Barren Path - Grieving - review
Barren Path - Grieving - review
Tracklist
01. Whimpering Echo02. Subversion Record
03. Primordial Black
04. No Geneva
05. Isolation Wound
06. The Insufferable Weight
07. Relinquish
08. The Unreliable Narrator
09. Celestial Bleeding
10. Lunar Tear
11. Horizonless
12. In The End… The Gift Is Death
A review by
ScreamingSteelUS December 14, 2025
And Barren Path gives you what you would expect from all those invocations: you're getting entire progressive death metal songs squeezed into 59-second bursts, with more musical notation per song than an average grindcore band utilizes in its entire career. Ask where "Primordial Black" found all those riffs and what "Relinquish" is doing with those harmonies and why "No Geneva" feels entitled to feed you such high-tension tremolo-picking and tech death scales. "Isolation Wound" tempts me to remember "Abstract Maelstroms" off Matsubara's solo album; although there's nothing quite so unorthodox as outright hip-hop constituted here, spoken words over this slipping breakdown is an unusual break in tempo for sure. A similar rhythm opens "Lunar Tear", whose imagery and guitar harmonies alike suggest In Flames being ripped apart at the seams. You get some acknowledgment of grind's punkier side in "The Unreliable Narrator", but even there it's only 30-some seconds of concrete slams before you hear fingers actually moving up the neck again: there's genuine musicality in these chopping tempos and squalling shrieks.
I'm going to stop trying to describe every song, because this is an album that you can experience in 13 and a half minutes, so why even read about it in the first place - you can afford this time, whether you like the album or not. But then again, I suppose there are a lot of grindcore albums that could make this claim, and you do want to be sure not to get lost in the chaff. The simplest pitch is that if you like Gridlink, you'll like Barren Path, and if you don't like Gridlink, you're about to have the dormant potential of grindcore explosively illustrated for you, and if you don't like grindcore, Kenny G is down the hall and to the left.
But there is more than just the one-to-one exchange here, as we are still talking about a different entity. Vocalist Mitchell Luna is a distinct personality, for starters: though he does ease you into the transition with some higher-pitched shrieks reminiscent of Jon Chang, throughout the album he will cycle through deep, guttural vocals and occasional mids for a broad range of pitches and techniques. The songwriting is on the whole less complex than Gridlink, despite having one extra guitar to work with: the notes on Bandcamp phrase this as "relinquishing high tech weaponry. Only use of rudimentary blades, precision blast strikes, and amplified guttural attacks is allowed." Now, that could be nonsense that I'm misconstruing as sense, or it could be referring to another aspect of Grieving entirely, but I interpret it as pertaining to the thing that I have independently noticed and that roughly tracks to this game jargon, which is that Barren Path prefers to let the brute force take the wheel sometimes. And to great effect: Grieving has a super heavy sound, not just noisy and loud but momentous and impactful. Its production is deeper than Coronet Juniper, actually closer to Perfect Amber in its belligerent heft; the choice to shave off some notation is backed up by more low end, and this is where you will hear more of the Maruta side coming through.
On the subject of heaviness, I have literally no idea how anyone spends 30 years as a grindcore drummer, but here's Bryan Fajardo pounding away with more energy than anyone else in the band, and still throwing in complicated patterns and fills beyond mere blasts, e.g. the closing volley of "Horizonless". I'm a fan of this project and its neighboring entities for their unorthodox approaches to songcraft in the grindcore sphere, but when you're writing under a label of grinding, mincing, mashing noise, you can't neglect the foundation that is pure adrenaline-distorted speed lines, and for that you need a drummer who is capable of rhythmically articulating their muscle spasms. I'd also like to highlight the delicious cover art by Hide Takakura, "the Art Demon": it's like Dungeon Synth Berserk: Rainbow Edition, combining black metal demo chic with high fantasy in a way quite different from how that usually happens. I love the color scheme and the chaos of it; it complements the approach to the music quite well.
Barren Path may not have quite the level of sheer unorthodoxy and experimentation as Gridlink, but it is definitely filling that same space on my shelf. I like blind extremity, I like pure speed and brutality, but more than that, I like hearing something interesting done in that context, and this is a group I can trust to take me on a strange journey in the span of only a few seconds.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 9 |
| Songwriting: | 8 |
| Originality: | 8 |
| Production: | 8 |
Written on 14.12.2025 by
Written on 14.12.2025 by
Dull Music for Dull People Comments
Comments:
4
Visited by
57 users
|
Posts: 212  |
Posts: 212
That was quite enjoyable! Would I listen to it again? Probably not. But I can appreciate the effort put into this album. Btw, I would rather listen to this album without the generic vocals that add nothing to overall emotion.
Loading...
|
|
Posts: 1819  |
Posts: 1819 Quote: Meanwhile he just recently played on an Imperial Triumphant album. 
---- Need a break from headbanging? Restore your street cred by visiting my hip-hop list! Tha Swagnum Opus: A Selection Of Hip-Hop For The Curious Metalhead
Loading...
|
|
Posts: 97  |
Posts: 97
After the mild disappointment that was this year's Chepang - this is exactly what I needed. Rotten Sound's 9 min (album? EP?) thingie was OK too. goddammit Zorn I know you're in the wily, venerable senior twilight of your lifespan but some of your records even recently are Naked City records in all but name n lineup. get the guy from Swarrrm drunk in the studio booth to do the vocals if you have to and BRING THE HEAT BACK, SIR. we need kitchensink JAZZGRINDDD
---- No one can fend off 100 multi-colored Draculas not even Count Chocula or Vlad's Dad (Fat Drac) maybe Leslie Nielsen: Dead & Lovin EET
Loading...
|
 Posts: 7900 |
Posts: 7900
It rings a good sound to my ear too. I hope it does not get washed as it happens with new grindcore acts.
Loading...
|
Hits total: 683 | This month: 10