The Quietus reviews Gnod at Roadburn

It reads:

No other band could’ve done what Gnod did this weekend.
The first time I saw Manchester based psych institution Gnod some eight years ago now was a truly transformative experience. There relentless throb of their kraut influenced druggy psychedelia felt at once both monolithically oppressive but absolutely freeing too – their warped cacophony, I’m sure, on some level forever altered my brain. But quite honestly they looked more fucked up that most of the people watching them and band leader Paddy Shine spent the whole set looking as if he was having some sort of brain aneurism or stroke. Honestly, that they could have risen to the status of Artists In Residence at Roadburn was pretty unthinkable. Eight years later, though, and you really couldn’t envisage a band capable of doing what the Salford collective pulled off. From their searing, caustic improvised noise set on Thursday, to their nodding, multi-hued collaboration with Bristol’s Kuro on Saturday and their heavy-psych mainstage performance on Sunday as BBV with Radar Men From The Moon, like sonic chameleons the band moved through their guises with liquid fluidity without ever abandoning or jeopardising their core sound. It was their Friday ‘greatest hits’ set, however, that was the most special of the weekend. With vocalist Neil Francis back in the fold, the sextet powered through a heady melange of their heavier material, mostly culled from last year’s excellent Mirror, new LP Just Say No… and even, by the sounds of it, their psych-kraut masterpiece Chaudelande. At times soundings heavier and doomy-er than many of their more metal contemporaries on the bill yet also wandering into warped noise excursions that would make most other psych bands this weekend look about as psychedelic as shoe shopping this was a performance so buzzing with gnarled electricity as to be forever indelibly stamped into Roadburn folklore...

Read the full piece here: The Quietus

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