Style: djent/folk (clean vocals)
Review by: Dylan
Country: France
Release date: March 26th, 2021
Venturing through our never ending bookmarks, whilst searching for an album that will at the very least keep me entertained during my battle with covid, I encounter a band from France called Grorr. It seemed that this would be a an affair into newer territory for me as a reviewer, considering that I am not an expert on djent and the tags referencing folk and ethnic instrumentation certainly surprised me. And what I got was certainly that. In fact, Ddulden has way more up its sleeve than it appears on the initial sampling. During its entire runtime it functions best as an entire piece rather than a collection of tracks, to the point that if you were to skip any track it feels like you skipped a section of a large 36 minute song.
The idea of this free-flowing 36 minute piece that always moves forward proved to be far more challenging than what I had initially prepared for. But did the challenge presented by Grorr immerse me into an engaging, well thought out release? Or did it stumble frequently, failing to be greater than the sum of its parts?
Well, this is the part where I hit you with the punchline that this release (like most albums) isn’t best described by either definition but rather an awkward middle ground. A place where potential is shown that makes you feel great things about a release, but its fair amount of flaws (both objective and subjective) leave you generally underwhelmed. Allow me to explain why:
Ddulden’s Last Flight‘s general idea is very well thought out. At its core this is prog-djent with the asian folk influence coming on as mere background add-ons or interludes to further build the atmosphere. This is a win for Grorr given that they are able to really focus on their Djenty hooks without an attempt of throwing flair for the sake of it. Thanks to that, most of the melodies in place are interesting, enjoyable and well built. In fact, the moments where I was generally displeased with what I was listening to were extremely rare. To add to this, the production is exactly what a djent album should sound like, the small ethnic/folk touches gave it a much needed sprinkle of self-identity and even the vocals grew on me the more I listened to it.
By my 5th listen I had already marked out all of these positive qualities but there was still something… off about it. And I came to realize what it was when I had to think of tracks (guess they should be called movements in the album’s context but whatever) to recommend. We already discussed that the album constantly moves forward, right? Well, I’m afraid that it is a bit *too* forward for its own good. Any conceptual piece lives or dies by a collection of songwriting elements; motifs, callbacks, and self-references. And sadly it seems that Grorr has all but forgotten to utilize them, because any great moment is done a single time throughout the album’s entire runtime. This leads to a musical stream of consciousness that is pleasant in the moment but unmemorable in the grand scheme of things, when the entire album is meant to be taken as a single piece of music. If this release were constructed as a collection of songs this wouldn’t be a huge issue but the fact that it continuously flows seemingly from track to track makes its lack of “resolution hooks” jarring in the general experience.
At the end of it all, Grorr’s victories are not completely ruined by a single, albeit significant, mistake. There’s still a lot to get out of here, particularly moments like “Sky High” or “Sirens Call” will please the djent stan looking for more music for his collection. But as a complete work, Ddulden’s Last Flight barely misses the mark thanks to a lack of cohesion which is absolutely necessary for the type of release it’s trying to be.
Recommended tracks: Sky High, Sirens Call
Recommended for fans of: TesseracT, Vulkan, Vildjharta
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook
Label: ViciSolum Records
Grorr is:
– Bertrand Noël (vocals, guitars)
– Gaël Wallois (guitars)
– Yoann Estingoy (bass)
– Jérémy Chabanaux (drums)
– Julien Gefflot (keyboards, samples)
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