On T**he Great Destroyer, grindcore outfit Gadget's first full-length in 10 years (and only its third since forming in the late ’90s), the band sustains a blistering pace, but peppers the songs with just enough groove to give the music an anthemic quality in spite of its uncompromising attack. Drum fills appear suddenly, as if drummer and in-house engineer William Blackmon is about to send the song in a new direction, only to dissipate into the static cloud they briefly popped out from. A blast beat abruptly swallows the snaking introductory riff to "From Graduation to Devastation" before the listener has time to settle in. A tiny portion of the riff persists even as Blackmon's drums pound away, the rhythmic equivalent of rain pelting the windshield when you're driving through an angry storm while incongruously steady music plays on the radio.
Unlike many of their peers, Gadget's political leanings don't immediately hit you over the head, even though the music's sociopolitical undertone is always apparent. Bassist Fredrik Nygren's lyrics on "Choice of a Lost Generation," for example, don't explicitly reference refugees. But the song—with its cries of "false propaganda/ denial of facts/ blind man's hysteria" and "idiots on parade / half a generation led astray"—implicitly denounces European xenophobia at a time when the right-wing party won nearly 13 percent of Sweden's 2014 election. Much like Reaganomics set the stage for early ’80s hardcore and Thatcherism planted the seeds for the anarcho-crustpunk movement that gave us Napalm Death, Gadget's lyrics (which all four bandmembers contribute to varying degrees) seem more profound the more you root them in Swedish culture.
There is a pointed intellectual fury animating their music. Blackmon's lyrics on "Lost on a Straight Path" hint at the conflict between socialist values and widespread conformity through oblique angles. Musically speaking, the variety on The Great Destroyer is somewhat more submerged than on The Funeral March and 2010's split LP with Phobia. But the new material's discreet hints of less obvious influences like Deathspell Omega and even Sonic Youth suggest a muted sophistication. But the real coup here is how The Great Destroyer avoids the youthful righteousness of staunchly left-wing pioneers like D.R.I. and Extreme Noise Terror. Preachy lyrics worked like a charm for those bands, but heavy music's outlook needs to evolve in order to avoid sinking into camp. On The Great Destroyer, Gadget proves you can be cutting without being trite.
Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly quoted the lyrics of "Choice of a Lost Generation."
