DECAYCAST Reviews: GRAVE MOSS “Mosswave”  Cassette (Crass Lips Records, 2016)

Grave Moss play fuzzed out psychedelic lo fi synth punk/rock/death/doom/comedy/sludge.  But it’s not really that, but it kinda is? The label whom released this short little ripper of a cassette, Crass Lips Records, is just as all over the map in a great and eclectic, but uncontrived way. Sabbath mock band? Perhaps, but it sounds damn good? I think? I can’t tell my mind seems to be altered by some gooey, slippery off blue fungi, that could only be described as one thing; mosswave. Borrowing equal parts from Chrome, Black Sabbath Volume 4, Sisters of Mercy, and a broken Yanni answering machine greeting, Grave Moss create a style of deathrock that is both comical and serious, lighthearted and menacing, heavy yet gurgling with comic relief, nauseous yet satisfied. Drugged out, fuzzed out, mold puffed riffs, cavernous percussion, and angrily sneered vocals are the go to weapons of Grave Moss. The hammering guitar makes you split your head open like the village wino running circles until he spins out his blood and collapses from disorientation.

Oscillating between synth-driven death rock, dirged -out pop power chord progressions, scraping their way to the bloody tip of the mix, flustered with doubly duty screeched/howled vocals to boot. The falsetto voice it’s so low oscillates sub bass gurgle for an accentuated evil grin. Almost sounds like it could be mocking early Christian Death in the laugh out of the side of your mouth smile slicer. This is fun music to discuss how much Death in June is not that interesting, whilst keeping awake at the wheel to the next five-hundred-mile marker of death. Driving music to vomit to all whilst still head banging, this appears the aesthetic of Grave Moss Probably a laugh-treat live if they play it up to the absurdity of these recordings. The thickly churning bass lines and bass/lead synth parts glue the low end perfectly together to belch to thick, quivering sound, a tonal, dissonant, and slightly comical versions of alienating guitar and synthesizer riffs, pummeling bombastic percussion chugging away like the ergot beneath the old wooden keg nobody would dare drink out of, sans the drummer. Infected sound, stitched side to side through the singer’s flanged out, chopping, angsty barking fits which are hurled at the listener like a rickety crossbow, and with a creaking, sinking, smelly, ship collapsed into a swamp of disease and mutation, the sound of GRAVE MOSS is complete.