Aural Aggravation

4th May 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a few months since we last heard from London based industrial/alternative rock duo GLYTSH, who made some waves with their first single releases – and rightly so, because they were absolute bangers: their cover on Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ on hinted at the original material that was to follow, with both ‘(Hard)core memory’ and ‘SAV@Ge’ kicking serious arse. They’ve been busy in the meantime, landing a live slot supporting Tom Saint in June as part of the publicity for their upcoming debut EP, which ‘V.H.S.’ gives us a flavour of.

‘V.H.S.’ – that’s ‘Vulgar Holy Spirit’ – is pitched as ‘loud, proud and kind of a sombre love song’, which Jennifer Diehl – who now goes by the pseudonym of Luna Blake when she’s in Glytsch mode – expands on as being “about a lost relationship trying to be resurrected… It’s a dark romantic tale 2.0 with a Frankenstein flavour and could be seen as the sequel to our second single – ‘Hard(core) Memory’”.

It’s another slice of savvy songwriting that does so much all at once, starting out like some clean, crisp ‘alternative’ pop – the kind of electro-goth that pretends to be menacing but really isn’t – before going absolutely raging wild, demonic screaming with a barrage of noise exploding white hot and devastating. There’s a really thick swampy low-end and the production is dense and dirty – and it’s a real asset in realising the song’s full impact potential, because it very much accentuates the sense of volume, with the drums being pushed down beneath the speaker shredding guitar… and the guitar is a wall of sheet metal and it’s a riffy as fuck and properly heavy…and yet, somehow, there are glimpses of melody, a keen chorus that breaks out from the demonic rage of the verses, which returns us to the point where we’re forced to consider that there is a keen pop element to their songs. How can it be? And how can it all happen in two and a half minutes?

There’s no time to think or dissect it: it’s hard to take in what’s going on. It’s a blur, a blitzkrieg, an in-out smash-and-grab, fast, furious, violent and so well executed.

In the wake of Nu Metal and Marilyn Manson – who rose in on the tattered mesh coattails of Trent Reznor who brought the kind of niche noisy shit that was the domain of Wax Trax! and strictly underground to a huge global audience and then took it up several notches, aggro stuff has become quite normalised, not to mention predictable – but Glytsch bring something new and unique, and it’s not just that they’re female. They present a new hybrid, and a new level of ferocity that’s absolutely terrifying.

They’re racking up radio plays already, and they’ve got world class quality howling from every pore.

AA

Photo Credit: Ulrich von Trier