The Grip Of The Naked Mind

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6.0

• Band:
  BRAINSTORM
• Duration: 00:27:05
• Available from: 02/08/2024
• Label:

• Time To Kill Records

Brainsore's story is currently short but intense: formed in 2022, the Modena death-grind band immediately managed to tread stages far and wide throughout much of Italy without any publication to their credit, thanks to an evidently competitive live line-up led by the caustic voice of Federico Iulli, already with the Modena grindcore giant Jesus Ain't In Poland – a band of absolute value for lovers of a certain way of understanding extreme music, yes brutal, but always intelligent and not at all predictable. Brainsore have therefore managed to come forward in terms of concert presence even before having reached the finish line that they are now about to reach with their debut “The Grip Of The Naked Mind”, published by Time To Kill Records.
The album is developed over a little less than half an hour in terms of duration, for a total of twelve tracks with a generally contained duration, as the death-grind tradition requires. However, although it is therefore a relatively short listen, the difficulties in the flow of the pieces are unfortunately not lacking. Despite a production generally suited to the proposed music and a fairly precise execution – but not impeccable, especially from the guitar point of view – the succession of the pieces generally seems not very engaging, where the riffing is often not very incisive and memorable and the drum work seems to simply accompany what is traced by the guitar lines, without attempting its own solutions in terms of arrangement.
Some interesting episodes are certainly present, as already witnessed by the single “The Mangrove Diaries” and, above all, by the sixth piece of the tracklist, “The Amen Corner”, a well-made composition in terms of structure and arrangement, which can bring to mind what was done by bands like Misery Index or Criminal Element. However, the songs generally struggle to establish themselves in the memory even after multiple listening sessions, often leaving the impression of a lack of refinement and chiseling with regards to arrangements and structures supporting a riffing that is not particularly brilliant or original: the guitar parts show a certain affinity with what was proposed for example by Carcass in “Symphonies Of Sickness”, without however possessing its intrinsic bizarreness, effectively leaving the voice with the task of expressing sensations of alienation and abstractness on unusual but violently tight lyrics, perfectly in line with what was previously written and recorded by Iulli on the albums of the aforementioned Jesus Ain't In Poland.
The impression that “The Grip Of The Naked Mind” leaves us is therefore that of a perhaps unfinished work, whose main protagonist is the lyrical section and which would probably have needed further changes and improvements regarding the general layout of the songs before being recorded. We are certain of the potential of Brainsore in the death-grind field, where greater attention to detail and to the refinement of writing and execution of their music can only benefit a band already started from the point of view of presence on stages. We wait confidently.