Published on Oct 5, 2001
On the surface, the hard rock quartet Grudge wants you to
believe that they’re a breath of fresh air in a stagnating music
scene. They suggest, without using the words themselves, that they
could be the biggest thing out of the Northwest since groups like
Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam left their legacies.
If only they could live up to that hype.
Forgiveness, Grudge’s debut, is more akin to a poor man’s
Godsmack, albeit with a little more anger and intensity at times.
It’s not a bad disc, but it’s not one that leaps out at the
listener as a “must-own” type of album.
Hailing from Billings, Montana, the band – vocalist Gerrick
Phillips, guitarist Richard J. Candelaria, bassist Brian Coleman
and drummer Marco Castro – try to set themselves apart by
occasionally throwing in a time signature or rhythm pattern change
into the music, a trick used to perfection by many other bands. The
difficulty is knowing the right time to utilize such tricks in the
music – and, on songs like “Forgiveness,” it sometimes feels like
they’re being utilized just because the band knows how to. It’s a
bit disconcerting for the listener, and makes the album that much
harder to follow at the outset. (Rule number seventeen: Don’t
confuse the listeners on the first song of your debut disc. That’s
a sure way to lose them permanently.)
For much of the 44 minutes that
Forgiveness takes to get through, Grudge fail to set
themselves apart from any number of bands who spew angst among
crunching guitar chords. Maybe the occasional sample (as heard at
the beginning and end of the album) help to break things up a
little bit, but songs like “Carni,” “Suck Factor” and “Pissed Sick”
don’t suggest that Grudge aspires to reaching the top of the
gloom-rock heap. Then again, they don’t necessarily fail completely
as songs; tracks like “New Seed” and “Hate Me” offer rays of hope
for the listener.
It’s not that Grudge did a bad job on
Forgiveness, and it’s not that they didn’t try hard enough
to overcome the inevitable comparisons. But Grudge seems to want to
be taken on their own merits and accepted as a unique band. If only
they had offered a little more evidence to warrant this.
2001 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault”. All rights
reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of House
Of Hits Productions / Buddha Records, and is used for informational
purposes only.