Missed Album: The Gorge – Mechanical Fiction

Style: Progressive Metal, Metalcore, Technical Groove Metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Textures, Gojira, Car Bomb
Review by: Christopher
Country: Missouri, USA
Release date: 28 July, 2023

So there’s this band in the metal scene, they’re called Meshuggah—you might’ve heard of them. I cannot stand them. Don’t get me wrong, Meshuggah are incredibly technically impressive; Swiss watch levels of intricacy, a level of ability and meticulousness that borders on awe-inspiring. But nothing bores me more than the monotonous polyrhythmic thunder of a Meshuggah album, the relentless assault of riffs in 69/420 continuing unabated for around sixty whole minutes. I am immovable in the face of Immutable. I feel nothing for Nothing. Koloss? More like colossal piece of [Editor’s note: this bit went on for two more paragraphs so we just cut it out].

Anyway, having already alienated half of our readers, I’m going to take on another technically-minded, Meshuggah influenced band. The fourth album from The Gorge sees the Missourian quartet refreshed after a seven year break, taking their complex brand of progressive metalcore to new extremes. Balancing the instrumental intricacy of Meshuggah with the catchier metalcore of bands like Textures, lead singer and guitarist Phil Ring—who’s based as hell on the grounds that he’s wearing a Steely Dan t-shirt in their Bandcamp photo—lends a hardcore sensibility with his punishing growls, and there’s a soupçon of jazz influence in the mix, too. At a well-paced forty-five minutes, Mechanical Fiction does everything you want from this sort of complexity focused record without overstaying its welcome.

An overfocus on polyrhythms and time signatures can push a band’s sound into the realms of solipsism. Fortunately, The Gorge always centre songwriting, finessing the compositions with some mind-bending rhythms throughout. Some of these are simpler in nature, as on “Beneath the Crust” where an abrupt bar of 3/4 wrongfoots the punky 4/4 riff, others more overtly mathematical, as on “Remnants of Grief” which cycles through a bunch of uncountable (for me) riffs, eventually hitting upon some more melodic veins. Naturally, the MVP on this album is Jerry Mazzuca, whose kit mastery is vital to the intricacy of all these changes in metre and feel, and his contribution has a real sense of personality meaning that Mechanical Fiction has plenty to satisfy both the clockwork brained tech heads and the cavemen who just wanna headbang to phat grooves. 

Like their aforementioned forebears, The Gorge will occasionally overwork a great riff, and the reliance on the low-end does mean that some of the tremolo riffs (“Presence”, “Beneath the Crust”) feel a little too similar to one another, but I’m the heathen that thinks Meshuggah are a soup of sameyness so this is clearly pretty varied for this stripe of prog. Similarly, Ring’s growls, though powerful, are a little monotonous—standard for the genre, but sometimes I want a little injection of variety, of melody. Moments like the chant and lead guitar that close “Beneath the Crust” offer some euphonic relief amid the more oppressive heaviness. 

None of that is to suggest that The Gorge punish the listener with colourless riffage; in fact, they know when to let the compositions breathe. “Earthly Decay” plays with a set of calmer chords, throwing in psychedelic lead lines, and ramping up the intensity to a powerful crescendo to create a compelling experiment in varying an ostensibly simple four-chord phrase; the finale “Wraith” conducts similarly post-metal influenced climactic inquiries. Meanwhile, the sojourning 7/4 tapping rhythm that orients “A Decision Was Made” and the short instrumental title track, which sees the band get their Tosin on with an Animals as Leaders style groove, both have a pleasing sense of melody underlying their complexity. 

I made my biases clear early on and while The Gorge are a little out of my usual reviewing scope, they’ve produced something so interestingly composed and genuinely fresh that I knew I had to help shine a light on it. If I, a simple Devin Townsend-loving melody-seeker, can find a lot to love here, then this should blow the fans of this sound out of the water. Meshuggah fans, I’m sorry for the things I said, but we have more in common than that which divides us, and so I present to you Mechanical Fiction as a peace offering; we can all agree it’s cool as hell.

Recommended tracks: Remnants of Grief, Beneath the Crust, Earthly Decay
You may also like: Hippotraktor, Ahasver, Hypnagone, Polars Collide
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

Label: Pelagic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

The Gorge is:
– Phil Ring (guitars, vocals)
– Joe Bowers (guitars)
– Chris Turnbaugh (bass)
– Jerry Mazzuca (drums)