Review: Ghold ‘Bludgeoning Simulations’
The sad news of Oli Martin’s passing – guitarist and much-appreciated Ghold comrade – came as an untimely shock while I was putting my thoughts together for this album. Thoughts go out to the band and Oli’s people. Presumably, that’s his Rock God guitar solo on Lowest, among other, less obvious contributions to the feel of this record, and their work since 2015.
Personally, it feels strangely unfair. I remember seeing them as a two-piece a long time ago and loving them – there is always space for longform weirdo doom in my ears. However, I had always struggled to fully engage with their records. They were a bit too puzzling, too ‘difficult’ to fit into the hours and days of my life. Now, just as I finally felt I was getting to know Ghold, a loss. I hope they are OK.
Bludgeoning Simulations is also in many ways a puzzling and difficult record, but in a way that speaks, as always, of their artistic commitment to create what was necessary, rather than what was desirable. The scope is broad, from scorching drive and pounding drums to wide abstract spaces, blurred vocals and painterly percussion. There’s also an unashamed use of the anthemic mode, whether in the rousing chorus on Lowest, or the peasants’ revolt and shuffling band of penitents I hear closing out Place To Bless A Shadow.
Yes, it’s heavy music, but familiar tools are used in unsettling, arcane ways to serve a murky and uncanny purpose. The artistic range Ghold employ is not to create a jarring juxtaposition of elements as some bands use to disorientate, but more a craft of its own, building on a loud foundation through uncompromised minimalism and dark ambient stretches to produce increasing isolation and emotional weight.
building on a loud foundation through uncompromised minimalism and dark ambient stretches…
Looking back at Ghold’s music belies my faulty framing of them as a heavy doom duo that went clever, and shows the ‘weight and grunt’ label they apply to themselves as more like a self-deprecating mask. For example, PYR from 2016 already holds all the elements at work here, in the best awkward tradition of ‘different’ heavy bands; they have long been starting from a familiar place to take our minds elsewhere.
This album does, however, feel like a step forward from 2019s INPUT>CHAOS, bringing to the fore something about the dislocation between rude body and modern surface. This last album ended with a queasy urging to ‘caress me’ and close a somewhat ambivalent distance. On Bludgeoning Simulations that blade of vulnerability is still present, but there are also more voices together in power.
There is a stark contrast here between the rough physicality alluded to with song titles such as Cauterise and Rude, Awaken, and the sheen and novelty of the image we are often confronted with in the world today. It is an assault of the alienating unreal: things that look or sound like what we know, yet recognition somehow slides right off the surface. Ultimately, Ghold have found a way to speak to the disorientation of the not-quite-real, pushing back with a powerful assertion of humanity. RIP Oli.
Label: Human Worth
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Harry Holmes
