If I was to approach this mini-review in the same way that Jon Chang approaches musicmaking, it would read simply:
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT.”
I first discovered Chang & co when I downloaded the Hydrahead sampler, and one of the Hayaino Daisuki tracks appeared on it. HD is like, the distilled essence of everything I love about thrash. I personally prefer HD to GridLink, but only in the way that I prefer slightly better beer to beer.
What HD is to thrash, GridLink is to extreme metal. (Pick your genre preference, I don’t care — if your average Slayer fan would listen to it and say, “whoa, that sounds like noise”, I just label it as “extreme”.) It’s like Chang and company have extracted the essence of what makes extreme metal awesome, distilled it to toxic levels, and injected it into the best 12 minutes of your life.
When I first picked up Amber Gray, I could only listen to it once through before needing a break. In comparison, the tracks on Orphan have much more variety. There are a few songs where you can even identify a chorus among the verses, which is quite the feat for an album where the longest track clocks in at 1:28. I bought the digital download mere moments after it became available, and I listened to the album for a straight hour before finally hitting my saturation point.
As an added bonus, if you buy the Orphan + Amber Gray combo pak (or vinyl), you actually get the remastered edition of Amber Gray, which is totally ninja. When I first hit play on the remaster and the new, shiny snare fill ripped into my skull, I had the distinct feeling that this was the best thing I’ve ever spent money on.
I hope GridLink does well enough with this album that they can continue to churn stuff like this out. As for me, it’s time to get back to the grind.
\m/
Comments (0)