New Gorod album on the way.
Created in 1997 in Bordeaux under the name of Gorgasm, the band released two demos, an album and a split before changing its name in 2005. In 2023, Benoit Claus (bass, The Great Old Ones, live for Nader Sadek), Mathieu Pascal (guitar), Nicolas Alberny (guitar, ex-Antropofago, ex-Arcania), Julien « Nutz » Deyres (vocals, Grist, Ahasver, ex-Zubrowska) and Karol Diers (drums) announced the release of The Orb, their seventh album.
From Chrematheism, the first track, we have this virulent technicality at full speed with which the band likes to play, but also heady and jerky Prog patterns. Heaviness and violence seamlessly blend to let Death Metal express itself between waves of complexity, just like on We Are the Sun Gods, where explosive leads meet a solid basis on a frantic tempo. The band also places some catchy parts as well as more raw influences, especially in vocals, then the long break will come to temporize rage before fully confirming Progressive Metal influences, just like on The Orb. Clean vocals and airy melodies meet, sometimes letting screams take their place, but quietness reigns on this track, before Savitri reveals a compromise between the two universes, letting dissonant leads answer to more aggressive jerky riffs. But once again, the rhythmic calms down, offering worked and airy elements choking raw violence, and Breeding Silence applies the same, letting incessant harmonics populate its eruptions of rage, led by an uncompromising blast. Clean voice appears again to temporize worked riffs which lead us to Victory, a track with more Old School influences at first, then complexity comes back to the forefront, like on this hypnotic tapping flow. The sound becomes darker on Waltz of Shades, a disturbing composition letting musicians develop a universe between heaviness and abrasive tones before going back to full speed. Scale of Sorrow goes back to raw and efficient Death Metal elements while being guided by complex patterns, then the album ends with Strange Days, a curious cover of The Doors that the band easily adopts to perfect its new influences.
Gorod doesn’t rest on its laurels, and evolves towards a complex Progressive Death Metal with The Orb. If you like violence, you’ll still find some on this album, but also expect to be surprised!
75/100