by Hugo Reyes (@hvreyes5)
Trying to explain why you should listen to Gulch’s Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is pointless; If the first twenty seconds of wretched and putrid grooves, capped off by a vomit inducing growl don’t draw you in, then this may not be your thing. To listen to Gulch is to experience hardcore in 2020. Nothing is off limits, as long as there are danceable parts for the fans to mosh to. Not since Candy’s Good To Feel in 2018 has there been such a pure distillation of the genre.
The goal for Gulch has only been one thing: to have fun in 12-15 increments. All the ephemera that now surrounds them, while it makes for a fun icebreaker, doesn’t matter. Yes, they are all shirtless and wear black jeans; no it's not for any specific reason. I don’t even want to spend too much time getting into the stupid controversy over something as banal as a hoodie.
Those talking points, while extremely not important, are part of what makes Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress feel like a celebration. Every single song, show, and assorted shenanigan has been building to this album. The excitement on release day was palpable, with fans only having social media to exclaim in hyperbole for how much they liked the record. I think of a quote from Nick Acosta of New Morality Zine: “New GULCH is making me feel like a maniac packing orders. Is this what drugs feel like?” It's one comment among thousands that really highlights how starved fans are for hypermanic hardcore during the pandemic.
Once you put on the title track, you begin to understand the hyperbole that surrounded the record on release day. Gulch is able to bring out that guttural feeling that reminds listeners why they care so much about the genre in the first place. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve heard many of these songs before on old releases. This particular version of “Self Inflicted Mental Terror” for instance, is the one that will stick. The guitars are thicker and Elliott Morrow’s vocals are a bit clearer, which makes his putrid death metal groans all the more satisfying. It's closer to a greatest hits collection, interspersed with some new tracks.
The few new songs are even more adventurous, playing around with traditionalism that is poison to hardcore. On “Shallow Reflective Pools of Guilt,” all you hear is a snare fill for the twenty seconds, with no guitar to be found. It’s a very little choice but feels like a novel way to build up tension, and that’s what heavy music is all about at the end of the day. How do you make tension and how will you choose to eventually resolve it?