Review by Sonny for Grin - Hush (2024)

With Hush comprising 16 tracks and a runtime of forty minutes, it is obvious that Grin are a different beast from most of their peers in the world of stoner sludge metal, much preferring to build heaviness from the pile-up effect of a number of short, focussed sludgy blasts rather than extended stoner jams. Comprising husband and wife team, Jan (drums, vocals) and Sabine Oberg (bass), both of sludge band Earth Ship and stoner / psychedelic rock band Slowshine, this is their fourth full-length, maintaining their strike-rate of an album every even-numbered year since 2018. I missed previous offering, 2022's Phantom Knocks, but, to be honest, Hush, is very much in similar vein to 2020's Translucent Blades, so I guess that the duo have hit upon a formula they are happy to stick with and with Jan producing, mixing and mastering the album, he is ensured that he controls the vision.

Apart from the short song lengths, they also differentiate themselves from most of their peers by disdaining the use of six-stringers. The riffs are powered by Sabine's powerful, driving bass and the leadwork, as so far as it exists, is provided by synths. A fair number of the tracks also have a heavy psychedelic component with swirling synths and Jan providing washed out clean vocals rendered even more trippy by a noticeable echoing effect, with a couple (Neon Skies, Vortex) even sounding like metallised versions of the neo-psychedelia of the 90's Madchester Baggy scene. Whilst the psychedelic component is significant, this is no lightweight affair, it's bottom-heavy stoner metal bolstered by a sludgy influence courtesy of Jan's harsh vocals and the driving rhythms, Sabine's bass underpinning everything with a mega-solid foundation.

Ultimately, though, as much as I enjoyed Hush, it is an album I like rather than love. This is mainly due to the fact that I would like to have heard some of the ideas presented here expanded upon beyond the two or three-minute, self-imposed limit to the tracks' runtimes, some of them sounding like snippets or incomplete ideas in need of further development. I do like their fusing of sludgy metal and light and spacey psychedelia and I found plenty that appealed to me, but I feel that the promise of the premise is never fully realised and that is a shame because it is an idea that works well.