Grayceon.txt
Grayceon - Grayceon
Date of Release: Feb. 14, 2007
2007 CD: Vendlus Records Vend021 (USA)
Tracks
01 - Sounds Like Thunder (Grayceon/M.Schenker/Meine)
02 - Song For You (Grayceon)
03 - Into The Deep (Grayceon)
04 - Ride (Grayceon)
Max Doyle - Guitar, Vocals
Jackie Perez Gratz - Electric Cello, Vocals
Zack Farwell - Drums
Grayceon is an atypical three-piece from San Francisco comprised
of electric cello, guitar, drums, and vocals. Pulling together
an extremely diverse range of musical influences and writing
styles, Grayceon's fresh sound defies the boundaries of the
metal/rock/progressive genres. Screaming melodic lines over
distinct guitar "chunk", doom riffs, jazz chord progressions,
intricate folk-like delicacies, and just about everything in
between can be found in a single Grayceon track. The cello
proficiency and the guitar finger picking style alone are
unprecedented in heavy music. And although the vocals are sparse
and the drumming unconventional, all elements are intertwined
effortlessly to give the arrangements a fluid feel that may not
be present in less able hands.
-- Vendlus Records
---------------------------------------
Consisting of four songs of widely varying length (from four
minutes to twenty), Grayceon's formal debut is a darkly
atmospheric record that embraces the stately, goth-tinged
element in metal that arguably has always been there - anyone
thinking otherwise hasn't listened to early Black Sabbath often
enough. The trio's members are drawn from Amber Asylum and
Walken, but it's too simplistic to say that it's a combination
of those bands; rather it's a jelling of separate aesthetics
that often produces something uniquely striking. Hearing Jackie
Perez Gratz's cello suddenly cut fiercely across the wired,
marvelously dramatic drumming from Zack Farwell makes for pure
thrills; interestingly it's often the group's singing and Max
Doyle's guitar which acts as the steadying anchor in contrast.
There's something very attractively early-seventies about
Grayceon's work, suggesting the more open horizons of what paths
metal could yet take instead of the outwardly-imposed
stereotypes it found itself struggling with in later years.
Opening song "Sounds Like Thunder" sets the tone beautifully, an
epic in all but name at eight minutes down to perfect
split-second pauses and a final conclusive ascending
arrangement. "Rise", the twenty-minute song which concludes the
album, takes this tendency to its logical limit, touching on
everything from the calmest possible vocal/cello interplay to
steady, doom-tinged propulsion to sheer mania and back again.
Meantime "Song For You", the shortest one of the bunch, could be
a lost Balkan dance song from earlier centuries with its nonstop
speed and keening vocals swoops; it's a song that could easily
be imagined as totally powerful without any amplification
whatsoever - and that's as metal as it gets. After so many dull
variations on the 'feedback plus orchestration' combination in
the early 21st century, it's nice to hear a band that figures
out a new approach exactly right.
-- Ned Raggett (AMG)
---------------------------------------
Grayceon are a new trio from San Francisco whose main
distinguishing characteristic is their lineup of electric cello,
guitar and drums. With this instrumentation, their music reminds
of styles as diverse as chamber-rock, post-rock, metal and prog
- the most obvious comparisons are with such string-led rock
bands as Dirty Three, The Halifax Pier, and so on (more obscure
bands that come to mind are Make A Rising and A Northern
Chorus), yet Grayceon manage to sound nothing like any of those
groups, instead adding enough heavy riffs and compositional
twists to carve out their own special niche.
And a neat niche it is: this is very intelligent stuff; it was
refreshing to hear the cello used not merely as ornamentation or
to reinforce the main melody line in harmony with the guitar,
but instead played consistently in counterpoint, elaborating on
lyrical melodies set in glorious contrast with the grittier
sound of the chug-chug electric guitar. The presence of cello,
in other words, is no mere gimmick; the band exploits its unique
timbre and phrasing in ways far more sophisticated than your
average "rock band + string instrument". Cellist Jackie Perez
Gratz indeed shows off a versatility of style that reminds
obliquely of Far Corner's Angela Schmidt (though Perez Gratz's
lines tend to be somewhat more straightforward), whenever called
for shifting smoothly from gently sloping melodies to chunky,
chordal riffing. The end result is something that combines the
epic soundscaping of post-rock with the immediacy and impact of
metal (but the metal-phobic need not fear; this influence is
only felt in the power-chord guitar riffing; there are no vocal
histrionics or shredding solos).
