EARLY GRAVES – “Goner”
San Francisco’s wildly talented EARLY GRAVES have returned with Goner, their second full-length, and follow-up to the 2008 debut stunner We: The Guillotine. Like their first album, Goner is a tremendously fierce, burly offering. Compact in length (only 26 minutes long), but deep on throttling metal/hardcore powerviolence, the album hits with an instant kick to the groin. Sharp musicianship frames the sonic destruction, often until things simply meltdown. EARLY GRAVES are able in maintaining their composure for a few songs, and then, like on the fourth track “Rot”, things just kind of spiral out of control. It’s an addictive, infectious concoction. Think about what it’s like to attack a car with a sledgehammer — the first few shots are swift and focused, but by the eighth or ninth pounding, your grip has loosened and that focus has turned into off-kilter swing, attached to a mile wide smirk. “Wraiths,” the album’s sixth track is both the heaviest song, and the one that moves along mostly at half speed. Two words best describe its apocalyptic outro: creeping death (and not the METALLICA song). EARLY GRAVES’ sound on Guillotine was mostly off the grid when it was released, but Goner has some neighborly company with NAILS and their excellent 2010 full-length, Unsilent Death. And looking back even further, it doesn’t take much time to connect this ugly, but thrilling sound with that of RORSCHACH, or a filthier, faster DEADGUY (with extra bonus murky TODAY IS THE DAY content). However it’s described, Goner is another fantastic listen and it really ought to turn some heads.
