Artist: The Sawtooth Grin
Album: Good.
Label: Wax Vessel
Release Date: October 31st 2022
Location: Providence, Rhode Island
The The Sawtooth Grin return with their highly anticipated new full-length album Good., an album that is best described as a panic attack in auditory form.
The Rhode Island math/grindcore act have been putting out unhinged and highly technical music since the early 2000s and their vigor and ferocity has yet to waver. Good. shows that bands with this level of ingenuity and innovation do have the staying power that many of their grindcore contemporaries lack. It also shows that the band haven’t lost an ounce of their technical proficiency, nor have they shied away from taking things to strange and unusual places.
The driving forces for me on the album are of course the guitars, the vocals and the drum work, hell it’s the bass too, its all of it. Personally though, it’s the guitar work that had me hooked from first listen. The mathy technicality that Jason brings to the mix is absolutely captivating but never comes across as pretentious or wanky as some bands in this style do. This isn’t technicality for the sake of it, it’s worked in perfectly with the album’s overall aggression and jazzy complexity.
The vocals on the album are absolutely grating, coming across as raw, shrill grindcore style shrieks. I won’t pretend to be able to understand the lyrics because I can’t but that doesn’t matter because it doesn’t make me appreciate the music any less. The pure venom and spite carried across in these vocals alone makes them a powerful force that drives the album ever forward.
The drum work on the release is almost as complex and varied as the guitar work and brings a huge amount of energy and depth to its overall sound. Without this unrelenting percussion I don’t think the release would be nearly as impactful and abbrasive as it is. The album’s bass work brings additional complexity to the mix, matching the guitar at many points in energy and technicality. More importantly though, the bass adds some real depth of sound to the overall mix and makes it feel fuller and heavier as a whole.
Overall, the album is well worth your time if you like your music on the abbrasive and assaulting side. If you struggle with overstimulation, then it may be best to give this one a miss or you’ll be at serious risk or a migraine upon its completion.
Listen to and order the album:
