If you like your grindcore without a lot of dynamic—you want to be steamrolled by the music, no slowness allowed—you’ve come to the right place with Barren Path.
The Grieving album is somewhat brief and has a brief ambient interlude and some feedback, but besides that, it doesn’t stop. Instead of a bludgeon, it makes your head spin. Where it’s short in length it makes up for in denseness of notes and drum beats.
Grindcore isn’t known for it’s subtlety, but a couple songs—”Relinquish” and “Isolation Wound”—have what sound like dashes of atmospherics. It doesn’t surprise me that the guys that made up the guitars, bass, and drums of the final GridLink lineup would do something interesting.
The stars of the band are guitarist Takafumi Matsubara and drummer Bryan Fajardo (who are GridLink O.G.s) and the one non-GridLink member, Mitchell Luna. Rory Kobzina and Mauro Cordoba, on guitar and bass respectively, complete the lineup.
The complicated guitar riffs interweave—again, not a surprise coming from Matsubara—and Fajardo is one of the go-tos for unrelenting blasting and tom work, which is what he delivers here. Luna’s screams and growls should be familiar to fans of underground grindcore, and he makes his way through stark lyrics on Grieving that basically communicate that the world’s going to hell and all hope is lost. There are a few, far-between lines that stand out and are possibly relatable:
“Is this how you will remember me? We both suffered together for so long.”
“And I will try … To take my own advice. An effort easier said than done.”
“Sometimes I forget what it is I’m looking for … perhaps for something that doesn’t exist.”
Music Videos
Barren Path has two videos for the record, one for the song “The Insufferable Weight,” below:
And one for the song “Horizonless”:
The whole record is also on YouTube, below:
So a person can give the whole thing a spin before adding it to the cart. And for this kind of music, it’s an album well worth proceeding to checkout with.
Tour
The guys are hitting the road in California and playing Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle afterward. The dates are below. I’m guessing seeing Barren Path live will be nuts.
April 30 – San Diego, CA – The Banshee
May 1 – Long Beach, CA – Que Sera
May 2 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
May 3 – Atascadero, CA – Dark Nectar
May 4 – Sacramento, CA – Cafe Colonial
May 5 – Oakland, CA – Thee Stork Club
May 9 – Seattle, WA – Nuemos
Where to Get the Record
Grieving is a 12-track, about 13-and-a-half-minute album that came out on Halloween last year from Willowtip Records and is available on CD, LP, and digital. (As of this writing the vinyl is sold out, but it’ll be restocked, the label informs me.) If you check the record out on Bandcamp, the band has added the lyrics there. Consider giving them a read.
Further Reading:
Check out my interviews with and news items on GridLink here at the blog.