The compositions are the star of the show, making full use of
the band's unconventional instrumentation. There is no
unnecessary soloing whatsoever, so the focus stays on the
songwriting. The best of the bunch is definitely "Into The
Deep", which is chock-full of memorable melodies and
near-transcendent moments in which the cello is played so
beautifully so as to lull the listener to sleep, while the
guitar simultaneously blazes through energetic pseudo-metal
riffs. The 20-minute closing epic "Ride" does leave something to
be desired, as it contains several repetitive sections that
could have been tightened up without affecting their
tension-building effect, and it just doesn't have the same
stick-in-your head melodies as the preceding epic. But the rest
of the pieces all have more than enough to make the grade.
The easiest across-the-board criticism to make is that these
guys just sound slightly amateurish. The vocal harmonies are a
little rough, and most of all the drum sound is extremely flat.
The recording quality of the drums masks a very competent player
complements the ebbs and flows of the compositions almost
perfectly - but seriously, that snare sound is better suited to
a high school band's demo tape than an ostensibly
professionally-produced CD. Still, for a first effort from what
is presumably an up-and-coming young band, this self-titled
album does more than enough to whet one's appetite for more.
-- Brandon Wu (Ground And Sky, Aug. 9, 2007)
---------------------------------------
Any group with an electric cello as a lead instrument is
automatically going to stand out. Place said cello alongside a
finger-picked electric guitar and drums in a heavy-metal trio
and you've got some serious sore-thumb action. With its
eponymous debut, San Francisco's Grayceon proves that a
vertically held string instrument can shred just as hard as its
electrified horizontal counterpart. But there's way more to this
record than its unconventional instrumentation. Grayceon's got
songwriting chops to burn and some damn creative musicianship
that makes the track times - between nine and twenty minutes -
fly by.
Grayceon's cellist, Jackie Perez Gratz (also part of the
art-rock group Amber Asylum), doesn't merely recreate heaviness
with an instrument that wasn't made for it. Instead, she
arranges her parts to play to the cello's strengths. Gratz makes
it sigh and moan like only a bowed instrument can on the
expansive opening segment of "Sounds Like Thunder", and she uses
the cello's natural gritty timbre to add heft to guitarist Max
Doyle's chunky thrash riffing on "Song For You". When Gratz and
Doyle (a member of Walken) play in the same range, the overtones
collide and a ghostly bottom end emerges - Grayceon has no need
for a bassist. And somehow, drummer Zack Farwell (also in
Walken) knows exactly how much space to take up. It's rare that
a metal drummer comes off simultaneously as raw, sensitive, and
technical, but Farwell swings it, and all without a double-kick
drum.
With such painstaking care taken on instrumental interplay and
development of themes, Grayceon's largely instrumental songs
verge on chamber music. Baroque cadences and complex
counterpoint give "Ride" a classical elegance, but not once do
the tricky parts hold back the song's inertia. Some sections are
beautiful and airy; others cram an album's worth of heaviness
into just a minute or two. Half of the fun is finding out what's
around the corner. The other half is the giddy rush of hearing a
band that stretches the boundaries of metal while offering the
same visceral thrill that started you head-banging in the first
place.
-- Etan Rosenbloom (Prefix Mag)
---------------------------------------
Although their general approach may be familiar to a number of
discerning heavy music fans, chances are Grayceon are still not
quite like anything in your music collection. Featuring members
of San Francisco groups Walken and Amber Asylum, this trio
samples the metallic buzz of the former and the stark Gothicism
of the latter to form a muted blend that retains its creative
edge without ostentation. Although their self-titled LP is only
four tracks, its prodigious length (45 minutes) and full
packaging does qualify it as such.
