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.