Gangrened Premiere Deadly Algorithm in Full; Out Friday
Posted in audiObelisk on April 7th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
A record at least three years in the making, Finland’s Gangrened will release their full-length debut, Deadly Algorithm, this Friday through a host of labels including Kohina Records, Domestic System, Noizeland Records, Odio Sonoro, Quebranta Records, Trepanation Recordings, Burial Records and Violence in the Veins. A follow-up to their 2014 We Are Nothing EP (review here), it is a five-song/42-minute run that paints a dark picture of the time and place we’ve come to inhabit. Not so much post- as simply apocalyptic, though plenty dystopian either way in its multifaceted atmospheric sludge onslaught. Pick your societal teardown, I guess, but know that Deadly Algorithm feels more like that teardown happening than its aftermath.
It is a challenging album, and feels purposeful in that. It is not haphazard, but in its spaciousness there is room for the unplanned and the unexpected, the turns it makes throughout its two sides are not as telegraphed as, say, Amenra, and being born out of Finnish noise rock somewhere along the path of its roots, the scope is different, but there’s calculation happening just the same, and even the four-minute “Intro” that leads into “Triptaani” (9:21) and “Hologrammi” (6:45) serves a pointed function in establishing the world in which Deadly Algorithm is taking place. That world should be plenty recognizable, from the anxiousness of decay to capitalist infiltration of social structures to becoming the Orwellian product via social media false celebrity.
These issues are addressed in the lyrics one way or the other, and if you happen to speak Finnish, you’re one up on me, but amid the urgent chug that takes hold quickly in “Triptaani” and the shouts that break through the morass of tone surrounding, the point gets across. The range is broad, however, and as Gangrened embark on this wanton delivery of heft, the ambience set by “Intro” never entirely dissipates. The spaciousness of the mix is such that when “Triptaani” breaks in its second half to set up its lurching conclusion, it feels natural rather than shoehorned in for dynamic effect, and the post-metallic squibbly lead guitar over top of the massive ending is like a melodic lifeline in the chaos.
“Hologrammi” offers little letup. Its rhythm is more of a march, but the shorter runtime carries with it a more forward attack, and the song’s abiding pummel becomes a defining characteristic. There’s tension 
between parts, shouts interwoven with obscure spoken passages, but the roll is steady until a wash of synth or sample or something else takes hold at around five and a half minutes in, fading gradually but consuming the song just the same and leaving its final crashes to play out with an especially desolate feel, wrapping side A with a rumble en route to the closing duo of “Kungingatar” (11:43) and “Triangeli” (10:23).
True, the second side of Deadly Algorithm is two songs instead of three. True, it’s about two minutes longer than side A. But it feels like Gangrened are pushing well beyond a point of no return even as the integrated intro of “Kuningatar” leads the way into the unfolding of the song itself, building up over its first three minutes to an eventual breakout. Its title translating to “queen” in English, “Kuningatar” is both intense and spacious, its tempo thrust insistent but with echoes reaching out as it heads toward a momentary bass-led midsection break. Airy lead guitar seems to top the bulk of the second half of the track in various forms, but the underlying pummel and drive is never really lost, even as the band crash out at the end and let the drums start “Triangeli” in a way that comes across as purposefully direct, one into the next. That is, whether they were or not, these two songs sound made to be positioned together, such is the ease of the transition between them. Side B is all the more of a monolith for that.
As to what horrors Gangrened unleash in the final statement of their immersive debut, those are noisier, more feedback-laced, slower unraveling and ultimately more unhinged. Again, purposefully. If “Trangeli” (“triangle”) is somehow the culmination of where Deadly Algorithm has been leading all along, its brutality feels earned, to say the least, but like the album from which it results, there is more depth to the finale than simple bludgeoning. It might seem silly to call Gangrened “mindful” on an aesthetic level, with the sort of new-new-agey connotation of the word, but the band is to be commended for not losing sight of their expressive goal even when that goal seems to be ripping the album apart at the end. The final minute-plus of “Trangeli” is dedicated to some final shouts and then residual noise on a long fade, and the atmospheric point that began to be made in “Intro” is highlighted in the album’s last moments — a sense of completion resonant in more than just the gut-wrenching lumber the band have been throwing around all the while.
There is plenty of that, to be sure, but Deadly Algorithm portrays the insidiousness of the age in which we live through its mood and overarching disaffection as well. Even in its critique, it is of its era. One could go on about the forces that would be required for a worldwide shift to, well, anything, but frankly, to do so is overwhelming and sad. That the impulse is there at all should be taken as testament to the thought-provoking nature of Gangrened‘s work across the record’s still-accessible, still-fluid 42-minute span, and though they present their arguments forcefully, they are doing more than screaming into the abyss. As a debut, their doing so is especially notable.
Full album is streaming below ahead of the release Friday.
Good luck, and enjoy:
“Deadly Algorithm” title, cover and concept verses about a subject that was used in the previous release “We are nothing”. how the world economic elites manipulate mass population. In this case, sneaking up, orienting the development of new technologies like algorithms of artificial intelligence for massive data and attention extraction. Persuasive technology to keep users as long as possible connected. Unfortunately, in the rising attention extraction digital economy, and data extraction also, that the new technologies are at the right moment immersed in, a human is worth more when we are depressed, outraged, polarized, and addicted. Parallel to this, is growing a massive surveillance by governments and big companies with the purpose of basically implement what seemed a dystopia till a little while ago: Living in the “1984” novel of George Orwell, or even worse. . . “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”.
Deadly Algorithm has been recorded in different sessions between June 2018 and February 2019 by Sami Nortunen at Ylistaro (Finland) and also at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke in June/July 2020. Deadly Algorithm has been mixed and mastered during July-September 2020 at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke.
Players:
Jon Imbernon – Guitars and effects
Joakim Udd – Electric bass and bass synth
Lassi Männikkö – Drums
Mikko Mannistö – Vocals and effects.
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