Gridlink--Orphan

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Gridlink won.  I don't know how they do it (it might have something to do with their painfully short run times on each album, though), but Gridlink wrote another album to end all albums.  It's as if they just have a stable of end-all songs sitting around one of their houses, all packed up and ready to go, twelve minutes apiece, with sweet artwork attached to it.

How?

Let me back up for a second.  It wasn't long ago that I first experienced Gridlink's full frontal maniac assault, having been thoroughly regaled about the virtues of their album Amber Gray (which I reviewed here).  Such grind perfection the world was (and still is) not prepared for!  What shall we do when Gridlink is no more and music has nowhere else to go?  The thought pains me to no end.  If there is no Gridlink for my theoretical children (who are less and less likely to exist with every news broadcast I watch), who then will my fake children look to for inexplicably brutal and amazing seven-second-long songs?  Because my kids aren't touching my Gridlink record with their grubby, disgusting hands.  Fuck those theoretical children of mine!

They disappoint me.

As much as I loved Amber Gray (and that was a lot), Orphan is better.  The riffs are sweeter and more br00tal, the tempos are faster, and there's a drumsticks-clicking-together countoff before almost every song.  And I love those!  The only thing I love more is the sizzling hi-hat countoff.  Fucking br00tal, brah!  Orphan grinds in much the same way that the previous release did, but better.  Gridlink sounds like a man with horrible diarrhea running frantically to the nearest restroom.  In his frantic scrabble for relief, the man becomes rabid and desperate, tearing through pedestrian flesh in his maddening dash to get the softshell crab he had for his birthday dinner safely out of his colon without having it land in his relatively clean pants (I think that it goes without saying that this is autobiographical).

The title track, as per usual in the metal game, is a great example of the crazed and frenzied maelstrom that Gridlink have concocted.  And have you got a hankering to hear a pretty great seven second song, the likes of which my children-who-don't-exist will be clamoring for once I finally meet my demise in a foolish and ill-advised motorcycle stunt gone horribly awry?  Look no further than "Cargo 200."  What about something a little more laid back that doesn't sound like a group of cool demons with sweet haircuts shrieking at the god that abandoned them long ago?  Fuck you, then!  Look somewhere else, you stinky hippy.
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Hippies aside, if you aren't listening to Gridlink and sending them pieces of dismembered Barbie dolls in the mail to express your adoration, there's something wrong with you.  I mean, if you aren't staking out their houses at night to get a feel for how they live and rummage through their garbage cans, you're a bit of a weirdo, and I'd appreciate it if you'd just stop reading right here and go turn yourself in to the nearest psychiatric treatment center, which is something that people have been advising me to do for years, but since I'm so mentally spry and not at all insane, I've simply  let their voices slide off me like water while I burn the eyes out of pictures of supermodels in my mom's basement.

Because I'm well adjusted, and Naomi Campbell should be punished for giving those men impure thoughts.

I'm not going to post a link to the download, because, seriously, it's really easy to find.  I myself bought the vinyl from Vacation Vinyl as a preorder.  Blood red with great big album art!  Here's a picture of me enjoying Orphan the way it was meant to be enjoyed, physical copy and all.

I like the tangy zip.

Goes down smooth!

At any rate, you should listen to Orphan and buy it and take creepy pictures of yourself doing things to it, because that's perfectly acceptable when you're listening to musical perfection.  Make sure that you're wearing relatively clean pants when you listen to it, because that soft shell crab I mentioned before will be promptly ejected if you aren't prepared for the onslaught.