BIG BRAVE – In Grief Or In Hope

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8.0

• Bands:
  BIG BRAVE
• Duration: 00:44:07
• Available from: 12/06/2026
• Label:

• Thrill Jockey Records

It is a process of increasingly radical reduction to the minimum terms that Big Brave are carrying out with their music. After years spent stunning, hammering, even disturbing, through a unique mix of noise rock, shoegaze and metal, with the splendid “A Chaos Of Flowers” they had portrayed themselves in a more intimate, rarefied, nocturnal dimension, completely or almost completely abandoning excruciating feedback, massive distortions, real heaviness.
With “In Grief Or In Hope” the trio starts again from those painful and beautiful notes, filtering them with some suggestions that appeared last year in “OST” – a dark-ambient experiment that went a little unnoticed – and then sadly dragging themselves into a sound universe made of vague punctuations, black and poignant melancholies, guitars that ripple and calm down softly, savoring their presence.
The main protagonist is the voice, as in “A Chaos Of Flowers”, a light and at the same time heavy poetry, because the tones are never cheerful, echoing also on this occasion of that leaden and ethereal matter that has some of its celebrated exponents in performers such as Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle, AA Williams. Robin Wattie, singer/guitarist of the group, matches the names just mentioned, proving to be fully up to them, using all the vocal range available to her: if whispers and murmurs are what most frequently emerge, occasional screams vindicate her hardcore training and the ability to scratch even in such a subdued context.

Compared to the album from two years ago, Big Brave seem to go even more to the bone, discarding any frills and maniacally focusing on very few elements, just enough to make the vocal story stand out, and nothing else. There is almost more silence than music during “In Grief Or In Hope”: every sound is barely mentioned, you are careful not to raise the tones, not to exacerbate the volumes, as if any mood surge was too much, out of tune.
We navigate between bitter drones, suspended in an ecosystem where there is no physicality, only a cloud of intense abstraction. Large spaces, a very slow evolution where each word takes on a significant specific weight.
Sounds that necessarily require inspiration that is decidedly above average, so as not to appear to be a vacuous exercise in style. And once again, this little miracle succeeds for the Big Brave. “what may be the kindest way to leave” (the song titles are shown in lower case as per the press notes) captures in a formidable narcoleptic embrace, bristly in the sharp guitar notes, misty in the defeated vocalizations, in some moments almost confused in the feedback, although this is not at all disruptive. On some occasions the sound becomes slightly more open, without deviating from an almost constant emotional trajectory; they are small variations on the theme, within a tracklist that shows rigor and discipline in pursuing a certain ideal of sound.

Some echoes of the past re-emerge in “vegetables”, more claustrophobic and threatening, subtly malignant in Wattie's laments, even though we are talking about another slow song, devoid of real rhythmic elements, dark and repetitive in structure.
Also fascinating is the gothic aura that spreads like a suffocating pall on “skin ripper”, a lacerating dark crooning, with the guitar notes that seem to collapse to the ground, exhausted by this painful emotionality. “In Grief Or In Hope” shows continuity with the trio's recent moves, taking its intimate and rarefied dimension to the extreme, keeping its ability to excite and enchant intact. Whether it is through a frenzied rhythmic hammering, or a sharp and blackish drone, it doesn't matter.
The profound, unbreakable minimalism of the work keeps it a step further back in our appreciation compared to the richer and more fascinating “A Chaos Of Flowers”, although the charm emanating from this new release remains very strong, yet another testimony of a unique band, capable of leaving an indelible mark on the contemporary noise/metal scene with each release.