Galvanizer – Prying Sight Of Imperception Review

Everything old is new again.

Case in point: I’m pretty sure I’ve used that opening line about five times over the past fifteen years.

Second case in point: this sophomore full-length from Finland’s Galvanizer.

This trio is coming up on a decade of existence, despite that its members are all in their early 20s, which means that they weren’t even born when most of their direct influences released the albums that Prying Sight Of Imperception brings immediately to mind, your Slumber Of Sullen Eyes, and your Symphonies Of Sickness, and a bit of your Like An Everflowing Stream.

So yes, Prying Sight is a new album that sounds like old albums, a combination of classic-styled Scandinavian death metals (predominantly Finnish but with a dash of Swedish buzz) and line-walking death/grind. More importantly than any of that, like those three records namechecked above, it’s filled to bursting with riffs galore, some of them sharp and pointy, some of them blunt and crushing, some of them flirting with a melodic sensibility, all of them virtually oozing wonderfully rotten greatness. The melodic ending section of “The Inexorable”… The top-to-bottom spine-snapping rage of “Chthonic Profanation”… The swirling grinding drive of “Dia De Muertos”… Prying Sight wraps itself up in a microcosmic display of all its own glories, the five-minute “Of Flesh Unknown,” thrashing and carving its way through blistering death metal and gnarly grind, breaking up in a peal of thunder (literal thunder, actually) and keyboard-tinted melodies, a showcase for nearly two minutes of Carcass-esque guitar leads to wind down the proceeding kickassery.

Bassist Vili Mäkinen’s vocals stick to a low grunted guttural, avoiding any of the gore-grind gurgling, offset sporadically by the more Walker-like snarl of guitarist Aleksi Vähämäki, the combination working perfectly in that tried-and-true grindcore high/low pairing. The guitar tone is perfectly putrid, and yet sharp and distinct; the bass is gross and slimy; Niko Niemikko’s drums crack and punch without sounding overly processed; the whole mix sounds both appropriately current and yet clearly harking to the classic days of yore and gore.

Stylistically, you’ve very likely heard all of these tricks before — everything old is new again, but in truth, of course, it isn’t new at all. Galvanizer’s combination of influences doesn’t automatically make them unique… but their level of skill and professionalism in putting those influences into play — in molding them into an album like Prying Sight Of Imperception — well, that puts them farther down the line than dozens upon dozens of other youngsters finding inspiration in albums older than they are.

If the kids can keep doing classic death/grind like this, then they’re truly all right, indeed.