“The Fury of Lullabies” by Gorazde

If you’ve been following experimental rock in any capacity over the past thirty years, you already know that the genre has seen more rollercoaster-like curves than most any other style of music. With the continuous diversification of avant-gardism around the planet thanks to the advent of modern recording technology, hybrids have been hitting record store shelves at unprecedented numbers, with even some long-term observers struggling to keep up with the hottest acts around. Among the bands to recently get my attention with new content, Gorazde has probably been the most profound in their performing ability, and their latest album The Fury of Lullabies is a real testament to the chemistry they share in the studio. 

The Fury of Lullabies takes bits and pieces from across the darker end of the aesthetical spectrum to form a thoroughly doomful listening experience indebted to metallic sounds as much as it is acoustic death rock in the style of Dax Riggs or Glenn Danzig. Songs like “Enucleate the Third Eye,” “Orison,” “Last Movement,” and “Postulant” don’t ask permission to be muscular – they thrust potent sonic depth in our direction whether we’re ready for it or not, allowing for the girth of the grooves and the destructiveness of the distortion to form the foundation of the narratives in each song. 

BANDCAMP: https://gorazde.bandcamp.com/album/the-fury-of-lullabies

It can be said that the bulk of this tracklist relies on a sense of nocturnal hopelessness to create continuity between the songs rather than a consistent beat or approach to melodicism as more conventional acts might have utilized, and tracks like “Distant Spirals,” “Incubavit,” and “Dead Hand Path” aren’t without a texture of the most revered quality. Rather than using hooks and harmonies to shape the mood of the music, it’s all beefy instrumentation and blunt lyricism, which is somewhat refreshing to come across nowadays. 

I will say that breaking up this tracklist produces an entirely different storyline for the album than listening through from “Last Movement” to “Projections” does, but if you’re under the impression that this means The Fury of Lullabies has campy, progressive rock moments, you couldn’t be more wrong. Where others include camp, Gorazde only twists the knife of their nagging instrumental melancholy harder, filling up the spaces between lyrics with angst and discord rather than elements of a more theatrical quality. It’s unlike any of the other heavy rock records I’ve been listening to lately, but that could be why their third LP has stuck in my head as much as it has since my first acquiring it last week. 

Intelligently conceptual and supported by experimental attitudes that belong in rock n’ roll music full-time right now, Gorazde’s The Fury of Lullabies is one of the best albums of its kind to land on my desk all year long. Equal parts retro post-punk darkness and unrelenting doom metal strength, The Fury of Lullabies has all the right ingredients to turn on the dark psychedelic crowd this August, and from the looks of its critical reception, I think it’s already becoming this band’s most successful effort yet. 

Michael Rand