Gross Misconduct

Founded almost 20 years ago, and with three full-length studio albums to its name, the Canadian band Gross Misconduct has its share of experience. According to Metal Archives, the band is independent and has been since the beginning. The most recent work is the 2018 album titled Equinox. It was released on the 2nd of November. It has the following tracks.

1.Equinox 05:45

2.A Place of Bones 05:50

3.Exhaustive, Integral 05:27

4.Triserpentine 06:24

5.After the Vultures 04:27

6.Ocean Inferno 05:22

7.The Cloak 02:18

8.Slow Burn 06:11

total time 41:44

Equipped with a good production, it helps them a lot to have all that experience in order to make an independent album that can boom in the ears when you hear it. Having never heard the band, I was not expecting anything in particular. When you hear it, the modern extreme metal comes through immediately. The growling is mostly based on death metal, and the vocals are a bit comprehensible, and surprisingly so because I keep getting the impression that all the words are intelligible (or feel intelligible, most of the time). The guitars are progressive extreme metal, and it’s all types of headbanging guitar sounds, a bit of thrashy moments, some black metal riffing, melodic death metal parts and grooves are present throughout, but they wrap it with a solid Gross Misconduct treatment so that it is all smooth as the band’s style, not as a mix of various random genres. From the album’s start to the end, there is a consistent style that gives the flavor to the album.

Besides the work of putting together an album that sounds professional; that shows the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into making an album that they can be proud of; and the band’s dedication to the creative process of making metal music for no other reason than the spiritual satisfaction that you get from music—besides all that, which is all commendable—the one thing that I can say is the closer, the thing that clinches it all, has got to be the melodies. The melodies may not be that easy to hear at first because it’s extreme metal. You know, the overpowering sound of headbanging extreme metal, and all that, but once your hearing adjusts to the situation, the lay of the land, then the red carpet is really ready for the melodies to show up and do their thing. The band is not content with being good at being loud. Nor are they satisfied with showing that they can play their instruments. All good things, but you have to have the songs.

People say that today’s music listener has no patience. They say that the average listener does not wait very long before clicking and moving on to the next mosquito-attention-span thing and clicking away down the rabbit hole. I don’t know if that is true or not, but o.k., let’s do it that way and let’s see if you hear what these Canadians have to offer. If I have to recommend one song, I suggest that you listen to “Ocean Inferno.” If I may say so, though, I hope that you give it more than 13 seconds before clicking on to the next band. Don’t be that cruel because at about the 3:12 mark the guitar solo will kick in. I will not spoil it for you now. I will just say this: the band—to paraphrase what Scorpions said a long, long time ago—reached for the guitar melodies that will touch your feelings. If you don’t feel it, that’s fine, go back to what you were doing, but I’m just telling you that this song gives a good idea of what Gross Misconduct is all about. It’s a fine, fine song, as is the entire album.

OFFICIAL BAND BIOGRAPHY: There has been no script, adherence to the outside, nor even so much a thought given to what happens outside of four walls, two guitars, a bass, drums and a few microphones. Vancouver, Canada's Gross Misconduct enters its second decade as a band with continued and unrelenting focus on craft, songwriting and an uncompromising live show. Established in 1999 and consisting of founding members David London, Jesse Brint, John Kurucz and “new guy” Julian Kenchenten, the four-piece is poised to release its most complete offering with the band's third full-length release, Equinox.

Slated for a fall 2018 release, Equinox builds upon the foundation laid in Gross Misconduct's first two albums, The Process of Indoctrination (2007) and The Disconnect (2011). Equinox is an amalgam of the frantic thrash found on the band's debut and the more progressive death metal elements of its followup. The fast parts are faster, the slow parts are moodier. Songs breathe. Imagine Cynic with a dollop of Death, a smattering of The Crown/Mastodon/Gojira and healthy doses of 1980s Metallica and Slayer. This is where Equinox finds its home. The lyrical content straddles a myriad of inspirations from personal tragedy and death, to the natural world and observations on the human condition.

Hundreds of shows later, Gross Misconduct has shared the stage with seminal bands from across the globe: Napalm Death, At the Gates, Amon Amarth, The Haunted, Dark Tranquility, Insomnium, Amorphis, Brutal Truth, Skeletonwitch, Forbidden, Rotten Sound, among many others. Domestically, the Vancouver group has shared the stage with some of Canada's finest: Archspire, Augury, Fuck the Facts, Martyr, Neuraxis, No Means No, The Dayglo Abortions, Anonymus. Those efforts have not gone unnoticed on both the international and domestic fronts.

grossmisconduct.bandcamp.com/album/equinox

facebook.com/GrossMisconductBand