"I need oxygen!"
The instantaneous explosion of unfettered sound, noise, drama of "Annette" by Gothenburg, Sweden post punk quartet Grund saturated in drones of blaring sax, chunky jagged guitar chops, bass and splashing drum anchors and potent vocal wails. From the upcoming EP "Avund", the absolutely heaviness and punk abandon had me thinking of a cross generational blend of artists like early proto punk pioneers like James Chance and the Contortions and Richard Hell and the Voidoids or Gareth Liddiard's incarnations like The Drones and Tropical Fuck Storm. Other impactful artists are bouncing in my head, hints of Minor Threat and Hüsker Dü and maybe just saying an amalgam of all the aforementioned artists or similar artists makes the most sense, the most sense of all. Let's just say I love the passion and power that Grund bring to the forefront (and backbeat).
Important LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[ Grund is the amalgamation of Hugo Welther, Sebastian Sandström, John Ekberg and Rickard Ribbås – all of them familiar faces for anyone who's been in and around the Gothenburg alternative rock scene throughout the last decade. The band members all have backgrounds in various bands and projects (Contraband Express, The Marabous, Rymddjuret, Ram Di Dam, Blod, Katakomb, Joniserande Hjorten and more) that were active in an impressive variety of genres. As a perhaps inevitable result of their varied backgrounds the songs on Avund twist and turn through an array of influences, though certain components keep Grund grounded and sounding clearly “Grundesque”, such as the riff-centric, guitar driven soundscapes, the recurrent just-barely-tonal qualities that invoke imagery of abstract horror and the winding, equal parts unpredictable and unreliable, song structures. The songs on ‘Avund’ in a sense deal with different forms of collapses “Anette is about waking up from an epileptic seizure and the feeling that follows; the feeling that the world around you has turned into a dead world. The inability to hear the people around you looking down, being uncertain if you are awake.” says songwriter and guitarist/vocalist Sebastian Sandström. Meanwhile, songwriter and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Hugo Welther recalls that ‘Hägring’ has undertaken a variety of meanings for him in the process of writing the song “Hägring is about the journey towards ruin and collapse and what remains after. Whether the collapse in question has been psychological, intersubjective or planetary has shifted from day to day.]
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/grund_musik
The upcoming ‘Avund’-EP by Gothenburg quartet Grund is found at the intersection where the history of rock music and doctor Caligari's cabinet inevitably collide; where the ghost of rock n roll crawls up to the funhouse-mirror and is confronted by the distorted image that stares back at it.
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