The opener "Sounds Like Thunder" leads with Grayceon's best
qualities: Max Doyle's thoughtful guitar intertwined with the
pensive cello of Jackie Perez Gratz to create a musical tapestry
both soothing and subtly charged. At its best, the vocal
interplay between these two mimics the timbre of their
instruments in subdued, elegant polyphony.
One might at times wonder whether Grayceon is metal at all,
rather than prog rock or even post-rock. Arguably, it is any and
all. However, each time that Doyle and Gratz wander off into a
subdued instrumental, soon enough the aggressive fills of
drummer Zack Farwell come surging back again to accompany a
newly distorted and more angular riff pattern from Doyle, and
that heavier vibe does linger more often than any other.
For the most part, though, Grayceon tends towards some
compromise of extremes, settling on a mood that is often
melancholy but rarely mournful, 11:40 into "Ride" being one of
the few examples of the latter. (As it happens, "Ride" is their
most diverse song, with other passages sounding downright quaint
- 15:00 - or like a quasi-thrash warm-up - 17:00.) Largely
instrumental, this first full-length allows itself plenty of
room to develop its many themes, handling each carefully and
never seeming too hasty. This will from time to time make
following the overall theme of a song rather difficult, but the
fact that these songs have such themes to follow is a success in
itself. Many progressive and, it must be said, self-indulgent
groups of this nature follow wherever their whims lead them,
leaving both structural continuity and their audience behind.
Not so, here, though, as Grayceon is continually compelling.
Although Doyle and Gratz are the only two members providing
melody, Grayceon always find a way to make their songs sound
rich. This often does include the use of layering, but only one
track of each instrument would still be more than sufficient
with the melodies they have chosen. Farwell is also to be
commended for his diverse and energetic use of the kit, which
contributes greatly to this album's memorable vitality, but he
can at times sound too eager or too loud. The other members do
at times equal his intensity, particularly the semi-shouted
moments from Gratz, but the overall feel of Grayceon is more
subdued than some of the band's demo recordings and toning down
the drums in their mix, even if it is just by a notch, would
make Grayceon even more appealing.
And all in all, Grayceon is remarkably consistent, particularly
for a debut outing. Although Walken appear to be a fairly new
group, Gratz's extensive connections and experience in the San
Francisco scene bring legitimacy to any project, which in this
case is well deserved. If Grayceon continue upon their present
path, they will be welcomed by music lovers across all
traditions and help overturn the foolish notion that music must
be muzak to appeal to a wide audience. Indeed, if more bands
were playing with the earnest focus of Grayceon, elevator jazz
would be a blunder long forgotten.
-- Etiam (Maximum Metal, Aug. 17, 2007)
---------------------------------------
Prog rock has lost touch with its goals; instead of actually
progressing, most of the genre's practitioners are content to
rehash past explorations. But San Francisco's Grayceon are the
real deal. This self-titled debut is as legitimately progressive
as they come these days, not to mention as meticulously detailed
and beautifully crafted as anything so far this year.
Grayceon is a composite group of sorts. Featuring Max Doyle
(guitars) and Zack Farwell (drums) of excellent San Fran
thrashers Walken, the band's lineup is rounded out by one Jackie
Perez Gratz on cello and vocals. Gratz is a veteran of
long-running Relapse act Amber Asylum as well as a new member of
the up-and-coming Giant Squid, not to mention a contributor to
albums by the likes of Today Is The Day and Neurosis, so you
could say she's something of a genre-buster veteran. It
certainly comes out in Grayceon's songwriting; this trio's sound
is immediately distinct and unusual. Spanning 45 minutes with
just four songs, Grayceon is a sprawling journey through the
minds of three musicians who seem bent on both pushing
boundaries and expressing as many different emotions as possible
along the way.
Though perhaps 'songs' isn't really the right term. Firstly,
only the fiercely brief "Song For You" resembles a normal song
in terms of dimensions; the rest are far more elaborate and
dynamic than traditional rock or metal songs. Secondly, there's
not much singing going on. Though Gratz injects ethereal vocal
lines occasionally and sometimes conducts hair-raising harmonies
with Doyle, the vast weight of these compositions rests on the
instrumentation, and some fuckin' instrumentation it is, too.
