In many ways, I am an obsessive tracker and recorder, and as such I've been makings best of the year lists far longer than I've had this site (I will probably publish them here all at some point for historical context. In 2023, my number one heavy album of the year was from a band that I hadn't heard prior to that release. That album is called Objects Without Pain by Great Falls. I was blown away by that album's mix of post metal and noise rock and pained, confessional lyrics. A few years later and Great Falls are back with another dark explosion of chaotic, metallic-tinged noise rock: The Bite That Grows Up. 

Like its predecessor, The Bite That Grows Up is a primal release of anguish and regret. At pretty much every moment on the album, lead vocalist and guitarist Demian Johnston sounds like a man one millimeter away from complete psychic collapse. Writing in a terse, economical style that read more like morose short stories than traditional lyrics, Johnston is largely concerned with his failures as a parent on this album. According to interviews I've read with Johnston, some of the confessional elements to his songwriting is exaggerated for dramatic effect, but if even kernels of the songs are true, they're painting harrowing pictures. Consider the full lyrics of the first single, "Nicotine in the Spine":

This is true. I screamed in my child’s face. When I break down. Give me that phone. When I broke down. What can Dad do to keep you safe? When I break down my eyes tear up. When I break down I start to give up. Raise by wolves is heartbreaking. With help maybe you’ll be okay. I’m not doing well. You should hear how I was raised. Sitting upstairs screaming times tables so drunk parents can hear me clearly. You’re great. I’m not prepared. I’m barely dad. You should run to the woods. Find a pack. Find a home.

Across The Bite That Grows Up, Johnston drops lines that cut like daggers. On "Hailstone Numbers," he sings "Got to an age where death settles in," a line that hit me in the face like a hammer as I continue to deal with ongoing grief from major losses in my own life. On "Buildings Full of Rope," he sings "Here I watch near the edge waiting to slip," another incredibly economical line about the precariousness of his mental state. And while the album is lyrically and sonically dark as a black hole, the songs do allow for the possibility that some rays of light might someday escape. After all, you cannot disappoint your loved ones if you don't love. Here's an excerpt from "What No One Can Give":

'We had planned to raise with love. We had tried… we had. Tell me it worked. That she’s alright. That she’s okay. She got that job, She’s in that band. And I got old. And I love the calls. I sit on my porch and dream of the group. This family we built. The dogs have run off. I stand to call them home. They find me in the morning.

That disappointment and heartbreak is part of love isn't exactly an uplifting or comforting message, but Great Falls isn't a band that's here to provide comfort. Indeed, there are few bands that sound less comforting. Sonically, the band is as disquieting as Johnston's lyrics. Heavy, noisy, and unpredictable, their sound straddles noise and hardcore, metal and punk, with stabbing guitars, assaulting drums, and manic bass provided by Shane Mehling, a man who may literally be possessed by a demon while he performs. While every word of Johnston's lyrics may not be literally true, in the world we live in now the fact that faint comfort is all there is to offer might be the most honest thing of all. 

Great Falls' The Bite That Grows Up is available October 16 via Neurot Recordings.