Chain Gang Grave - “Prime Numbers” (Premiere)

November 5, 2015

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To the layman, math can seem like a cold, unappealing field – one of the few places where there are discernible right and wrong answers. But much like everyone’s least favorite high-school subject, if you spend enough time and energy on Chain Gang Grave’s new single “Prime Numbers,” it soon becomes clear that things don’t have to be so discrete.

Though the act’s name, along with the crush of feedback and dissonance that lead off their new track “Prime Numbers,” might prime you for a metallic sprint, instead the song opts for laying clouded, resonant riffs over a drawn-out d-beat before dissolving into a throbbing breakdown. That song structure might sound simple, but the music isn’t so straightforward; a variety of fills, guitar articulations and vocal styles build strange tension over the first two minutes of the song. Mixing sour and sweet might be done to death, but few do it as sharply as Chain Gang Grave. As with the band’s 2014 debut full-length When Your Friends Become Cops, “Prime Numbers” leans slightly more hardcore than metal, but the vein of aggression and urgency that unites those two camps is copiously on display here.

Stream “Prime Numbers” off Bury Them And Keep Them Quiet, below. Bury Them And Keep Them Quiet will be self-released by the band on November 13.

-Mark Moritz-Rabson

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