Grayscale Season – Do You Like Violence (Review)

Grayscale Season are a Swedish metalcore band and this is their second album.

Grayscale Season have written a hypercompetent, professional, and engaging collection of tracks on Do You Like Violence. This is metalcore with a firm eye on creativity and diversity. You’ll find thundering groove, harsh vocals, and heavy riffs, as you would expect, but there’s also a lot of other ideas, sounds, and influences here. There are post-metal and post-hardcore elements spread across the album too, further increasing its variety. Grayscale Season are certainly not what I’d call your average band.

The core of the band’s sound is groove-based metallic heaviness and song-focused compositions that speak from the heart. Melody is a key aspect of Grayscale Season’s sound, and this manifests in multiple ways across the songs. The music is well-written and detailed. It avoids many of the metalcore clichés, and instead just focuses on emotion-driven dynamics, beguiling heaviness, and creative songcraft. As a rough overview, imagine a mix of Poison the Well, Deftones, Vildhjarta, Landmvrks, and Remembering Never.

Alongside the above, there are plenty of other highlights to pay attention to on Do You Like Violence. You might stumble upon a particular keyboard enhancement that catches your ear, or a crushing rhythm that just gets you moving. Possibly it’s the use of clean vocals to accentuate particularly emotive sections that grabs your attention, or an inspired use of djent influences, (there are also guests from Humanity’s Last Breath and Vildhjarta on this release). Maybe it’s the striking piano-led piece Pillow Grin, or the choral opener Pink Mist that causes you to perk up your ears. Perhaps the band’s occasional use of blast beats has you intrigued, or perhaps the digital and electronic enrichments that pepper the songs do it for you instead. Whatever it is, there’s a lot to explore over the album’s 50-minute running time.

Ambitious and well-developed, Do You Like Violence is a bold step forward for Grayscale Season, and an album that offers much more than your average metalcore release does. Grayscale Season have delivered an album that is worthy of much more hype and attention than many of the bigger bands in the scene. If you’re a fan of modern heavy music, then don’t miss out on this.

Very highly recommended.