So, you have clever song titles, a clever album cover and clever riffs and you decide to call your band Grey? Well I guess that’s a case of being clever in your own special way. Of course one mans clever is another mans utter pretention so as to how you approach this lot from Hamburg is all down to taste really. You may have deduced what sort of music Grey play by now but if not their style edges heavily towards mathcore with plenty of beard stroking, convoluted guitar wanking going on over this 31 minute album.
‘I Am God’ brings us into meaty axe worship with a straight in, no messing about jagged attack complete with singer Jakub’s sandpaper vocals, these are down in the mix behind the musical weight and I cannot say I particularly like them, they grate on the nerves but no doubt that is probably the aim of them as it is with the skewed musicianship. Basically if you are looking for easily accommodated melody it’s not very evident here, this is more about dissonance, although I guess you could again quite easily go in on that ‘clever’ angle. There is more room to breath in ‘Is It Getting Colder Or Are We Already Dead,’ vocals are higher up and the instrumentation is looser here and although still chaotic, clearer by definition. It’s still a headfuck though as the singer goes and does a bear attacking impression and things grind and blast around him. It does go into something resembling a tune for a while but the song as a whole keeps chopping and changing and is if anything schizophrenic and not particularly pleasurable to try and keep up with. There is a burst of more melodic hardcore with clean vocals on ‘Through The Roof, Underground’ which I do like but it is only a minute or two before we are back into the beefy bellowing of the next number.
As you may have guessed, I am not particularly a fan of this style. I do not mind complicated music in the slightest, but I just find this too damn needy and don’t find I get much in return from this, apart perhaps from a headache. Also song titles such as ‘Hangoverweekendmelancholia’ just wind me up, we are back at the pretentious zone. Mind you it is easy to fast forward to the last number here, which is called ‘My Job Here Is Done,’ and thankfully it is!
http://www.myspace.com/whoneedsyou