Somewhat neoclassical (and not in the Yngwie sense) in both
melodic feel and structure, these tracks are stunningly elegant
and tasteful examples of cooperative musicianship. The most
immediately obvious point of comparison is Apocalyptica, though
far more textured and melodically diverse. Though Gratz's cello
lines are both rhythmic and eloquent, the real star of the show
is Max Doyle's guitar work. Using an unusual finger-picked style
and an arsenal of trebly, low-gain tones, Doyle employs a
seemingly endless vocabulary of chords to generate an incredibly
broad spectrum of moods, from folky to progressive to... thrash
riffs and borrowed Fleetwood Mac bits? Sure is strange, but it
sounds impressively organic anyway. The two instruments dodge
and twist through a maze of lead and rhythm segments that, while
initially overwhelming, are frequently quite beautiful. Driving
the clouds of harmony is the rollicking, powerful single-peddle
drumming of Zack Farwell. Though his roll-heavy bombast seems
out of place at first, it lends reams of urgency to the
otherwise somewhat ponderous music. A sparse but booming
production emphasizes both the intimacy of the drum-free moments
and the heft of Grayceon's more intense passages.
It's obviously somewhat difficult to capture Grayceon's sound on
paper, but take it to the bank: this album is a treasure trove
for those with a taste for the unusual and enough patience to
tolerate long, multi-segment songs. Honestly, the
heartbreakingly mournful ending of "Sounds Like Thunder" and the
four minutes of riff brilliance that constitute the final third
of "Into The Deep" are worth the price of this disc alone.
Grayceon have released an inventive and vivid debut that easily
bests most metal released this year. Looks like Vendlus Records
has gotten another good start in 2007. Highly recommended.
-- Doug Moore (Metal Review)
---------------------------------------
The End Records is slipping. They nabbed Giant Squid, Sleepytime
Gorilla Museum and Estradasphere, but somehow missed Grayceon.
How could this be? Are the stars misaligned? Well, what The End
blunders, Vendlus benefits, 'cause Grayceon's potluck rock is
captivating, smart and challenging. It's the sort of
left-of-center approach to heavy (mental) music that comes out
of Eastern Europe, but considering the acid-soaked specter of
Haight-Asbury still haunts San Fran's music scene, Grayceon are
wondrously peculiar in all the right places.
Comprised of Amber Asylum and Walken members, this is a power
trio of a different magnitude - cellist/vocalist Jackie Perez
Gratz is prominently featured throughout, fluently weaving in
and out of guitarist Max Doyle's skronk-folk and Zack Farwell's
unobtrusive but excellently played percussion work. Frolicking
comfortably somewhere between the post-rock of Slint, the
Canterbury Sound, King Crimson (In The Wake Of Poseidon-era) and
Neurosis-like semi-dirges, Grayceon's four-song, 45-minute debut
isn't too far removed from unsung Czech wonder-kids Silent
Stream Of Godless Elegy. While not metallic or aggressive,
Grayceon's no slouch. Nor are they particularly progressive in
traditionalist's thinking. The last 30 minutes of the album are
dense, diverse and dynamic, as well as organic, open and warm.
It's the kind of music for kids in tight pants to feel "worldly"
to, or roan-haired prog-heads to come back to Earth for a minute
or two. If you can imagine a group as much at home with Beggars
Opera as they are Isis, Grayceon's oddball, inviting style
should be more familiar than foreign.
