Punching us in the gut with distorted pulsations that feel as big and brawny as some sort of mythical giant, “Diadem” is arguably one of the more industrious and electronically forceful songs in the tracklist of the incredible new album The Fury of Lullabies by Gorazde this summer. Although stacked beside thirteen works that bring a lot of intensity to the table in their own right, “Diadem” was the track that struck me as the most versatile of the LP in my first sit-down with The Fury of Lullabies recently, and it definitely left me wanting to explore the depth of neighboring songs all the more. Gorazde dives deep into an amalgamation of doom metal, industrial rock, deathrock, nihilistic ambient music, and a touch of post-punk psychedelia in this record, but believe it or not, theirs is as seamless a sonic cocktail as you could ask for in 2021.
Physicality is always at the center of every composition’s design in The Fury of Lullabies, but I like that tracks sporting a bit of melodic intrigue, such as “Kiss the Murderous Beak,” “Projections,” and “Orison” aren’t completely devoid of intricacy in the name of flexing. There’s no shortage of intellectualism to be found buried beneath the grinding strings of this material; from the grim “Until the Stars Bleed” to the more straightforward “Last Movement,” Gorazde sound focused on constructing a very specific narrative, and one that isn’t born solely of noisy experimentation alone. This is a thoughtful left-field record, and I see virtually every critic who reviews it agreeing on that point this summer.
BANDCAMP: https://gorazde.bandcamp.com/album/the-fury-of-lullabies
Ominous tones overpower any broken melodies in this LP, and I would even go so far as to say that “Beholden,” “Enucleate the Third Eye,” and “Incubavit” sport an almost jazz-like flexibility I wish I heard more of out of similarly dark acts in the ambient underground. There’s so much emotionality to be uncovered just beneath the surface of the guttural textures and unforgiving beats in The Fury of Lullabies that I’d say you almost need to sit down with the complete tracklist a couple of times through before you really can understand how many working parts there are in every song here. It’s complex but totally fluid, which is a combination I’m not seeing a lot of lately.
A stunning addition to their growing discography, Gorazde’s The Fury of Lullabies is one of those rare doom-style offerings that has the power to inspire a bit of catharsis on the other side of the tunnel as much as it does the ability to drag us asunder with its enormous basslines and bludgeoning beats. Without venturing too far off of the beaten path (for audiophiles, at least), Gorazde are touching on themes that a preceding generation of experimentalists failed to connect in any meaningful way. Here, we find them forming a hybrid sound that has as much appeal to the post-punk goth crowd as it does the diehard metalheads still rocking Saint Vitus t-shirts in 2021. Theirs is a marvelous work, and something I don’t see myself stepping away from anytime soon.
Rachel Townsend