ALBUM REVIEW: Grave Lines, “Fed Into The Nihilist Engine"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 04/05/2018

Label: New Heavy Sounds

Grave Lines demonstrates irrefutable growth, confidence and deftness with a palette of emotional peaks and valleys.

“Fed Into The Nihilist Engine” CD//DD//2LP track listing:

1). Failed Skin

2). Shame/Retreat

3). Self Mutilation by Fire and Stone

4). Loss/Betrayal

5). Silent Salt

6). Loathe/Displace

7). The Greae

8). Guilt/Regret

9). The Nihilist Engine

The Review:

The United Kingdom's doom masters Grave Lines smashed their way onto the scene in 2016 with its "Welcome to Nothing," a debut that reveled in its sweltering power – blistering drums courtesy of Julia Owen, Jake Harding's disparate vocal attack and a style that puts a noise/sludge pace on you that would make Vasyl Lomachenko himself proud. And, happily, the band is back with"Fed Into The Nihilist Engine," a rugged return if ever there was one.

Grave Lines is intriguing because of its changeups. "Failed Skin," the album's 14-plus-minute opener, is by far the longest cut, and it is melting as it is impregnable. Don't let its gentle, loping opening chords fool you. As the bass kicks in, Harding descends from the heavens, with his punctuated and flaring vocals that rattle you out of your slumber. That clarity of voice carries on to "Shame Retreat," an ethereal song that makes the most of its strengths.

Grave Lines is unctuous with its heavy tracks, which slosh in hardcore influences, such as "Self Mutilation by Fire and Stone." You also witness promise with its gracefully constructed folk-tinged songs like "Loss Betrayal" and "Loathe Displace." The sharper among us might ask if the group is pining to be a metal team or more a hard rock band with departures like this. And in fairness there may be some attention to album arrangement, or else it becomes heavy-to-lighter-to-heavy-to-lighter song, rinse and repeat. Nevertheless the tracks themselves are strong, devouring your ears and imagination.

Now into its second album, Grave Lines demonstrates irrefutable growth, confidence and deftness with a palette of emotional peaks and valleys. As "The Nihilist Engine" closes out the album, it is impossible to avoid the many paths before the group, as well as one's own curiosity for what's next.

“Fed Into The Nihilist Engine”is available here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook