For me, instances of discovering a band organically are becoming extremely few and far between. Time and the occupational hazard of working with music make stumbling across an album cover (or in some cases a performance video) that piques your interest a rare occurrence. So imagine my joy when I scroll across the cover of Grogus' newest record Four Kings, with its necromancer-like figure and illegible typography. I didn't know what I was going to get upon pressing play. I was hoping for crushing riffs, and riffs I did get.
The band's 2016 debut Intuitive Readers and Metaphysical Artisans set the bar high for this new record. Its layered instrumentation and atmospheric additions landed Grogus in the tiny zone in which the circles of sludge, hardcore, and black metal all intersected in this highly specific Venn diagram. The trio pulls pieces from each genre to create something uniquely Grogus. The album's opener "An Oceantomb of Centipedes" knocks you off your feet with its one-two punch of shrieks and downbeats. Its multiple movements give you just enough of a reprieve before delivering another bludgeoning blow. "Biovore" feature guitar work that toes a thin line between hypnotic and manic, and sheer raw power cause "An Augur of Ebrietas" and "A Call Beyond" to churn and percolate beneath vocals that manage to both howls right in your face and somewhere off in the distance.
"Goat Temple" is the true outlier on Four Kings. Sandwiched between the two heaviest songs, the track is an odd ambient interlude with its ever-evolving cymbal swells, drum rolls, and billowing feedback. Its serves as a nearly nine-minute palette cleanser that keeps the two halves of the album from becoming a homogeneous slurry of blackened sludge. With a lot of noise inspired music, comes a sort of transcendence as the initial shock of the songs ill-defined edges wear off and the visceral emotional response takes over. "Goat Temple" may serve as an intermission, but it holds nearly the same weight that the five other songs do.
Like a lot of challenging music, Four Kings requires you to sit down with headphones and listen to it over and over again before it starts to make sense. This release is a feral creature that gives the listener these glimpses of intelligence between aggressive outbursts. Its raw brutality mixed with the band's more mesmerizing moments allow for a sinister, otherworldly journey and I'd recommend you should make the trip.
Four Kings is out now. You can purchase it digitally through the band's Bandcamp page or on cassette through Seasons of the Mist.
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