Glassing – Dire and Sulk EP
Glassing – Dire and Sulk EP
Medication Time Records / Brutal Panda Records
Release Date: 26/08/22
Running Time: 08:37
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Good afternoon, dear fiends and vagabonds! It is I, Dark Juan, your least favourite pseudo-Satanist (or am I? Pseudo-Satanist, I mean. It could all be a colossal double blind to fool the Children of the False God into compliance, whilst I am in fact subverting their foul faith via the medium of very poor descriptive writing about Extreme music and turning them to the worship of the One True Lord of the Earth. I tell you what, when I get down to Hell and the Devil sees me to weigh my crimes, I want a fucking recruitment bonus) and I am returned from a successful bit of wrangling young people and have plonked my increasingly fat arse on to the protesting Sofa of Impending Structural Failure to listen to uplifting tunes of joy and wonder at the world played on the sousaphone and to share my views on said happy-clappy bollocks.
That’s a lie.
I am in fact listening to a particularly visceral two track maxi single (they billed it as an EP, did the promo folks) from Glassing, being a particularly vituperative trio of Texans from Austin. I’m quite sure that their mothers love them and that they are nice, clean cut All-American boys really, but the noise they make says that they are all mass-murdering nasty pasties with all the wit, grace and charm of a ravening pack of direwolves chasing you down after they have already winged you.
Glassing do not play easy listening music. They play something that Dark Juan has no words for. Which does actually make this a really shit piece of descriptive writing, doesn’t it? Let me try to quantify the experience I am having…
Glassing’s music is analogous to a pair of Yank maniacs hooking your limbs to the back of two fuck-off pick-up trucks and hitting the gas. In opposite directions. Meanwhile a third one takes a hammer drill to your eye sockets. Yet, there are gentle pockets of serenity, like when the torture stops and you are at one with the pain and you are your own self-contained little universe of horror, limbs slowly star-fishing in remembered suffering. Then the fuckers start up again, taking pneumatic drills and sledgehammers to already dislocated joints and smashing extremities to bloody pulp. Suffer not the demented Englishman to live, and all that…
Taking Noise Rock, Post-Metal and Shoegaze and forcing them all to copulate in the breeding chambers of their nefarious headquarters, Glassing unleash a wholly unexpected storm of sonic terror upon the unsuspecting listener. ‘Dire’ opens with a dissonant guitar lick and some holy chugging before the throat-rapingly harsh vocal of Dustin Coffman tears into the song and it all goes quite insanely mental. Hyperspeed drumming meets Jazz-fuelled breaks and some of the most dissonant guitar work I have ever wrapped my lugholes around. Layers and layers of discordance and power build to a slow, echoey break, where the song dials down the wide-eyed and absolutely homicidal intensity for a kind of self-reflective yet still furious pause, like the come down after you have finally subdued a particularly troublesome victim…
‘Sulk’ is entirely different. Sounding like an infinitely more muscular Glassjaw having been forcibly melded with Coheed and Cambria and early Emperor, there’s absolutely no quarter asked for or given by these mad Texan bastards this time. Coffman sounds like he’s channelling at least Beelzebub, Astaroth, Belial, Asmodeus and Berith AT THE SAME TIME and guitarist Cory Brim plays with such razorwire intensity he’s in danger of turning his fingers Gory Grim as he cranks out the most wounding of slashing discordant riffs and licks. Drummer Scott Osment is clearly possessed by something as well, his tubthumping arcing viciously and wildly between mild mannered mid-tempo and utterly fucking batshit insane velocities. One is willing to wager that his hi-toms are really the skulls of former drummers in Glassing.
The production on this twin tracker is also punishing. Loud and aggressive and full, it does not beguile and charm the listener. It chews out the throat of the listener and tramples all over the corpse of the listener whilst it screams so loud and long it dislocates its jaw. Yet for all the egregious and over the top violence, it is clear and precise and the poor, abused, now deceased listener is able to discern little, subtle flourishes among the layers of brutality. It is actually jolly splendid.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System was taken somewhat aback by Glassing. Their sound is like the Flaming Lips being gangbanged by Glassjaw, Swans and early Darkthrone. My god, what a fucking mental image that is. I need to wash my brain in bleach. 9/10 for a cracking pair of songs. Let’s see whether they can keep the quality up over an album’s worth of music. Glassing – over to you.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Dire
02. Sulk
LINE-UP:
Dustin Coffman – Bass and vocals
Gory Gri…. Sorry. Cory Brim – Guitars
Scott Osment – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
