Giver’s Rattling New Album Packs Enthralling & Grippingly Fierce Melodic Hardcore

The new album from the German hardcore group Giver bursts with deeply rattling, fierce energy conveyed via an endless stream of wildly energetic but focused guitar and drum blasts. Aptly titled Sculpture of Violence and out now via the U.K.-based Holy Roar Records, the band’s new album sounds like they’ve found a great sweet spot between the grippingly solid, cohesive songwriting of classic hardcore and more recent outgrowths of grueling chaos.

Giver’s music feels definitively confrontational, but not necessarily angry in the traditional sense. Rather, the band have expanded their sound towards a both self-directed and more widely directed tension that feels physically palpable thanks to the huge heft of these tracks. They’ve ultimately wildly dialed up their overall energy, so that while there’s a gripping, galloping hardcore melody that anchors the album’s center, there’s also an overwhelming sense of the soundscapes that they’ve constructed falling apart over and over again. They add blasts of sheer chaos to their sometimes crushingly miserable-sounding rhythm. That experience drives adrenaline, with thrills in the traditional sense resting more on the other side, after the journey has concluded.

“These Words Are Rain” feels like a definite standout track, although there are plenty of enthralling moments to go around. The almost thirty seconds of regally massive, devilishly consistent drum blasts that kick off the song feel like the perfect jumping off point, and as the track concludes, the music again dials down a bit to provide another kickoff for that same kind of performance, which itself feels like it’s conveying emotional exertion to the absolute limit followed by crushing exhaustion. In between, the band quickly veer off into menacing guitar blasts and especially seething-sounding vocals, which throughout the whole album are mostly delivered with somewhat angry but mostly incredibly desperate-sounding hardcore yells.

The rawness of those vocals and the music as a whole helps drive in the inescapable emotional sincerity of this music. The band’s transformation of these riff and chaotic drum beat elements into a rich texture reflecting real-world emotional distress signals that feel like they’re finally getting sent is truly a sight — or rather, a sound — to behold.

5/5 Stars

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