Great Falls - Objects Without Pain (2023)^{Release ID: 47430}

Wow! Just wow! "Objects Without Pain" is fucking amazing & has left me wondering how I can never have heard of this Seattle outfit before, despite them having released several full-lengths prior to this one. I'd describe Great Falls' sound here as being super-intense & abrasive sludge metal with post-metal & mathcore influences & they've also got one of the most in-your-face hardcore vocalists you'll ever find in front man Demian Johnston to top it off. This record is honestly one of the best sludge releases I've ever heard, taking the best parts of Chat Pile, Neurosis & Converge & ramming them down the listeners throat with the force of a thousand sledgehammers.

This record is honestly one of the best sludge releases I've ever heard, taking the best parts of Chat Pile, Neurosis & Converge & ramming them down the listeners throat with the force of a thousand sledgehammers. The musicianship is absolutely superb, particularly the rhythm section which showcases an incredible understanding of how to lay an interesting platform & in doing so prove themselves to be just as important as the more widely celebrated craftsmen of the band. There are even some lovely progressive sections with the more atmospheric moments sitting amongst the highlights of the release & managing to eclipse the more chaotic mathcore-infused numbers like "Trap Feeding" & "Born as an Argument". I honestly don't why people want to link "Objects Without Pain" to noise rock & post-hardcore as this is clearly a hardcore-driven metal record that's miles too heavy to require need any references to rock or punk subgenres. If it doesn't take out my album of the 2023 award at the end of the month then we'll have a seriously classic release on our hands though. Just listen to the crushingly heavy sludge metal of "Old Words Worn Thin" or the lengthy post-sludge closer "Thrown Against the Waves" & tell me this style of music gets any better than this (Hint: it doesn't).

For sure there are a couple of things I liked about Objects Without Pain, the guitar tone is nicely pitched and best of all the drums sound amazing. I could listen to an isolated drum track of this quite happily and would prefer to over the finished thing. Unfortunately I couldn't take to it other than that. The songwriting is too spasmodic for me, it veers far too much into mathcore, djenty type territory for my preference and although I really like the tone of the album, the actual songwriting leaves me cold. But the absolute killer for me is the vocals. I would be the first to admit that I probably put too much weight onto vocals but I think I am quite tolerant of some very divisive vocalists, Silencer, Cirith Ungol, King Diamond or Demilich for example, but if I take against a singer then it is like a movie with Adam Sandler in it and no matter how good the rest of the production, it still has Adam Sandler in it! Such is the case with Demian Johnston, his vocals amount to little more than shouting at the top of his voice and just come over like some angry child berating his parents for some perceived injustice and which I find wearisome in the extreme. I don't have an issue with shouted vocals per se, but these are just irritating and off-putting to me to the degree where, by the second half of the album, my mind is wandering and I have pretty much tuned out. I seem to be a minority of one and good luck to those who derived far more enjoyment from it than I was able to muster, but this just isn't one for me I'm afraid.

Objects Without Pain is an album that I appreciate more than I outright love. For starters, I did go into this record with some pretty lowered expectations after hearing the first couple of tracks. Something about the timbre of this record was sending my neurons into a frenzy as they reminded me of a Chat Pile album God's Country from a couple of years ago. The vocals of Demian Johnston had this cold, almost alienating flavour to them that would have been difficult to stomach, like that Chat Pile album, but ended up salvaging itself thanks in part to this records atmosphere.

A lot of sludge metal is supposed to be concaving in nature and Objects Without Pain does so with some really good production. A lot of newer sludge bands like the sound of layering upon layering the record with recordings and doubled recordings to emphasize the thrashier side that sludge metal is built from. But here, the guitars are actually quite small, which highlights some very intense percussion. The slower pace sections are intense and highlight some of this bands hardcore/metalcore influences like Knocked Loose.

But the vocals are still the tick in the back of my noggin' so there is no use in hiding it. Thankfully, the production on the vocals is far better than that of Chat Pile, but I still find them less than favourable. The delivery of almost sounding like out protagonist is about to break down and cry at any moment is a sound that I find gets tiring the longer it goes on for. And sure, I've mentioned names in the past that can do it well (Jordan Dreyer, Dylan Slocum, Kristin Hayter), but on this? I think the intensity of the instrumentals really does a disservice to the vocals. If this was, say, a progressive metal/post-metal album, I might have considered it an expressive decision, but with this, I consider it another one of those artsy "subverting expectations', by combining two styles that don't fit well together.

Fortunately for Objects Without Pain, this is not a full blown sludge metal album. The hardcore punk/thrash influence does give the album some much needed variety and these vocals do fare better as the record changes styles. Some of the songs do run on for too long, especially that closer, "Thrown Against The Waves", but even they never felt like boring doom metal songs that refuse to develop or progress. I still enjoy the record and would recommend it to sludge metal enthusiasts, but just be prepared for a uncomfortable listening experience.

Best Songs: Trap Feeding, Spill Into The Aisle, Old Words Worn Thin

Boasting a line up from bands I have never heard of before coming to this month’s The Fallen featured release, Great Falls’ Objects Without Pain promised to be a voyage of discovery if nothing else. With a quote from a review of “…if you value art as a triumph of emotion over form, then you should listen”, alongside another quote that referenced comparison with Converge’s Jane Doe album, there was an increasing sense of intrigue as I teed up the stream on Spotify.

The first thing to call out is that this has Neurot Recordings written all over it. After just a few seconds of listening to the album opener Dragged Home Alive, there was no need for me to check the label this was released under. Strained vocals and sterile strings that eventually give way to monstrous riffage later in the track told me all I needed to know. The potent and pungent aggression inherent in the vocals and instrumentation reeked of a band with a real emotional connection to their art, presenting their songs from a very real place. Suffice to say that by the end of track two, Great Falls had my undivided attention.

Rattling into mathy territory with some of the more urgent and pressing tracks (guessing this is the Playing Enemy band member/s influence), Objects Without Pain represents a turbulent listen that possesses the perfect element of restraint without ever fully tempering the raging flow or direction of even the most franticly paced tracks. Where this flow does get flipped on its head and undertakes a dramatic loss of momentum it is done organically and sensibly to help inflict the emotional brevity of the messaging perfectly.

In the more sludgey moments riffs ebb and flow like huge tidal waves of black (not blackened) water with all positivity and colour drained from them. This album confronts the point where tired messaging stops being tiring and instead becomes seething frustration. It pinpoints where the collaborative approach to conflict resolution shatters into the lethal emotional shards that scar all parties involved. The notion that all loss is inevitable is never ignored but it by no means attempts to bill it as tolerable. I would disagree with the above line from the review I saw that said this album represents art over form. Objects Without Pain comes across as very structured, albeit with a crude sense of things dropping into place via the sheer brute force of the will of the musicians involved in its creation.

Whilst containing enough sludge to warrant the tag, there is a lot more to Great Falls than just one element of a genre of metal. The number of band members from the four bands that make up this mystery (to me at least) supergroup clearly gives Great Falls a broad palate to create from without ever overloading the listener. For those familiar with them, the band members of Great Falls are from Kiss it Goodbye, Gaytheist, Play Enemy and Bastard Feast.