In this series of posts I'll discuss a random album in my collection I feel like talking about!
Grave Pilgrim certainly have their own brand and sound musically, and you can hear it across all 3 of their main studio albums. For me however, I feel Molten Hands Reach West summarises the band best. It's a perfect gateway into Grave Pilgrim's music. They are unquestionably black metal in sound and character, but they fuse old folky/bluesy Americana influences into their style of black metal, with plenty of melody to go with it. It's almost like listening to Old West black metal! That's the vibe I often get when I listen to Grave Pilgrim, but in particular this EP. It's good. It's sooo good!
The folk/blues-type styles seem to go hand-in-hand with the raw yet melodic black metal the band play. It doesn't feel like their trying too hard, nor does it feel like a gimmick in any shape or form. For example, the powerful BM of 'Forged in the Fires of a Setting Sun' is seamlessly followed-up by the masterful acoustic piece that is 'John Glanton's Bones' - it sounds like it could have come from a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western! Those Americana-style blues and folk influences are also particularly notable on the instrumental intro 'Sanguine Dawn' and 'Blood Memory', as well as the superb 'Young Hickory'. 'Young Hickory' is almost entirely traditionally blues/folk-based in terms of it's instrumentation, but the raw production, dirty overdriven guitars and dark, muted vocals are what give the track it's black metal edge. Excellent stuff.
Even the more "typically black metal" songs - 'Molten Hands Reach West', 'Forged in the Fires of a Setting Sun' and 'Hard to be a God' - standout from the crowd. They're more metallic in the traditional black metal sense than 'Young Hickory' of course, but Grave Pilgrim still write riffs in a way that make use of bluesy licks and extremely memorable melodies that with any of the tremolo-picked riffs that is textbook black metal. These tracks are riffy, and even if the production is appropriately raw, every note/chord/lick is audible - and since there's actually quite a lot going on within these 3 songs, that's a good thing. The vocals are as raspy and grim as you'd expect; maybe they're a tad too low in the mix audibly, but I don't think the vocals are necessarily supposed to be at the forefront of the songs anyway. If anything, they serve more as atmosphere - that's how I perceive them anyway.
This genre has become one of my favourites over the past few years (it only took about 16 years!) - I've liked black metal since my late teens, but I've only really grown to love it as I've gotten older. I've gotten hold of quite a lot of black metal albums over the past few years from bands old and new. Some of these I like a lot, sure, but but when I bought The Bigotry of Purpose earlier this year, I immediately picked up the rest of their main catalogue immediately afterwards. I pre-ordered this year's The Pungent Wine of Pride on vinyl too (it was released at the end of May). That's how much I liked Grave Pilgrim's music. I get a totally different and unique vibe/atmosphere from this band that I don't get with other black metal bands. It's not like I want every BM band to sound like Grave Pilgrim of course, I just appreciate bands that go out the extra mile to sound that little bit different. And as much as I really enjoy their full-length albums, it's this EP - Molten Hands Reach West - that I seem to return to the most. It's like a bite-sized looksee into their catalogue, and that's how an EP should work! Very cool stuff.
Please bear in mind that I'm reviewing this based on the fact it is an EP and not a full-length studio album. The 9/10 rating doesn't mean it's necessarily better than their full-lengths. It just means it's a really fucking strong EP!
Adam's rating: 9/10
