note.
But is Gnasch’s first album The Legend of Johnny Gnasch death metal? Or is it doom metal? Can it really be referred to as ‘sludge’, or does it belong to the goregrind genre? Anyway, whatever bloodstained pigeonhole you want to put it in, you can be sure that it’s loud, gloomy, distorted, and just the tonic for the upcoming Christmas hellscape.
Sweden is famous for ABBA and slightly less famous for producing more death metal bands than you can shake a satanic stick at. Two of the more well-known Swedish death metal bands are Grave and Entombed, and Jörgen Sandström has been a member of both. Grave used to be known as Corpse but changed their name in a bid to achieve mainstream appeal. Sandström sings/screams on the opening track on The Legend of Johnny Gnasch – an album that features almost as many guest appearances as Live Aid. To mention just a few more: there’s Nicklas Rudolfsson from Runemagick and Sacramentum (the latter is melodic black metal, thank you very much), Erik Sahlström from General Surgery, and Richard Annerhall and Robin Westlund from the excellently named Repuked.
The Repuked pair join Jörgen Sandström and the Bristol trio on opener ‘Alcohellic’. If someone wants to assemble a compilation of mixed martial arts knockout moments, they need search no longer for an appropriate soundtrack. Just listening to it is the equivalent of being repeatedly hit in the head and simultaneously shouted at for devoting your wages to the liquid legal poison. Scream it quietly, but…‘Misled’ has a melody. It’s all in the filthy bass but it still counts. Queens of the Stone Age and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club will be taking notes. The track is also notable for a disgustingly audible throat clearing – phlegm has never sounded more thrilling. On ‘Decline’, clanging chords are as foreboding as the executioner’s axe, and the unease is ramped up by the tempo changes and death scream duet.
Medieval warrior soliloquy in the middle of a battlefield spotlit by the moon? Macbeth having a quiet moment? That’s ‘Hemlock’, though perhaps no words can do justice to the beauty of the haunting guitar. I realise that the wrath of black-clad purists may be incurred if I compare the start of ‘Leecher’ to nu metal, but what are they going to do about it? Curse me? Don’t worry, metalheads, the screaming soon resumes. If Gollum had irritable bowels, he would sound perfectly content in comparison with most of ‘Leecher’. ‘Erase’ is a call and response track with mammoth chords that make ‘Kashmir’ sound as aggressive as the Teletubbies. At ten minutes long, final track ‘Proclivity’ is almost a third of the entire album. Everything gets stirred in its pot: barbaric bass, growling that is deeper than the Mariana Trench, eyes of a newt, and every hope we’ve ever had.
As should be the case with all albums, The Legend of Johnny Gnasch is summed up by its cover: a picture of Johnny Cash flipping the bird, his skin melted and warped in the fashion of Freddy Krueger. Terrifying yet amusing (there’s a pun in the title for goodness sake!) Call it what you want: Bristol sludge, trip slop, make-you-deaf metal – Gnasch and their soar-throated allies have made an utterly brilliant record.
The Legend of Johnny Gnasch is out on 15th November on Bandcamp
By: Neil Laurenson