CoC : Gravitar - Now the Road of Knives : Review

Gravitar - _Now the Road of Knives_
(Charnel Music, 1997)
by: Andrew Lewandowski (9 out of 10)

Ever wonder what would occur if, say, Joan Miro produced the next album of everybody's favorite lugubrious sludgy noise metal trio? Of course not, for the result would carry the abstract into almost incomprehensible depths! Sheer sparsity and desolation, juxtaposed with transient interludes into utter chaos, would reign! I pity the sanity of a man willing to expose his mind to an entire hour of such apocalyptic fervor! Well, tuck away little Bobby and pray that your good wife is vacuuming! Gravitar has unleashed 70 minutes of studio trickery set on deconstructing the mundane formula of rock music, and in the process create one of the most disconcerting soundtracks for suburban nightmares and urban traffic jams yet to originate from the minds of a band which still uses guitars. Although, you will not locate your typically linear guitar structure anywhere on this one. Instead, everything is repulsively disfigured, as the post- apocalyptic desolation of subtle dissonances alternate with virulent waves of dynamic noise and textured ambience. Occasionally, a moment or two can degenerate into sheer experimentation for experimentation's sake, yet this is to be expected considering the vast (and incoherent) array of sounds utilized throughout _NtRoK_. For the most part, they conjure up stimulating and emotive hallucinations, and one needs to look back to the last K.K. Null album in order to hear something even remotely similar to this (and true originality is never a bad thing).

(article published 14/9/1997)