Band:	Gulch
Album:	Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress
Style:	Hardcore, Metalcore
Release date:	July 24, 2020
A review by:	RaduP

01. Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress
02. Cries Of Pleasure, Heavenly Pain
03. Self-Inflicted Mental Terror
04. Lie, Deny, Sanctify
05. Fucking Towards Salvation
06. All Fall Down The Well
07. Shallow Reflective Pools Of Guilt
08. Sin In My Heart [Siouxsie & The Banshees cover]

How many other hardcore albums do you know that have a cover of a Siouxsie & The Banshees song?

Formed by members of Spinebreaker, a death metal band with hardcore tendencies, and Drain, a thrash metal band with hardcore tendencies, and with me having no idea right now exactly who is and who isn't in the band anymore (post your goddamn lineups). Quite obviously the two have a very intuitive common denominator. Yes, short fast hardcore is nothing new, especially not in 2020. This is something I could say about pretty much anything, so I'll leave it at that. Gulch do what they do extraordinarily well and that's all that really matters.

Spread out over a mere 15 minutes, Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is, as the title suggests, really fucking cerebral. Laughing at what other bands call "full-lengths", this one builds upon what the band had already sewn the seeds of in their previous demos and EPs, particularly on 2018's Burning Desire To Draw Last Breath. That one on itself was enough to turn a few heads and already built up Gulch's reputation as a really vicious hardcore band that could play around with powerviolence, MySpace era deathcore and some first-wave metalcore, and that could also be vicious on a bunch of different paces in a short runtime, so basically the best of all worlds. But if that was promising, Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is an improvement on every possible aspect.

Though it is still as short as it is, it is at least relatively more worth being called an LP, but it also uses its brevity to make sure you want more instead of wondering when it would be over. Thankfully, I am left wanting more, since the the band sounds more playful, more convicted, more bludgeoning, and more ready to either kick your ass or dance you around, depending on how they feel like it. The music is thought-out enough that it doesn't feel like they get a pass at it just for the short runtime, but also because this is clearly a hardcore album made by people with a love for both hardcore and metal. For a genre where a lot of its hype comes from the live performances, having to put the same energy just into a record is a challenge enough, but Gulch give off extraordinary amounts of energy here.

And covering a Siouxsie & The Banshees song for a closer is such a power move. And since they already left me wanting more just as they close with their most ambitious track yet is just too much of a tease. I genuinely hope the hype doesn't die down just so festivals around me book them by the time this whole thing dies down. I would've written another paragraph of praise, but by the time you would've read that, you could've listened to the entire thing and would've been convinced by now.