Label - Prosthetic Records
Release Date - 3rd March 2023
Words - Tony Bliss
The idea that we are currently in the midst of a new golden age of boundary-pushing hardcore (following the scorched earth trail left by cult heroes Botch, Dillinger, Refused etc) is closer to a nailed-on fact by now, as more and more fresh-faced young bloods take a hatchet to the rule book and display a flagrant disregard for the sonic routine. Although not getting tongue waggings quite in the same way as Code Orange or Vein.fm, .GIFFROMGOD are still clearly hewn from the same rock as their scene-leading peers, and Digital Red is an eighteen-minute slap around the chops that may not redefine the world of heavy music itself but offers a tantalizing glimpse into the band's subtle sonic mutations since 2019’s approximation_of_a_human LP.
It’s clear from the off mind you that one thing hasn't changed; .GIFFROMGOD’s primary focus is still to take your head clean off your shoulders. Opener ‘knife goes in, guts come out’ is a monstrous thing, as it heaves into gear and stumbles between dizzying speed and blunt force hammer blows, like the confused churning of some broken engine trying to spring into life. ‘a kiss for every hornet’ follows suit with it’s scattershot dynamics and grindcore intensity, whereas ‘the cows meow’ is a spiky, atonal night-terror, a mid-song comedown not enough to save us from something perhaps as dissonant and ugly as the band have ever put together (although the scathing 'meat man meets man' is also a contender for that title).
Electronic respite ‘youth medium child psychic’ with its glitching beats and acid-damaged ebb and flow is an interesting glance at (what we would assume to be) an avenue the band are looking to explore further, however, there is an overarching atmosphere - perhaps born from a pitch-perfect production job - to Digital Red that really separates this batch of tunes from those that have come before, a disembodied, mechanical static and hum that when fused to these percussive twists and turns and hammering, discordant grooves somehow sounds more subversive and terrifying than .GIFFROMGOD have ever done previously. Sure, there’s nothing here that’s entirely unprecedented, but the sound of a band with the bit between their teeth is unmistakable, and on this evidence, Digital Red is a mouth-watering sneak-peek of things to come.
8/10
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