| CD REVIEW Grave Forsaken |
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Band : Grave Forsaken Formed during 2004 in Western Australia as a four-piece (by plus former Katara members Matt Skipworth and Vaughan Gregory on bass and vocals/ rhythm guitar respectively, plus lead guitarist Elias “Shred” Salmela and the band’s first drummer), Grave Forsaken is a socio-politically influenced Christian Thrash Metal act, which has undergone a couple of line-up changes since its humble start. A year later, GF recorded their self-titled demo EP, and released it independently to a receptive audience. This first effort sttill showed the band’s early Death Metal influences, which were laid aside as the band started playing gigs (in and around Perth) and started writing new material. From September 2005 to September 2006, the band recorded their debut album Beside The River Of Blood in a variety of home studios (which explains the somewhat inconsistant sound on the album), and saw it released through Rowe Productions that same year. I guess that during this time lead singer Tim Steadman also joined the GF ranks, allowing Gregory to take a step back towards a backing singer position – which he shared with Skipworth & Salmela, by the way). With this album GF made it clearly understoof that they were not just a Thrash Metal band, but would also venture into Death and Doom Metal with such tracks as “Tribulation Cometh” and The Celebrity Judge And The Sinners, Part I”. During 2007 GF was featured in popular Australian Christian magazine Heaven’s Metal, established themselves as a touring band having just completed their 2nd trip to Australia’s East Coast to coincide with the release of the Horror And Sadness single, and celebrated the addition of their newest member in Scourged Flesh drummer Dave Kilgallon. They also started the recording of their second album at Fattdog Studio, home studio of Daniel Holmes, known as the guitarist of the band Templar (and, incidently, also the producer of Katara’s only 2001 EP…and currently still the band’s producer), annd founded their Grave Forsaken Mosher Crew fan club, now with a dedicated Myspace page (on which the band includes bonus rehearsal tracks to be heard by the club members only). Having again taken almost a year to record, sophomore album Destined To Ascension was released in 2008, and folllowed by another run of live performances. But even before the album’s actual release, Gregory & Salmela were back at Fattdog laying down the basis of further and future GF songs under Holmes’ guidance. This Day Forth, with recordings done between April and October 2008, is definitely the “quickest” recording GF ever made, and the first released by Soundmass…a clear sign of the fact that GF is slowly climbing up in the music business. Yet, TDF also marks a farewell to lead singer Tim Steadman. No idea how or why his departure came about, but currently Gregory has resumed to his former role of lead singer. In fact, with the very recent addition of Scourged Flesh rhythm guitarist Simon Hoggett to the GF fold (he had already replaced drummer Dave a couple of times during the last 18 months), he has since been put in the luxurious position to lay down his own guitar and concentrate on his vocals altogether. But before we go on talking about this band’s possible future, there’s still this current release to talk about! In all honesty, it took me some time to get into the material, and Tim’s somewhat limited vocal range was the determinant factor in that! With the material focussed on Thrash Metal [song length varying from just over 3 ½ minutes (“Mother Of Harlots”) to 7:11 (album closer “Affluenza”), with 8 songs amounting to an album lasting exactly 41 minutes] this time around, I’m guessing Slayer was a prevalent influence in the vocals (at least)…but Tim doesn’t quíte come up to those standards. True, thanks to a repeated listening, I’ve grown somewhat into his limited singing style, and got to appreciate the underlaying music (especially the longer tracks “No News…Ain’t Good News”, “Celebrity Judge And The Sinners Part III”, “Death Undone”, and “Affluenza”) and backing vocals. Ach, maybe you’d better check it aall out for yourselves by surfing over to myspace.com/graveforsaken (I’m afraid graveforsaken.com came up blank when I tried it…and I’ve no idea why that happened), where you will find the songs “This Day Forth” and “Mother Of Harlots” alongside ample older material! Christian Metalheads, of course, should at least feel obligated to check this band out! If you like what you get to hear on the band’s Myspace page, you better make haste in ordering the album, because Soundmass still might have a couple of copies left of the album’s first eddition (which came with a bonus DVD). GF are still at the bottom of the corporate music business ladder, but at least their longer songs are proof of the fact that this band does have a certain “je ne sais quoi” which attracts even the more seasoned listeners among us. Recorded in a real studio with a decent budget to back it, there’s no telling what an impact this album might’ve had! The potential is certainly present for greater things… 83/100 Tony. |