Greyhaven – This Bright and Beautiful World

By RingMaster Review on May 6, 2022 • ( 0 )

Previously we have flirted with US outfit GREYHAVEN, enjoying their previous offerings but sensing there was something fuller, richer and more compelling to come. Now the Louisville quartet has dropped their new album, This Bright and Beautiful World, and effortlessly thick curiosity for the next move in their growth was waiting.

Quite simply, This Bright and Beautiful World blew the cobwebs off of captivation with its tempest of craft and invention. Breaching a new depth and imagination in their fusion of progressive metal, metalcore and post-hardcore, GREYHAVEN have woven an encounter which twists and turns like a cyclonic eddy and roars like a voracious bear yet has a beauty of melody and harmony which sublimely seduced. Unpredictability fuels its imagination and bold adventure its character across ten tracks which contemplate themes of “frustration, depression, and the inability to fully express yourself and appreciating the darker parts of life, even though that may seem impossible at times.” It is a release though which takes thoughts to the positivity and inspiriting light in those moments, lyrically as impassioned and enriching as the album is musically inspiriting.

From the opening knell of In a Room Where Everything Dies the album gripped attention, dervish spun webs of guitar entangling the senses as rhythms drove their disagreement home. The throat rabidity of vocalist Brent Mills shares rancorous discontent within the harrying like a rapacious flame, yet as Nick Spencer’s grooves cast further rich enticement to the trespass, melodic radiance descends on sound and Mills’ impressive tones and delivery to further catch the imagination. The track sets the template of things to come, the fire in emotion which soaks each song and the intrepid craft and enterprise which shapes them.

The individuality of each track is simply revealed by the moment, both the following All Candy and successor A Painful and Necessary Action revelling in their uniqueness. The first is seeded by an alternative rock like contemplation yet with the fertile rhythmic incitement of bassist Johnny Muench and drummer Ethan Spray driving its persuasion, the track is a tempest in the waiting while the second is a maze of psychotic sonic threads and rhythmic animation which leads to a mercurial landscape of emotion, seduction and hungry temptation. The track is superb, a pinnacle in the album’s Alps of highlights.

Across the part feral part unbridled beauty of More and More Hands and Of Snakes and Swans with its intoxicating bedlam, the foursome infested and continued to light up the senses; both confirming that every song in ravenous trespass and scorching warmth are openly crafted on technical dexterity and emotional fire, the glorious Foreign Anchor further proof as it rampages with incendiary enterprise through ears. Once there though it releases a seductive melodic calm, though a momentary respite in its compelling creative psychosis.

A peaceful contemplation brings Fed To The Lights into view next, its melancholic splendour the gateway to a release of corrosive intimacy and another weave of gripping GREYHAVEN sound while The Quiet Shakes and And It’s Still Too Loud respectively intertwine and ensnare the senses and engulf the air with creative turbulence. Both tracks continued the album’s esurience in seizing eager attention, release closing Ornaments From The Well more than emulating their success with its ruminations through the brightest and darkest, indeed most elegant and primal, aspects of its brooding and capricious examination.

It is an enthralling end to a stunning encounter, a striking release which announces GREYHAVEN as one of the most fascinating and gripping propositions this moment in time. So come enter the glorious tempest of This Bright and Beautiful World?

This Bright and Beautiful World is out now via Rude Records (UK/EU) and Equal Vision Records (ROW); available through http://greyhaven.shop/