Album Review: Growth – The Smothering Arms of Mercy (Wild Thing Records)

Carl Fisher 2 min read

Australian metal trio Growth are to release their debut LP, The Smothering Arms of Mercy, on 4th December, via Australia’s progressive music specialists Wild Thing Records.

The Smothering Arms of Mercy is the first in a trilogy of albums that explore the very human aspects of connection, trauma, despair, and the fragility of hope.

There’s no ignoring the gloominess, the melancholy or feeling of hopelessness that surrounds this album. It is the darkness encroaching ever closer and as hardily as they might try, everyone is eventually consumed by it at one time or another in their life. It is how you deal with that, deal with the surrounding darkness and where you channel those feelings that is the focus on Growth’s immense debut.

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Immense because of how detailed and complex it is while being undeniably heavy in a smothering death metal way. There’s no respite as even moments of melody are dripping with miserable resolve. The determination of Growth to express their feelings in the most sensitive but fierce of ways.

At over an hour worth’s of miserableness to get through, you might expect such a substantial and filling effort to start to cloy. However, Growth offer fluctuating levels of detail that are as likely to get the head banging for long periods as they will see deeper and more focused analysis being performed. There’s no overlooking how much vigour Growth have even when their style of death metal seems so detached from reality.

It’s not an album to make you feel good, aside from just how wonderfully crushing the instrumentation is. That’s not a negative though, this is metal after all. That so much devastation is channelled through progressive passages, comprehensive technicality and daring broad-mind behaviour makes this a must listen.

Growth – The Smothering Arms of Mercy Full Track Listing:

1. Cigarette Burns
2. The Treatment for Melancholy
3. Fortress of Flesh And Bone
4. Our Lady of The Hanging Heart
5. Lead Us to Our Glorious Times
6. Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip
7. Soul Rot
8. Something Follows
9. Gird Your Loved In Armour While Yet You Wither




Links

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Wild Thing Records

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Growth - The Smothering Arms of Mercy (Wild Thing Records)
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