This is the latest EP from Swedish grindcore band Gadget.
A decade since The Great Destroyer, Gadget finally return. With two new members on vocals and guitar/vocals respectively, Coerced is the world’s first taste of the new Gadget. Has it been worth the wait?
Of course it has, otherwise this review wouldn’t exist.
Eight tracks, 14 minutes. For grind connoisseurs, this is a feast of tasty extremity, but with an unexpected textured soundscape bolted on. For the most part, Gadget are as brutally uncompromising as always, and it’s great to hear their furious hostility manifested so strongly and confidently. The new singer fits the band perfectly. Her vocals scream and tear their way through the chaotic music like envenomed blades; sleek, dangerous, and lethal.
The first six tracks are whirlwinds of abrasive hyperaggression. Whether it’s blasting fury, hardcore heaviness, powerviolence intensity, crushing riff fests, scathing speed, or anything else, Coerced offers up potent dose of Grade A Grindcore Nastiness. You’d better believe it’s here to destroy. It’s mayhem. Glorious, wonderful mayhem.
Track seven, and the real outlier on Coerced, is False Pulse. This is the longest track by far – over five minutes – and is a noise piece that combines ambient unease with fractured industrial-adjacent utterances. It sounds like something Brutal Truth would have done, and it works.
After this, the eighth and final song – Violently Silent, second longest track – offers up a suitably heavy finale, yet one that’s more restrained than most of the unhinged songs that make up the first six tracks. Gadget once more show off the fact that their skills are not purely limited to blasting ferocity; they can do dynamics too.
Gadget rule. They sound vital and destructive. Coerced is a strong comeback, and it bodes very well for the future.
Very highly recommended for any grind fan.
Wonderbox Metal 