Grant the Sun - Voyage

Angry Metal Guy

A panda nose-dives toward a shimmering lure. The anglerfish hides behind its deceptive illumination exhibiting a sleuthing patience in the depths as its prey learns of its sad panda decision. Much like the unexplainable attendance of an ailuropoda melanoleuca to the no-light trenches of the sightless bait-and-strike angler, Grant the Sun acts as a singularity for Scandinavia’s extreme performers. Martin Rygge, of the furiously and disarmingly grindcore outfit Beaten to Death, stands ready to supply shouts and guitar abuse. The legendary Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah, Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects) had previously lent his syncopated stabbing (on bass) to Grant the Sun’s 2019 Sylvain EP. So that’s why then Voyage, as you would assume, treads through supremely gaze-laden and post-puddled waters—the world’s simply not so black and white.

Grant the Sun at surface appears as Norway’s newest metal jam band export, crossing ears with sounds that conjure the one-off twangy dream of Graviton or the chug-n-swell maestros Russian Circles. Reaching equally to a shoegaze fizzle (“Mariana,” “Vertigo”) and modern prog syncopation (“Machina,” “Hits like a Wave”), Grant the Sun brings many flavors to the table. Voyage lumbers about stacked with pleasantly vibrant and wavering guitar sounds, in large part due to the wide range of tones that fill the gentle roll of tracks like “Blue Desert” and “Seadevil.” Rygge and his jazz-minded compatriot Markus Lillehaug Johnsen (Ole Børud, Ine Hoem) have no problem imbuing djent-minded grooves with Holdsworth-ain¹ alien noodling (“Death Is Real”) or tense tremolo work (“Grant the Sun”)—definitely a musician’s album, but not only for the wise of theory.

Voyage by Grant The Sun
Grant the Sun wants to be a heavy band who revels in lush textures that breathe between riff crunching. Also, they want to be a psych-leaning effort that stirs the murky, ambient pot with percussive bombast. Voyage, as a result, has dedicated itself to neither. While main stick smacker Håvard Sveberg provides a tight tick to the heavier drive numbers, his atmospheric cymbal splashes can get lost in the fretboard fuzz and reverb on slower jogs (“Mariana,” “Vertigo”). The not spacious enough production further cuts the high end of some of his lower impact chimes (the ride during the solo backing of “Death Is Real” and intro to “Hits like a Wave” in particular), reducing that noise’s ability to aid the passage of time. This all leads Voyage to be a muddy mid-album fog book-ended by driving numbers. Both colors have merit but don’t mesh together well. Though over time the dissolving noise of “Death Is Real” does start to feel like a proper cast-off into “Mariana,”² but the swim below to the rise of “Seadevil” hasn’t yet felt more than being afloat in a slow current.

Still when Grant the Sun finds that cascading wash-out guitar bliss, thick rhythms, and subtle grooves, Voyage stands a chance at riding surf-ready post-metal. Many tracks feature plaintive shoegaze croons and hallucinatory spoken-word samples, which can run the risk of a post-induced coma. But at mostly the right moments, Rygge’s interjections of fervent barks on “Machina,” “Death Is Real,” and the fat closer help move the narrative. As a result, the post-metal swell and conquer tactic allows all of Voyage to coalesce as one hypnotic wave for its spiraling conclusion. Despite the master limiting the atmosphere during Voyage’s downtime, the tighter compression actively allows the chunky low-end and crisp hi-hat to promote an urgency on its energetic segments.

At a sub-40-minute finish, Grant the Sun could have afforded one more such a track to help navigate its course, but even as is Voyage runs as an easily enjoyable and sneakily hooky album. It has trouble with engagement in the usual spots for post-metal of this breed which keep it from truly excelling, though Grant the Sun tries to break free on many occasions. This often edging and endless corner of the metalverse, though, has much inertia to overcome—the apparent story here of the panda falling victim to its middling deep-diving abilities rings close to home in that regard. Yet following the steady succession of EPs through an evolution of Cloudkicker instrumental metal-gazing to this full-fledged band experience has moved Grant the Sun down an economical and effective path. The risk of the dive yields a satisfying reward.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Mas-Kina Recordings
Websites: grantthesun.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/grantthesun
Releases Worldwide: June 9th, 2023

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