The debut album “Donewiz” by the post-punk/darkwave band, Grieving Sea is out today via the Italian label Brucia Records. Especially for the occasion we can exclusively offer you a full album premiere. The project marks the first musical collaboration between Void (Feed Them Death, Pseudodoxia) and Giorgio Barroccu (Derhead), both co-founders of Brucia Records. Brucia Records offers a vast spectrum of genres ranging from black-metal to doom, from heavy-psych to dark-ambient.

“Donewiz” also features a few special collaborations: Sarah Townley (The Sun and The Mirror) created a cello performance on “In The End”, whilst Danish avant-garde musician and multi-instrumentalist artist Trine Paaschburg (Mouth Wound) collaborated on vocals duetting with Grieving Sea’s vocalist Void in “So Pure”.

“Donewiz” is the medieval name of Dunwich, once a busy port situated along the Suffolk Coast in the UK which gradually disappeared under the waters due to numerous storms affecting the region since the end of the 13th century.

The band explains the album: “Musically we wanted to create something genuine and real, somewhat resemblant of what we would have wanted to listen to if we could teleport ourselves back by 30 years, when music was emotional and uncomplicated. Therefore we have tried to obtain a very lo-fi type of production and delivery, augmenting mistakes rather than covering them up or polishing them. Lyrically, the album is not a concept album per se, however the intention was to narrate the inevitability of trauma and grief through the metaphor of extinction and natural calamity, finding similarities between the drama of our incommunicability towards each other and that of our incumbent death and tragedy as taught by history itself.”

A track by track rundown can be read below, check out while listening to the songs below. The album is out as download, limited edition 6 panel digifile CD and regular CD. You can order via Bandcamp.

Track by track

“Death In, Death Out”

The song is mostly piano driven and has a somber pace: the idea was to set a melancholic mood from the outset. The lyrics lament our incapability as humans to feel empathy, be it towards animals or other humans.

“Fall, Fall Again”

More of a traditional post-punk number, very lo-fi and with a simple structure. The lyrics cover again the theme of the inevitability of tragedy, exposing our inability as adults to accept our fall for fear of feeling pain, and so preventing us from healing and moving on.

“A Vacuum”

Also presents similarities to post-punk musically, whilst lyrically covering the themes of our inability to find similarities in both one another as also patterns and parallels in our history – affected as we all are by a sort of convenient blindness towards the lessons of our past.

“So Pure”

Another piano track, sung in duet with danish avant garde artist and multi-instrumentalist Trine Paaschburg (Mouth Wound). The contrast created by the delivery of both voices seems to create a remote and melancholic dialogue between two lost parts, lamenting the disappearance of something simple and pure.

“And In The End”

This one starts slow and simple musically, with only acoustic guitar and vocals, slowly building up tension with the collaboration of Sarah Townley from Heavy Psych / Drone band The Sun and The Mirror playing cello in this track.
Lyrically, it is is a sum of the previous parts, essentially coming to terms with the inevitability of pain and pondering whether the deaths we are grieving for, our past scars or even our future are at all real.

“The Sea Devours”

The lyrics are about the fact that we can try and conveniently see history as a tide destroying the shores of our lives, but in reality, we were always part of it, waves of a bigger tide and essentially crafting our own destruction.

“My Soul In Dunwich”

Musically, it is the mirror image of “Death in, death out” however played on strings – it also contains most elements present in previous tracks as it unfolds and progresses towards the end. The lyrics here explore the notion that the division between “them” and “us”, as in those who destroy and those who are destroyed, is irreconcilable. However there is also hope for those who are destroyed already, waiting from beneath the waters to celebrate for the inevitable extinction of the “un-humankind”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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