Barren Path – Grieving Review

The concept of a grindcore guitar god is a little bit silly to me, considering the rawness and punk ethos involved in the style overall… but then again, this is a sub-genre built on the works of Bill Steer, Jesse Pintado and Mitch Harris, Rob Marton, Scott Hull… So I guess it makes a little bit of sense.

And to that point, we can absolutely add Takafumi Matsubara to that list, his work with Mortalized and Gridlink among some of the most interesting and destructive grinding to come down the path over the past few decades. After a neurological scare that nearly cost Matsubara use of his left hand (an appendage that is kind of important to most guitarists), it’s a testament to the man’s determination that he can play at all, let alone come out of forced retirement with strong offerings like Gridlink’s Coronet Jupiter or the first Formless Master or his genre-blending solo record, Strange, Beautiful And Fast.

After the second rise and fall of Gridlink, Matsubara and blastmaster extraordinaire Bryan Fajardo weren’t done yet, so they put together Barren Path, completing the instrumentalists with bassist Mauro Cordoba and second guitarist Rory Kobzina from the final lineup of that earlier band. Based on his guest appearance on Strange, Beautiful And Fast, Shock Withdrawal vocalist (and former Maruta-n) Mitchell Luna was asked to man the mic, and here we are. So, if we make pause a moment to take score: We’ve got one of the most creative guitarists in the history of the style… and one of the most accomplished grindcore drummers of the new millennium (himself a drum god, credit where it’s due)… and with them, the remainder of the instrumental line-up of one of the most interesting grind bands in a quarter century, and top it off with the vocalist from several supremely underrated outfits…

Anyway, you can see where I’m going here, and what I’m doing is spinning this thing up. The question, then, of course, is: Is it worthy of such a grandiose lead-in? And the answer is… (cue fanfare and drumroll)

Yes.

Barren Path is worthy. Grieving is absolutely worthy. It pares back some of the spiraling franticness and off-kilter progression of latter-era Gridlink – and it focuses on a much narrower pathway than the admittedly somewhat disjointed style-jumping parts of Strange, Beautiful And Fast – and it does both to its own betterment.

Opening with a blink-twice-and-you-miss-it drum fill, “Whimpering Echo” hits the ground running, with Matsubara cycling through a dizzying array of riffs, while Fajardo blasts away so steadily beneath him that the jump into follow-up “Subversion Record” is almost unnoticeable. From there, Grieving is twelve songs in just a little over thirteen minutes, from the skittering tension of “No Geneva” and the carving moodiness of “Isolation Wound” to the blistering “The Insufferable Weight” and beyond. (The last of those, at 1:43 in length, is Grieving’s longest song.) Each track is filled to bursting with those riffs, rarely repeating, never stopping, just riff after riff after riff, blast after blast after groove after blast, grunt after shriek after scream after grunt… In typical Fajardo fashion, the beats zoom along at warp speed, with an energy that approaches the frenetic but remain controlled, benefiting from the fury of chaos but held tightly enough to give all of Grieving a positive(ly) electric charge. Luna growls and screams – and occasionally mutters and speaks, as in “Insufferable Weight” or the ominous interlude “Celestial Bleeding” – not too far removed from Chang’s performance in Gridlink, but less screechy and more varied.

I’m loath to use the word “supergroup” about an underground outfit playing music most people wouldn’t recognize as such, but in modern progressive grindcore circles, Barren Path is exactly that, and one of the rare supergroups that actually adds up to the sum of its respective parts. Simply put: These guys know how to grind, and Grieving is the result of their collaboration, and the first of hopefully many. No wasted seconds, no frills or excuses, just straight-up neck-snapping grindcore.

What else did we expect?