Grady Avenell’s return on vocals for his third stint was for Will Haven fans akin to the return of Joey Jordison to Slipknot or the reunion of The Chariot. You always hoped it would happen, and it would just make everything so much better.
‘Open the Mind to Discomfort’, Will Haven’s latest release on Artery Recordings offers five new ear shredding tracks with four instrumental shorts adding to the overall tone of the album. Not much has changed with regards to the sound, if you like Will Haven, you will more than likely appreciate this record.
‘Open the Mind to Discomfort’ takes off where ‘Voir Dire’ ended and there is no gross change of style from ‘Carpe Diem’ or ‘WHVN’ – their most celebrated releases, which will please their hardcore following. There has always been that element of repetitiveness about them, but then after all, the old adage of if it isn’t broken then why fix it, really seems to apply here.
First impressions of this album is that it’s heavy, a melt your face off heavy that has personified Will Haven’s sound over the last two decades. They possess the same atmospheric intensity as their peers, friends and fellow city dwellers Deftones, but Avenell’s vocals are much more gritty and the riffs so much more brutal, giving Will Haven a very unique and beautifully crafted end product.
Opening track ‘A’ is incredibly eerie and sets the tone for what is certainly a collection of songs that could make most feel uncomfortable. It takes a while to open your mind to Will Haven and see the beauty between the cracks, but when one does, it is easy to see why this noise metal outfit from Sacramento come with such critical acclaim, and why there was such genuine excitement for Avenell’s return.
Creepy instrumental interludes help to provide a break between songs and add to the albums overall atmospheric tone. The start of the interlude track labelled ‘C’ will take fans of David Lynch back to Twin Peaks and parallels of eerie weirdness are fair and complimentary.
‘Do You Have a Light’ is a savagely heavy song – the riff spirals down and down taking the listener into an ever building crescendo of relentless noise. The heaviness of this album must be not under appreciated – there are few that can make such an intense noise as to rip your ears off, whilst still making something truly elegant and beautiful.
Love them or hate them, there is very little vocal range to Will Haven and the songs do kind of blur into one another. If it weren’t for the aforementioned interludes, it would be hard to distinguish one song from another. However, Will Haven haven’t been known as a band who experiment wildly from what propelled them into the spot light in 1997 with ‘El Diablo’.
The end of ‘Pop 14′, the last track of the release, cleverly ends with the same ghostly sound as the start of opening track ‘A’, making the LP sound like it plays over and over in a loop, enhancing the feeling of relentlessness and unease. A chilling and fitting end to an album that is impossible to listen to without nodding your head in an almost zombie like fashion.
Brutal, haunting and beautiful – a sound that epitomises Will Haven. A sound that will reignite old fans and set a new generation on fire with their outrageously heavy and contagious riffs that make this noise metal outfit so good.
DAVE BULL