Stream 'Yarusenai (Ghost)' here
Pre-order The Weight of Things We Cannot Touch here
Yarusenai is a Japanese word for the intense sadness, disappointment or anger you feel when you know exactly what is wrong and have no way at all to fix it. The new single 'Yarusenai (Ghost)' is the centre of the album and the source of its title:
"Close your eyes
And try to feel the weight of things you cannot touch
I know it hurts so much, the grief we try to clutch."
It sits with the idea that feelings do not disappear, that they attach themselves to objects and places and get passed on, and its own answer is an instruction it cannot follow: "It's done, let it go." The clean intro came first, and the main riff is its vocal hook, tremolo picked. But there is more buried underneath this track than anywhere else on the record, including a piano and, somewhere in the background, a bird.
On the song, vocalist and bassist Adam Dahlman comments:.
"Yarusenai is a Japanese word for the feeling of intense sadness, disappointment or anger when you know exactly what's wrong and have no way at all to fix it. That's the human experience, and it scares and intrigues me in equal measure. I hope there are ghosts. I hope there are feelings that remain, emotions that can be passed on."
Grayscale Season have never sounded much like their hometown. Formed in Gothenburg in 2012 and independent throughout, the four-piece pair crushing low-tuned riffs with a fragile falsetto, because that is what it sounds like when someone performs strength while falling apart underneath it. They have toured the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and played Helltown Festival in 2024. Press comparisons have run to Loathe, Deftones, Humanity's Last Breath and The Acacia Strain. The Weight of Things We Cannot Touch is their most direct record and their least resolved.
The album takes its name from a Japanese word. Yarusenai describes the sadness or anger you feel when you know exactly what is wrong and have no way at all to fix it, and Grayscale Season have built an entire record out of that condition. Across eleven tracks the narrator sees precisely what is wrong with him and stays in the wrong room anyway, conforms anyway, says the thing too late anyway. The album keeps looking for somewhere outside itself to put the grief, first in contempt for other people and then in the ground. Neither works. Only the closing track names something reachable, and what it grieves is not the loss of that thing but the years spent looking past it.
On the sound of the record, vocalist Eddie Lejhagen comments: "I don't think we really had a specific reference for how the album would sound. Melancholy is probably what I wanted the album to have a lot of, and I think we managed to pull that off. As for the screamed vocals, Deafheaven is probably a major inspiration - the desperation in it, but melancholic at the same time."
The Weight of Things We Cannot Touch was produced by George Lever (Loathe, Sleep Token), who worked with the band remotely while they recorded everything themselves, a first for them. The album was mixed by Buster Odeholm (Humanity's Last Breath, Bring Me The Horizon) and mastered by Seth Munson (Teddy Swims), with additional top line production and piano by Aurora Karme Nord.
Tracklisting:
01. Strung Up
Tracklisting:
02. soulmogged
03. Yarusenai (Ghost)
04. Infinite cc
05. Exit
06. Second Breath
07. mov
08. Square Terror
09. Heart&Ache
10. HER
11. I Know What You Are
Comments
Post a Comment