It reads:
And so it comes to pass, a new Gnod album. In case it appear that they now come around seasonally rather than annually (a bit like Christmas seems to) it’s worth bearing in mind that our last encounter with them, just a few months hence, was the time-marking career retrospective Easy To Build, Hard To Destroy. In fact it’s hard to believe that it is more than three years since their last non-collaborative full-length release.
The leanness and ferocity here carries the blazing torch of 2018’s seismic Chapel Perilous and indeed the brace of offerings before that. Well if things looked pretty grim up North back then, they look a damn sight bleaker all over, now. Appositely, the title translates as ‘The Death Of Meaning’ which for the fatalists among us kind of resonates, n’est-ce pas? The fact that it’s French may be the contrarian Gnodders thumbing their noses at a certain tousle-mopped Ear Flicker in Chief who’s overly fond of his Gallic goading. Or perhaps not, either way, it works both as a brutalised statement of art and of intent.
‘Regimental’ sputters into life with scrambled radio broadcast samples before being borne aloft by riff, power chords and trademark shouty vocal. So far, so viscerally Gnod. On the aural screed of ‘Pink Champagne Blues’, the two-drummer propulsion resurrects Twink-era Pink Fairies (previously Jesse Webb had only sounded like two drummers...
Read the rest here: Terrascope
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