A brand spanking new album release from Gadfly has finally arrived and for us, it's been pretty long awaited as we are somewhat familiar with the band's sounds, but this record surpassed all expectations as it blends that vivacious and aggressive live energy and takes a multitude of heavy rock genres and molds them into a record that drips with personality and a slew of influences.
The new record is called Sura and throughout listening to this release you will get not only fierce grunge, doom rock and metal, classic hard rock, and even tones and feels of '80s punk (early Misfits), but you get this sort of haunt that the record boasts mostly due not only to the guitar riffs, but the vocal approach as well.
It has been a damn long time since I've heard an album that was able to take all these approaches and create its own atmosphere with them.
The guitar tones are sonically driving but also have a particular feel to them and that kind of sticks throughout the record along with the vocal approach which at times can be bellowing and again, haunting with this bountiful and sort of powerful energy to them that matches the energy levels of the band, and this is super important with music of this nature.
Everything compliments each other so when the band gets sort of super gritty, sort of the vocals, when the band gets melodic and deepening, rumbling, and expansive, the vocals do all of the same but in a different way.
This is one of those bands where the vocalist is such an imperative part of the music itself because a lot of times you have bands like this one that are super intense, have amazing drumming and guitar work that make everything feel just super alive, and then the vocals fall short. This is not the case with this band.
As a matter of fact, at times the vocals can be way more intense than even the massive immersion of the band and music so it's such an amazing match of not only energies but textures and tones and the way that they balance each other out is outstanding.
This record is a step up and speaks volumes for this band because I've heard some of their previous stuff and it is equally as amazing, but this record shows a number of different sides to how they put their songs together and how they perform them so listening to the full album is an absolute must with this one.
If you listen to one or two songs only, you're not getting the full spectrum of what the record actually has to offer and that would be pretty shameful.
There are some surprises around the corners, some unexpected and slightly experimental tones, and sections, and you can tell that this is just an album that has a lot of different influences infused into it and pumping through its veins, but it is still made with fewer walls or boundaries then you might be used to.
I look at this as a huge plus because I think that we need more bands like Gadfly to make music. After all, they have a major passion for doing it and do not conform to certain kind of genres or be super radio friendly.
This is a freeing form of doomish, dirty, charismatic, full-bodied, driving and fiery heavy Rock music and I feel like this is the sort of thing that we've been missing for quite some time.
That freedom of 'this riff is daunting and awesome so we're going to just write an entire song based on this riff.' And then it comes out amazing in the end because the whole band falls just as in love with that riff as the guitarist did.
Feel like that is this band.
Having said that, of course, I have no idea how they actually write their songs but, that's the vibe I get.
Definitely take a super deep dive into this record and turn it nice and loud because you definitely will not regret it.
Commentaires