Gridhappiness/Failure Feel

Your breath shortens. A lump forms in your throat. The pounding of your heart physically shakes your body with ever-increasing urgency. Light fades like a quickly fading sun. Sweat drenches your clothes, but all you feel is cold. Panic and terror rip through your very core. The fight/flight response is kicking in and leaving you with no other options. Is it a panic attack? That’s possible. It might also be this gut-wrenching and resolve-shaking split from Gridfailure and Feel Happiness.

Gridfailure, whom I have covered here in the past, is the malignant brainchild of Dave Brenner. He deftly scrapes, claws, grates, and manipulates sound, practically bending it to his will to make music that is as ugly as it is emotive. Gridfailure is the soundtrack of an unforgiving and unloving concrete jungle that chews you up and spits you out before you even know what is happening. In regards to this latest offering, Brenner says:

“Going full-bore sci-fi/slasher with these tracks, ’This Liquefaction’ is the feeling of your sanity pouring forth into the ground, feeding the Earth, which buckles, arises, overtakes, and consumes your being. ‘Cryomechanical’ is the sound of rebuilding civilization on a frozen tundra which exists where you now sit in only a few years from now; at the time of conception, the cause remains unclear. ‘Swarming’ merges mutant layers of extreme powerdementia into an all-consuming funnel of ravaging paranoia, swarming. ‘Wetworkers Local 845’ is just a day in the life of The King’s Highway Ripper who sadistically pollutes your ears with this thing called GRIDFAILURE.”

Feel Happiness is the recently formed solo project of Lane Oliver. Static and metal drones effortlessly blend with mournful guitars that would make any basement-dwelling black metaller weep in agonized joy. You can practically smell the mildew growing with each dank, DSBM-soaked second. About the tracks, Oliver says:

“’God Bless You All on the Earth’ captures the anxieties, and hopelessness associated with the very real possibility of complete environmental collapse, and filters them through glacier-melting, drone metal crawls. ‘I’ve Cut Your Armies Down and Torn Your Heart’ is the sound of a pagan sacrificial ritual that rivals the incendiary climax of ‘The Wicker Man.’ It lurches at a menacing pace, dragging you through its hot coals, before stringing you up with the other unlucky ones. In contrast to the previous hellscapes, ‘All You Are Is Meat’ conjures quiet melancholia that slowly unfolds into haunting noise. FEEL HAPPINESS is all about fun, obviously.”

Obviously. I mean, I’m having fun. Aren’t you?

Listen here:

And here:

 

The Gridfailure/Feel Happiness split is out this Friday. They are also planning on releasing a collaboration album in 2020.

Want to feel bad even more than usual? Like/Follow Gridfailure on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Bandcamp. Like/Follow Feel Happiness on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Bandcamp.