Artist: Grown Below
Title: The Long Now
Type: Album
Label: Solitude Productions

If you’re happy, then this will sort you out. Belgian band Grown Below combine two depressive genres, Post Metal and Doom. With 4 tracks out of the 7 lasting over 10 minutes, you could expect a drawn out affair. Indeed, 67 minutes of unmitigated gloom would be enough for anyone but this album is much cleverer than that. Time and skill are combined to weave ever decreasing circles of sadness and beauty. If an album could sweat sadness, you could wring it out and get drenched in it.

But “The Long Now” challenges existing norms and goes beyond the pure genres. “Trojan Horses” starts this amazing journey. We are surrounded by lush and melancholic tones, all gushing with feeling. The slow and deliberate approach is undoubtedly that of Post Rock Doom. The vocals are not uniform and range between clean, dreamy, emotive and guttural styles. It seems that there are contradictions but it’s so absorbing that this is irrelevant. Guitars resound melodiously and exotically in prolonged fashion as if they’re coming from somewhere else. The constant plodding of the drum and the bass guitar provides the epitome of sadness. We’re practically at bursting point when the track stops to allow us to take breath and comes back for more. After 13 minutes of such hypnotic beauty and varying angles, the 4 minute harshly growled technically oriented follow-up “Devoid of Age” is standard fare. The band’s strength, to which we have been witness already, lies elsewhere. The searing sadness, reinforced by the discreet use of the violin, returns on the next epic, the 12 minute “The Abyss”. This stuff’s designed to make you stare into space and weep. This is Doom at its best and of a paradoxically colourful kind. The bass rumbles through it again while the guitar captures the mood of intense emotion and the violin runs through the middle. The vocals are slightly out of the ordinary as if the singer from Disbelief had taken up Doom for a living. The minimalist sadness lingers gloomily but it is not funereal. Rather it is uplifting in majestic. “Minaco II: Nebula” is funereal, so much so that it’s like passing through a dark and lonely tunnel. This is another interlude before another monster track. “End of All Time” is just that. The mood is delicate, as the feeling is created of distant-sounding floating loneliness. As this spine-tingling track progresses, it becomes once again majestic in its quiet way. “End of All time” is completely absorbing. The title track starts in the now familiar plodding fashion with the equally familiar luxurious guitar in the background. The calm is then broken up, as the growler growls and the mood becomes harsher, in a not dissimilar way to Katatonia’s “Brave Murder Day”. A deep furrow is dug. I couldn’t claim to be swept along as it’s slow progressed. It’s more a case of being carried along. The drum now beats funereally. A female voice is heard. This is total gloom but not of an introspective or self-indulgent kind. The track becomes repetitive and slightly militaristic before bursting into life and almost anger. The album finishes quietly and that is appropriate. There are moments where fire threatens but the overriding impression is that reflection is what’s called for here.

Incredibly, this is Grown Below’s debut album. “The Long Now” has amazing maturity and depth. It makes you question your existence. For those of a weak disposition, I have this warning: listen to it in moderation or it will overwhelm you.

http://www.myspace.com/grownbelow

http://www.slowburn.ru

Andrew Doherty

MTUK HOME