Griefbringer's Toxic Doom Induces "The Horrible Wilting" (Early Album Stream)

Begin your Monday with the most essential of fare: riffs. While we all have enough tragedy and suffering at the start of the workweek, certainly, Griefbringer fortunately serves up more riffs than grief if you really crunch the numbers. The Italian group, featuring members of Monumentum, Schizo, and other local highlights has created a fascinatingly bizarre hellscape on their upcoming album The Horrible Wilting through agonizing, exacting doom that hides an experimental side.

Their primary fare is Lovecraftian-esque nightmares both musically and conceptually, but as tracks like “Ghosts of the Desert” show, there’s more than just off-kilter riffs here: deep laid-back vocals and more atmospheric instrumentals surface in the midst of the album. It’s hard to describe exactly what this combination sounds like–eldritch grunge, perhaps, as a complement to the rotting doom-sludge seen elsewhere on the record.

The Horrible Wilting displays a refreshing willingness to be uncomfortable. Griefbringer has an aptitude for picking riff tonalities and vocal approaches that, rather than just being heavy or fitting doom and sludge metal archetypes, fundamentally feel off-putting. Of course, this being metal, that’s a good thing–and this is something Italian doom metal has long excelled at, so it’s nice to see that legacy carried on. The Horrible Wilting is an uneasy walk through a garden of oddities. Stream it below before it releases this Friday.

…

…

The Horrible Wilting releases November 18th via Church of Crow Records.