layout: post tags: review author: knut artist: She Said Destroy album: Succession cover: https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2345175597_16.jpg bandcamp-src: 3374095560 bandcamp-href: https://shesaiddestroynorway.bandcamp.com/album/succession facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shesaiddestroynorway/ genre: Sludge Metal/Post Metal/Black Metal/Trash Metal/Blackgaze/Technical Metal release-date: 2021-10-15 label: Mas-Kina Recordings shop: #link to shop type: #only for specials — For those who have to genre define a band, this album will be confusing. For those of us who like it when musicians use their experience and skill to bend genres, this album is a treasure chest. It contains 11 songs written between 2007 and 2020, each recorded in January and February 2020 as standalone songs in guitarist Snorre Bergerud’s studio in Vilnius.
The band were quite active from their inception in 2000. The band started out as Peppermynte Gymsokk then changed the band name in 2003 to She Said Destroy, which is a song by the London band Death in June. It has been nine years since their last release, Bleeding Fiction - a thirty minute long single song EP. And here we are this year with a diverse and impressive 54 minutes long album with 11 songs.
The music on this album is so fresh and gives an enjoyable listen from the first track, ”To Ourselves The World Entire” which dives straight into sludge metal with growling vocals. The drumming is impressive, leading the song forward accompanied by hard riffs from the guitar and bass playing the melody behind it all. In the next song ”Eyes Go Pale” the music borders on post hardcore, with the growling vocals in the background. The use of dissonant guitars on this song makes it almost without progress in spite of the drumming and bass driving it forward. It is like the music holds its breath.
The dissonant style the guitar plays, is used on many of the other songs, like on the third track ”Our Will Be Done”, where they dip deep into dissonant doom metal with blast drums which is a thrill to listen to. They pick up speed again on ”You Will End” which starts out as fast Black Metal with blast drums, some dissonant guitar riffing before an engaging melody rises from the murky music. There is a lot of heavy metal guitar chugging and groovy bass on the fifth track ”Greed Witches” - a perfect headbanging track. One can almost see the audience in one´s inner eye.
”Sharpening the Blade” is such a fascinating song from this band, showing the inventive music writing. They venture into the Blackgaze soundscapes with a song that begins hard and fast, then suddenly a very beautiful and memorable melody jumps out of the dark music. You will probably never get tired of playing this song. Both the quiet and the hard part of this song helps the melody swirl around in the sonics.
Darker soundscapes greet us in the next Doom Metal song ”All the King´s Horses” with low growling from the vocalist accompanied by heavy dissonant riffing. It is like they musically describe a world gone off the hinges. The next songs are composed in the same vein using different metal genres to give the heavy music a very muscular drive. But that is only until we arrive at the last song, ”Succession”. A melody played by organ starts the song and last until blast drums and guitar riffing gets your attention. The organ lingers over riffs from guitar until we are met by clear guitar that gets more and more dissonant until the song glides into a mix of Post Metal and Post Rock and ends with the lone organ melody.
This album is quite free from any concept as the songs are written over twelve years and with no specific album in mind. That could easily have been a really messy album where it not in the hands of seasoned and highly skilled musicians. The playfulness and joy they must have felt when recording, shines through the heavy, often gloomy music and make it an enjoyable listen.
