The third full-length album from these Japanese media-darlings is aptly titled ‘The End’. The end of the world didn’t come as promised (still recovering from my disappointment there), but the album does mark the end of the road for the band as a trio as since guitarist Mika Penetrator’s departure, Vivian and Risa have announced they have no plans to replace her. In case you are wondering what that means, well, as for the long-term your guess is as good as mine but for now it means The End has no guitars and the music here is made up of bass, drums and a combination of the two girls’ vocal contributions.
Perhaps it’s not unreasonable to state that the band have been, to a certain extent, overhyped especially around the release of Ill Innocence. The girls have been met with their share of detractors who use the counter-criticism that they are just ripping off another band with a very similar name (if you can’t work out who then you’re in the wrong place!), and if they were three big hairy blokes from Birmingham as opposed to diminutive Japanese chicks then they’d still be struggling away, grateful for whatever opening slots they can get down the Underworld and signed to a much less lauded label. That is probably true to some extent; they do come in the kind of package that PR and marketing types literally dream about (and unsurprisingly such bitter remarks tend to come from big hairy blokes in struggling bands; go figure!).
This album does seem to have fans divided. The fact is, this still sounds like Gallhammer, but takes their lo-fi crusty-blackened-doom noise and strips it down much, much further. Beginning at ‘The End’ we are met with an ominous, gloom-infested layering of bass sounds that don’t so much crawl along but sound more like they are being dragged against their will. As for the drums, it all sounds to be done in slow-motion. Incredibly unhurried and sets a very lugubrious tone for things to come. Making up for lost time, ‘Rubbish CG202’ rattles calamitously forth and captures the very essence of the underground; it sounds utterly filthy and completely unpalatable giving two middle fingers to all things polished, mainstream and, well, nice! This is downright ugly music for ugly people, and Viv’s vocal rasps back that up just nicely as they are full of hatred and scorn.
The discordant array of noise on ‘Aberration’ just doesn’t sit well at all; screechy distortion and unstructured bass sounds that sound like they just recorded an impromptu jam sesh although there is a certain charm to this mainly due to Risa Reaper’s excitable manga schoolgirl yaps. These continue on the chorus of ‘Sober’ which add contrast between the harsher tones of the main vocal lines. I like the punk vibe that comes across of ‘Entropy G35’, with its sped-up drumming and rollicking bassline it is possibly my favourite track on the album. It’s incredibly simplistic and grimier than a Japanese pseudo-snuff movie. ‘Wanderer’ seems to pootle along at an unhurried pace creating a certain tension and quickly lulling you into a sense of hypnotic gloom for its 11 minute duration.
I do miss the guitars if I am being honest, and at times I really do feel this is lacking something that was present on earlier albums. It still has the same gloomy spirit you’d expect from Gallhammer, and have found it quite enjoyable although really hope they bring in a third member to round out their sound on future releases.
http://www.myspace.com/ghammercrust
Luci Herbert
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