Labels: A389
Review by: Alex Deller
Rightly or wrongly, I always bracket Gehenna with the likes of Unruh and Enewetak. True, they’re not as technically-minded as the former and don’t have the sludgy, Iommian edge of the latter, but they all share a dirty, metal-streaked sound and bitter worldview that makes for ideal listening when you wish 99.9% of humanity drowned, aflame or stricken by a deadly virus. Herein the band play a track called ‘Get Fucked Up’, which is all primitive snarls, hatchet-like riffing and lyrics like “I’ll return from the storm / with blood in my eyes / and vomit hell when I speak.” It’s not exactly ‘No One Will Ever Miss You’, but it certainly serves its purpose well enough. California Love I’ve not heard since they played London, which was around the time ‘Reaping The Whirlwind’ came out. They set up stall with a gurgling, mid-paced bellycrawl which is swiftly cut to ribbons by blurred bursts of grind-like speed – a nice enough effort but one that, at just shy of two minutes, could’ve easily been stretched out to be something more substantial.