Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight the new single “Music for Furbies” from Gatta Morta.
Gatta Morta, the new alternative metal supergroup comprise of Buzz Osborne (Melvins), JD Pinkus (Butthole Surfers), Coady Willis (Big Business) and Clinton Jacob (mr.phylzzz), is a supergroup that got it right. Where some supergroups might play it safe and abandon the quirks and weird idiosyncrasies that make its constituting players so exciting, the gang here have decided to leave it all in. You get everything from Melvins-style Sabbath worship, Butthole Surfers mutant alt rock, the Bonham-sized grooves of Coady Willis, all tied up with the weirdo rock vocal of Clinton Jacob.
The single “Music for Furbies” from Gatta Morta’s upcoming debut album shows this alternative metal supergroup blending these elements into a beautifully weird beast of a song. The alt rock verses feel not far off from things bands like Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. were doing in the early ’90s, groups that emerged from the smoky underground of punk and the alternative metal that pushed Jane’s Addiction into the mainstream. It’s the solidity of this element, the natural groove of the band, that makes the turn toward a very hardcore-does-Black Sabbath chorus riff all the more exciting.
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Gatta Morta do not try to make sense of the shift. They don’t try to ease you in with a transition. They know in their hearts these sounds belong together because they are true loves of everyone involved and trust you to follow. The fact, however, that the vocals still stay in the expressive alt rock tradition even as Melvins influence shows brighter and brighter calls to mind those magical Melvins records of the late ’80s and early ’90s exploring the same bizarre, joyful terrain. It’s our Heavy Song of the Week.
Honorable Mentions
The Body & Cel Genesis – “To Be Eviscerated”
Have you ever wondered what Sleep Token would sound like if they wanted to f**king kill you? The template here is not radically far off, wielding a sensuous nocturnal atmosphere that is on the edge of seductive and buffeting it with a strong rhythmic propulsive backbone. The difference is where Sleep Token goes for something that ultimately tries to split the difference between prog metal, metalcore, and R&B, The Body & Cel Genesis give in entirely to the harrowing anti-humanism of industrial music at its finest. This is the music of witnessing atrocity through screens and learning how your devices are made, who had to die for bananas in the grocery store and cheap chocolate on the shelf.
Knoll – “Inopportune”
Bleak and nihilistic grindcore band Knoll return with “Inopportune,” the debut single from their upcoming albumDoth Appear due out February 5th. This is grind more in the vein of Fuck the Facts or fellow grindcore classmates Full of Hell, full of wild dissonance and lots of influence from the worlds of black metal, noise, and experimental music. “Inopportune” sounds like the kind of thing you might here if you were captured by a Cenobite and left in a suspiciously damp room with bizarre architecture and chains hanging from the ceiling instead of chairs, conjuring a sense of being trapped in the lair of something tenebrous and unknowable. It is this same constant expansion of sonic vision that has made Knoll so exciting over time and is a brilliant example of the artistic heft even the bleakest and most terrifying heavy music can muster.
Showing Teeth – “Hellraiser”
Feral animal aggression. That’s what sets Showing Teeth apart from others in the metalcore and deathcore pack. Her delivery of the material, from the hyperaggressive guitar playing to the absolutely unhinged vocal performance, feels more in line with the chaotic force of hardcore than the often overproduced and packaged world of contemporary metalcore. The fact that you could imagine her performing this track alongside Converge or in a stuffy club after a youth crew band is a testament to the real punk edge to it. But, pivotally, it is also unashamed of the worlds of metalcore and deathcore. This is not an artist or a song that wants to distance itself from its peers out of false shame but one that feels like some gesturing from an open door away from the jockisms elements of the scene have taken on back to the world created by bands like Minor Threat, Black Flag, and the crusties that came after.