Core Presents: Great Falls + Glassing

Great Falls

Read any article or comment thread about the Seattle noise-rock outfit Great Falls and you're likely to see descriptors like cathartic, heavy, crushing, and unhinged. Maybe even psychotic. And sure, those are all apt: For over a decade, vocalist/guitarist Demian Johnston (Kiss it Goodbye, Undertow, Playing Enemy) and bassist Shane Mehling (Playing Enemy) have honed their sludgy, overwhelmingly intense brand of heaviness, punctuated by delectably discordant riffs, terrifyingly low, thwacking bass lines, and mesmerizingly tight percussion. In the live setting, too, they’re notorious for a stage presence that is so aggressively confrontational and menacing that Mehling once broke his own arm mid-set.

But the most striking aspect of Great Falls, setting them apart from the murky sea of sludge metal and AmRep-inspired noise-rock bands, is their ability to paint a deeply, utterly human story through an all-out assault on the senses: an art the band has perfected on their fourth full-length album *Objects Without Pain*. The album is not only their Neurot Recordings debut, but also the first LP featuring drummer Nickolis Parks (Gaytheist, Bastard Feast), who joined the band prior to the release of their exhilarating, cacophonous EP *Funny What Survives*.

Glassing 

No one really sounds like Glassing. Notoriously hard-to-classify, the Austin trio, named after a Planes Mistaken for Stars song,  cemented themselves as a pillar of underground heavy music with their 2021 full length, “Twin Dream” (Brutal Panda Records). Owing as much to the Cure as they do to Neurosis or Pg. 99, Glassing followed suit a year later with the assaulting, nightmarish lullaby of an EP, “Dire and Sulk” (Brutal Panda Records, Medication Time Records EU).

Made whole by Cory Brim’s undeniably unique guitar voicing and melodies, Dustin Coffman’s vocal abilities and colossal bass, and more recently adding Scott Osment’s (Deaf Club) precision and fury behind the kit, the group is officially firing on all cylinders. Their spirited live shows have only gotten tighter, and their music somehow more intense.