Noisy post-hardcore indebted sludge upstarts Great Falls return with a grimly mesmerizing album on The Bite That Grows Up.
Release date: October 16, 2026 | Neurot Recordings | Instagram | Bandcamp
I’ve been a fan of aggressive and heavy music for nigh on three decades of my life. My fandom has waxed and waned over the years, often fixating on one subgenre or another for a year or so with lots of room for other styles of music in between, but something about the aggression and loudness of it all remains a counterintuitive comfort. I recall seeing an article about a long-term study of heavy metal fans a few years ago that showed that people who enjoy abrasive, distorted, angry, and violent sounding music benefitted from lower stress levels, less depression, and were all around happier people in spite of the music’s sound and themes. Perhaps that is why I keep returning to heavy sounds, as a form of sonic therapy. Maybe I’m just accustomed to it.
Whatever the underlying cause may be, I found an album a couple of years ago by a band called Great Falls titled Objects Without Pain, their first album for Neurot. It was one of those situations where as an impulsive shopper and record collector I bought the thing with only a few samples of the music therein. The album arrived, and I listened to it while doing dishes and chores, not really giving it the attention it deserved. I shelved it, happy with the vibes, and carried on throughout the year. Later, while sitting at my laptop doing something other than writing album reviews, I decided to throw it back on, this time with headphones. I had a fucking blast listening to it, interrupting my work to play frantic air drums and genuinely embrace looking like a flailing idiot without shame. I live alone, for the record. The point is, I grew to love that album, and when I saw Great Falls had another on the way, I jumped on reviewing it despite having two other reviews due the same day. The album is called The Bite That Grows Up, and it scratches an itch that only Great Falls can find.
Great Falls‘ sound is a unique one. Sure, it has some familiar sonic tropes, but the band lives somewhere between sludge metal, post-hardcore, mathcore, noise rock, and shares characteristics with skramz and post-metal. That sounds like a lot of world salad to describe a band, but Great Falls manages to hit all of those reference points in like, every track. It is impressive. Opening track “A Small Weakness” hits with an off-kilter and dissonant rhythm and riff that sounds nearly muddy in its lurching, hazy cadence and tone. When the vocals kick in, the bass provides the melody before the band erupts into a frantically complex eruption. In under two minutes you can experience the sludge tones and mathcore complexity. Suddenly the wildness drops out into something a bit more clean as vocalist/guitarist Damien Johnston proclaims in his desperate sounding wail, ‘I’ve been sent here/but I’d come by myself/this why I’m here/I need help‘ in a manner that can’t help but remind me of skramz’s sense of emotional devastation. His guitar begins to dance between notes and distortion feedback before the crushing heaviness of Primitive Man style sludge pummels your psyche.
This contrast of loud, quiet, fast, slow, measured, and deranged define each song on this album. Nick Parks drumming remains wildly complex and perfectly timed throughout the album. Also a member of Gaytheist, he is quickly rising to one of my favorite current drummers in metal. Granted Johnston’s vocals are delivered through short declarations and his delivery contains the morose cadence of skramz or depressive suicidal black metal, to deliver with such histrionics while playing complex riffs and switching effects is a feat unto itself. Shane Mehling’s bass sounds absolutely monstrous hitting dirge like lows with a distorted rumble while also calling to mind Botch and Sumac‘s Brian Cook‘s understated complexity. Great Falls are an incredibly talented trio.
The downside of this barrage of talent and eruptive song structures is that everything kind of blends together. In some ways, this is on purpose. The noise transition between “Worse Than Sleep” and “Hailstone Numbers” makes the tracks bleed into each other nicely, giving way to the most interesting track on the album. “Hailstone Numbers” sees Parks using a broken kick drum and dragging chains across a floor as percussive elements. The track builds in a maelstrom of twisting influences and emerges as a stellar example of what Great Falls are capable of. Partway through the track, there is a guitar loop that moves into a sludgy post-metal passage that would make Neurosis envious. Moments like this stand out, but ultimately I wish there was a little more variety on this album.
It isn’t for lack of trying, “Nicotine In The Spine” opens with a couple of bars of sad, detuned organ before the chaotic eruption of Great Falls‘s sound bursts back into its grimy focus. This album is truly one of the heavy highlights of the year for me, but I would love to hear what the band sounds like with a little more restraint and texture. It is as if they want to fit every idea into every song rather than let individual ideas ruminate. This is a mild criticism, though. “Debt Ethics” almost immediately proves me wrong with an incredible display of what is arguably more traditional songwriting. The next track, “Buildings Full Of Rope” leans more into their hardcore and post-hardcore influences, at least with their guitar tones. This shit has to be insane to see live, three dudes going apeshit on their instruments like the most bizarrely tuned and discordant jazz trio of all time.
Great Falls throw so many ideas into each song on The Bite That Grows Up that even after 9 or 10 listens I am still trying to make heads or tails of describing it. This is both a strength and the one criticism I have, and that could be entirely on me trying to rationalize their hardcore tendencies with their more sludgey ones. I think it is that when they go full bore crazy, as they often do, it feels less cathartic and impressive each time. Like how Steven Spielberg tried too many jump scares in Jaws. Everything surrounding these moments is great, but the impact lessens every time. It is almost like the vibe of their music outshines the memory of the music itself. You could spend hours upon hours with this album and still be unable to recreate the performances by ear. I suppose that makes the impact dependent on your mood. I could see this criticism corrected by either focusing on more traditional song structures (ew, but maybe) or by exploring more drone and noise moments and letting the tensions build more slowly.
If you need something viscerally intense while also complex and unhinged enough to feel like it is about to go off the rails, then The Bite That Grows Up is for you. Great Falls have made an album that fits a very particular mood by welding together various alloys of metal into a non-Euclidian monstrosity that is as satisfying as it is bewildering. This is a band that I will continue to champion, because no one else quite sounds like them. They also have the chops to back up a sound so ostentatious while maintaining familiar touchstones. I think Great Falls will only get better as they continue, but this is an exciting and impressive album nonetheless.
