Heavy Song of the Week: Gatecreeper Mark Sonic Shift on Lean, Mean New Single “The Black Curtain”
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The post Heavy Song of the Week: Gatecreeper Mark Sonic Shift on Lean, Mean New Single “The Black Curtain” appeared first on Consequence.
Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, the top song goes to Gatecreeper’s “The Black Curtain.”
It’s refreshing to hear a band’s new single and witness a tangible evolution in sound.
Arizona’s Gatecreeper emerged roughly a decade ago among a slew of like-minded death metal bands seeking to revive the ethos of the genre’s early ’90s heyday: vile, goopy, Scott Burns-worship. They were one of the bands that continued to ascend even after that pre-COVID OSDM boom, and while many of their peers have continued to hone that classic sound, Gatecreeper appear to be growing from it — in a good way.
That’s not to say their new single “The Black Curtain” isn’t death metal. It certainly is — the low frequency guttural vocals of Chase H. Mason are — pun incoming — a dead giveaway. But this particular track has a tight and bouncy chord progression that would be at home in a Lamb of God-style groove metal song or even one of Alice in Chains’ more metallic moments. Kinda how Turnstile took hardcore and injected the catchiness, Gatecreeper manage to make this more than your average death metal song — accessible, even — without sacrificing the recognizable aesthetics of the genre.
Honorable Mentions:
Marty Friedman – “Illumination”
Shred fans rejoice: Guitar virtuoso Marty Friedman is back with a new album, entitled Drama. The former Megadeth/Cacophony guitarist teased the LP with the elegant lead single “Illumination,” a lengthy piece that touches the many angles of Friedman’s musicianship. It’s nice to hear him in Cacophony mode, for lack of a better term, where he’s weaving a modern classical piece via the medium of the electric guitar. There’s enough climatic moments to satisfy his more metal-leaning fans, but it’s also clean enough to perk the ear of straight-up classical listeners, as well.
Hot Water Music – “Remnants” feat. Turnstile’s Brendan Yates and Daniel Fang
Hot Water Music might have the most star-studded heavy album of the year on their hands. Nearly every track on Vows boasts a notable guest collaborator, and this week the post-hardcore vets unveiled the single “Remnants” featuring Turnstile’s Brendan Yates and Daniel Fang. It marks a full circle moment as Turnstile took their band name from a 1997 Hot Water Music track, and Yates and Fang help lift the song with subtlety, the former via backing vocals and the latter with additional percussion.
Six Feet Under – “Know-Nothing Ingrate”
Six Feet Under were stuck in a creative desert of sorts at times during the past decade, i.e. retreading old ground by re-recording early material (and not necessarily improving upon it). But then vocalist and band leader Chris Barnes tapped his old Cannibal Corpse bandmate, guitarist Jack Owen, for 2020’s Nightmares of the Decomposed, and the results were far more inspired. Barnes and Owen once again collaborated on the upcoming follow-up album, Killing for Revenge, and the misanthropic opening track “Know-Nothing Ingrate” is arguably the best song to bear the Six Feet Under name in years. Self-admittedly inspired by the pummeling thrash of Kreator and Dark Angel, the song hits that sweet spot between thrash and death metal that those aforementioned bands dealt out decades ago. Barnes and company hoist that same flag of aggression mightily.
Heavy Song of the Week: Gatecreeper Mark Sonic Shift on Lean, Mean New Single “The Black Curtain”
Jon Hadusek
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