-- Chris Dick (Decibel Magazine)
---------------------------------------
Grayceon is an atypical three-piece from San Francisco comprised
of electric cello, guitar, drums, and vocals. Pulling together
an extremely diverse range of musical influences and writing
styles, Grayceon's fresh sound defies the boundaries of the
metal/rock/progressive genres. Screaming melodic lines over
distinct guitar "chunk", doom riffs, jazz chord progressions,
intricate folk-like delicacies, and just about everything in
between can be found in a single Grayceon track. The cello
proficiency and the guitar finger picking style alone are
unprecedented in heavy music. And although the vocals are sparse
and the drumming unconventional, all elements are intertwined
effortlessly to give the arrangements a fluid feel that may not
be present in less able hands. Compared to Opeth, King Crimson,
and Ved Buens Ende, not in sound but in 'feel', Grayceon
embraces the hard-to-describe-them definition and pushes
boundaries even further by occasionally throwing in a bass riff
or vocal line by other artists as varied as Fleetwood Mac and
Scorpions. But don't 'blink', the moment a passage like this
becomes recognizable it is long gone. Alternate low tuning both
on cello and guitar also contribute to their unique sound.
Formed in 2005, when three friends, each fans of each other's
other bands, decided to make some noise together. Grayceon is
Jackie Perez Gratz (Amber Asylum/Giant Squid) - electric
cello/vocals, Max Doyle (Walken) - guitar/vocals, and Zack
Farwell (Walken) - drums. They quickly realized that their
combined energy created a sound that was inspired and
challenging, so they decided to give it a whirl and kept writing
new material for the project. A demo was recorded in early 2006
and Grayceon has been handing them out free to anyone who wants
to hear it. They subsequently recorded a full-length album in
the Summer of 2006 and this debut album was released on Vendlus
Records in February 2007.
Grayceon toured the US and Canada with Giant Squid in the Spring
of 2007, the Northwest in the Fall of 2007, and are planning a
longer US, and possibly European, tour for the Spring/Summer of
2008. Jackie Perez Gratz has performed with Amber Asylum for
almost a decade and has released 5 full-length albums and
several compilations with them on Relapse/Release Records,
Elfenblut, Misanthropy, Black Lotus, Cleopatra, Paradigms,
Projekt, Neurot Recordings, and Profound Lore. In addition to
Amber Asylum, Jackie has also performed and recorded with
luminaries such as Neurosis, Tribes Of Neurot, Jarboe (Swans),
Today Is The Day, Steve Von Till, Ludicra, Asunder, Lost Goat,
Matmos, Two Gallants, Giant Squid, as well as having
collaborated with members of the legendary Weakling, The Gault,
Hammers Of Misfortune, and The Fucking Champs.
-- Grayceon Homepage
---------------------------------------
Grayceon was formed in 2005 by Max Doyle and Zack Farwell from
Walken and Jackie Perez Gratz from Amber Asylum, but is also
involved with and has played with many bands. They played
together and liked the result and decided to keep on going with
it and wrote new material. They recorded a demo in 2006 which
they sent to several record companies, finally catching the
attention of Vendlus Records, through which they released their
first self-titled album in February 2007. They have toured the
US and Canada with fellows Giant Squid (with which Jackie has
played before, and they are planning further tours for the rest
of 2007.
Grayceon offers something for everyone. Some post-rock textures,
some sludge metal (but of a lighter flavor than others in this
field), some good old crunchy riffs of metal, and great epics
which are amplified in their effect by the magnificent use of
the cello by Jackie and the vocal harmonies of Jackie and Max
Doyle. The cello and guitar are used both as background and as
solo instruments together and alone, which is another
interesting aspect of their sound. They have the ability to
create compelling music, long epic tracks with mesmerizing
textures, alternating between a soft sound to a rapid and even
raw sounding part in which the drums go wild and at times beat
like in a death metal track. With the tracks on their eponymous
album, you go on a mental ride which passes through different
emotional states between tracks and within a track (melancholy,
pensive, rage and whatever else the music conjures in your
mind). While the long 3 tracks have a majestic feel when coming
to their occasional chorus, Grayceon still has this subtle raw
and free spirit feel to them, which is probably due to the three
instrument lineup and their unique sound. This goes beyond
metal/rock, and the term progressive is therefore, most
suitable. The end result is compelling and most of all,
beautiful. They have been compared in sound but mostly in spirit
to several bands, but it would not do justice with their music
to do so, as they manage to be in a position where it's a
difficult task to describe their music. It can be said that it
draws influences from several sources as mentioned above, but
their sound is all their own.
-- Assaf Vestin (Prog Archives)
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