Mirror, by GNOD

Mirror

by GNOD

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jonezyboy An elongated version of the brutally heavy Learn to Forgive was reintroduced into the GNOD live set in 2022, leading to my rediscovery of this brilliant riff-tastic album. Favorite track: Learn To Forgive.

Levrikon Prior to the release of The Mirror, Gnod had generally been a long-form, krautrock-influenced psychedelic collective, putting out tribal rhythm, pagan rituals on LP. That's why the first 30 seconds of The Mirror are so shocking: This is repetitive, heavily political, metallic post-punk. It sounds less like Amon Duul and more like Metal Box-era PiL or Cop-era Swans, with angry sloganeering about the rise of fascism shouted above the din. Favorite track: Learn To Forgive.

Nic Brown GNOD make NOISE; a churning scree of incandescent tumult that feels less like rock 'n' roll than an anonymously delivered pummelling to the head and guts in some dark alley late one Saturday night. GNOD's is a singularly British noise too. Yes, there are vague nods to early Swans but only a band playing in the ruins of what Cameron et al have done to this once green and pleasant land could raise such a conflagration as "Mirror". Whatever your musical taste, you need this album in your life immediately. No ifs, buts or maybes. Favorite track: Sodom & Gomorrah.

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Mirrorboard Mini Gatefold CD
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Silver Mirrorboard Mini Gatefold CD

Includes unlimited streaming of Mirror via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	The Mirror 07:46	buy track
2.	Learn To Forgive 08:19	buy track
3.	Sodom & Gomorrah 18:11	buy track
4.	The Mirror (RAIKES PARADE REMIX) 07:56	buy track

about

GNOD
MIRROR

As 2016 dawns , it’s a fool who predicts the next move of Gnod, seemingly less a musical collec-tive and more a psychic force fuelled by maverick spirit and fearsome willpower.

Their mind-frying 2015 triple-album ‘Infinity Machines’ stood proud as a towering work of experi-mental expansion, acidic invective and nihilistic abrasion.Yet as an outfit whose restlessly uncom-promising nature is matched only by their unflinching anti-establishment drive, Gnod set about cre-ating a diametrically opposed aesthetic.

Just as dramatically as their restless disposition morphed their sound to a binary-driven direction for their last work, now Gnod were to strip their electronic setup to a vicious, viscous attack, as redolent of the primal punishment of early Swans as the angular clangour of prime Public Image Ltd, yet shot through with a mercurial power and fiery intensity that could come from no-one else. The opening title-cut of ‘Mirror’ seethes with lithe energy and dubbed-out vitality, whilst elsewhere the eighteen-minute closing track ‘Sodom & Gomorrah’ may be the most dystopian piece of music the band have yet created; a harrowing yet fiercely compelling colossus of bleak abjection.

“The tracks were pretty much written on the road in May 2015” elaborates Gnod’s Paddy Shine. “The final versions of the tracks on the album are a reaction to the results of the re-cent UK election and also some shit that was happening to us and our friends during that period. Lyrically it deals with mental health issues and how things like social media are a vehicle for our split personalities and egos - that and being under the thumb of forces and power structures we can't really fully understand, or even if we understand them we feel helpless to change the situation. This album won't change the situation or start any revolu-tions but it felt good for us to write some music to let the rage out"

Reflecting and refracting the uncertainty of a darkening era, ‘Mirror’ is a work of bold rein-vention and raw renewal, sculpting chaos and discord into a formidable statement of in-tent. Only one thing is certain - wherever Gnod choose to go next, their ire and inspiration blaze as brightly as ever.

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released April 1, 2016

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Gnod Salford, UK

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