Grave Robbert: “When The Bell Tolls One” and “Midnight Road”
Grave Robbert was founded in 2010 by Rob Grave Törnqvist, as a solo horror-metal project, up until the end of 2017, when it was decided to go on as a full band. Currently in the studio recording the debut album “The Nightmare Begins” – set for a 2019 Halloween release – the band have dropped the singles “Midnight Road” and “When The Bell Tolls One”, from the forthcoming album. Both tracks were mixed by Cat Casino (Deathstars, Vain, Hank Von Hell).
True talents will hardly be found on a reality talent show, but where it’s always been found – on the road, in the garages, basements and warehouses and playing endless tours of gigs anywhere and everywhere. Where the truly talented learn their way. Grave Robbert must fall into this category for the band has a versatile and well-oiled sound.
“When The Bell Tolls One” is an awesome song with the right amount of emotional masochism and pounding music to really get your blood pumping. Like a mountain of might, the track opens with brute force. It clearly and defiantly, showcases the thunderous ferocity of its pummeling metal.
The growling vocals here are great. The rhythm is heavy. In short, this track freaking rocks. The vocals, are so intense that it sounds like the singer is breathing fire all over the studio. Grave Robbert run through five minutes of surging riffs, thundering drums, and blood-curdling vocals like it’s nothing, as if to remind metal-heads how much they can make it look easy.
When singer first unleashes his ferocious howl in the track, it’s hard to not be delighted, like entering a particularly well-designed haunted house. With zero respite, listeners are thrust into the song, making it clear that Grave Robbert is no less astute behind the guitars as they are behind the microphone.
In fact, there is a precision and decisiveness to this performance that is sorely lacking in the genre right now. And if that wasn’t enough Grave Robbert do a ninety degree turn on “Midnight Road”, just to show how versatile their talents are. Shimmering piano keys and lucid acoustic guitar picking are accompanied by luscious strings into an ethereal Goth-rock ballad that is as surprising as it is stunning.
The track absolutely shows how Grave Robbert can move from visceral growling to mellifluous soul-searching melody, as the female vocals lead the song into a mystifying soundscape that will mesmerize the mind and hypnotize the heart. The band has created a dreamy atmosphere with close-to-perfection melodic vocals on “Midnight Road”.
Listening to it, your legs will tremble indicating the onset of goosebumps. In fact in that precise moment it’s actually hard to believe that Grave Robbert can be described as a horror-themed metal band. And from that standpoint, the production and composition on these tracks are both borderline flawless.
It’s almost as if the band wanted to tease and taunt us with two opposing and contrasting sounds, via “Midnight Road” and “When The Bell Tolls One”. This of course makes the anticipation for their upcoming album even stronger. Just to fully understand exactly where on the metal sound-scale, Grave Robbert will position themselves on “The Nightmare Begins”.
