It reads:
Gnod – Mirror
9/10
There’s something odd about the way in which music like the throbbing primordial noisy rock Gnod employ on Mirror gets labelled variably as ‘punishing’ or ‘brutal’. At the worst of times it’s a glorious and triumphant sound; a shot of dense energy I find it hard to describe as anything less than utterly magnificent. In such an environment as modern Britain, anything other than shouting gets you bloody nowhere, which is probably what’s driven Gnod to the brute-headed tunnel vision of Mirror. In making the album, a trimmed down Gnod quartet did away with the spiralling rhythms of 2015’s long-simmering Infinity Machines triple album, and focused on blunter sonic instruments: volume, ferociousness, anger… fuck it, sheer hatred. Not counting a remix, the album’s a densely distilled three tracks in 35 minutes, and it’s both Gnod’s most unpredictable and clearest statement to date.
The group allotted a mere three days apiece for recording and mixing the record, and the material they got together was mostly written while on tour. To boot they were touring in the wake of the UK’s 2015 general election, which many of us have done our best to erase from our memories...
Read the rest here: DIS
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