GRADIENCE are pleased to drop their new single and companion video for “Master To The Slave.” The track is taken from the band‘s forthcoming new full-length, set for release on their new label home of Metal Blade Records later this year.
The usually clear-cut boundary between apocalyptic, sludgy blackened death metal and dark urban trap-rap is thrillingly pulverized by GRADIENCE. Lines of musical convention are further blurred by disarmingly emotive and intimate vocal lines, and a vibrant sound picture heaving with glacial synths and hypnotic sonic details. At first it might daunt and confuse those who like their boundaries clear-cut, but at the heart of GRADIENCE’s brash and radical new sound is an authentic and heartwarming new friendship. In 2022, guitarist Jakob Harris and vocalist Gavin Mistry struck up an immediate creative rapport at a Copenhagen show for local deathcore heroes Cabal. Although from very different backgrounds – Jakob a visual artist and musician playing in “a popcore band,” Gavin is a main player “in different hip-hop constellations” – they quickly found common ground in an area both were keen to explore.
“It just feels completely natural for us to mix everything,” notes Harris. “We‘re really up for whatever label people want to put on us. We’ve actually found it difficult for ourselves to narrow it down Harris but we like to think of ourselves as just being a metal band. We‘ve used the description ‘blackened rap metal’ just to catch people‘s attention. But to me, rap is just a tool we use to convey an emotion or feel, just like we use screams and melody. We‘ve found different styles of rap and singing that suit Gavin really well, and when we‘re writing vocals for a song, we‘re only thinking about what would be the best fit with the energy and vibe. For us, there needs to be an emotional connection in order for heavy music to resonate with the listener on a deeper level.”
Harris comments further on the band‘s new single, “The song is about Gavin‘s struggle with managing his self-destructiveness and we wanted the video to feel like a physical manifestation of Gavin’s internal war. The moment in the music video where the hangman‘s noose becomes a crown of rope is a deliberate visual metaphor of Gavin gaining the upper hand of what could potentially destroy him.”
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