Stream Grave Miasma Endless Pilgrimage (Stereogum Premiere)

Stream Grave Miasma Endless Pilgrimage (Stereogum Premiere)

Listening to the music made by London-based death metal quartet Grave Miasma can feel a little bit like walking into a basement filled with weird, amazing antiques. You’re first blown away by the fact that this place even exists, by the sheer spectacle of all these forgotten riches. But then you start rifling through the cache — wide-eyed, hands trembling, unable to fully focus on any individual item because there are still so many more. Where do you start with Grave Miasma? The riffs? The hooks? The performances? The ornately wrought details? The sheer head-wrecking power? The unexpected and exciting turns taken by these songs? Their climaxes? Their transitions? Their denouements? Their grandeur? Their horror? Their otherworldly beauty?

You can — and should — pay attention to all those things, because, I mean, my god. For what it’s worth, though, I find myself immediately focusing on Grave Miasma’s sound, because there’s nothing else in metal quite like it. It doesn’t feel like it was conceived and constructed in a laboratory; it doesn’t feel like it was drunkenly recorded on a 4-track; and it doesn’t feel like it was produced by laboratory technicians attempting to recreate the effect of a drunken 4-track recording. It feels like fucking Blessed Are The Sick as played by by Pink Floyd at Pompeii. It is huge and breathtaking and ancient and organic.

These qualities were evident on Grave Miasma’s debut album, 2013’s Odori Sepulcrorum, and they are even more prominent on the band’s forthcoming mini-LP, Endless Pilgrimage (it’s worth noting that both were produced by Jaime Gomez Arellano, whose Orgone Studios specializes in this sort of sonic majesty). And look: Maybe the sound won’t be the thing for you. Maybe you’ll find yourself transfixed by any of the other many treasures offered by Grave Miasma. But you will be transfixed. Anyway, we’ve got the new one for you to spin in full today, a week in advance of its official release. Check it out.

Endless Pilgrimage is out 5/6 via Profound Lore. I should also mention that Grave Miasma don’t play live very frequently, but they are making a stop at this year’s Maryland Death Fest, followed by a show at Brooklyn’s St. Vitus on 5/30 and another in Chicago (venue TBA) on 6/1. Then they’re doing some dates in Latin America with Bölzer, and if you happen to be in the area during any of those dates, do not sleep. I have seen both those bands live, and their shows are like fucking ceremonies. Here’s the GM tour poster if you need more info.

GM_TourDates

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