Bandcamp Grindcore is a genre that lives and dies on whether it has anything on its mind beyond speed, and Trauma Bond have plenty. The London duo of Eloise Chong-Gargette, who writes and screams the words, and Tom Mitchell, who plays and records everything else, formed in the winter of 2020 to make what they call a visceral exploration of aggression, and Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. is the summer entry in a planned four-album cycle of seasons. Do not expect warmth. The cover, a hand clutching a melting block of ice on a bare cream field, is the whole thesis in one image: heat, loss, the thing slipping away while you hold it. This is grindcore as an emotional state rather than a sport, atmospheric and theme-heavy, with Kurt Ballou of Converge dropping in for additional guitars.
The best of it works because it is not just fast. Trauma Bond are at their strongest when they let the atmosphere do the damage, and the record repeatedly pulls back from the blast into something slower and more suffocating. “Dissonance,” the closer, is the clearest example: a minimal, spacious intro breathing enormous dynamic range before the whole thing collapses into a monolithic, cavernous fuzz wall, guitar and bass fused into one crushing mass. “Brushed by the Storm” opens the album in that same murky, room-heavy dread, all overloaded low mids and organic, undefined drums, more doom than grind until it decides otherwise. When the duo work the seam between grind, sludge and noise, letting a track rot before it detonates, they have a real identity, and the hardcore backbone keeps it from ever drifting into pure texture.
The reservation is the master, and it is a familiar one for records this heavy. Too much of Summer Ends is pushed to the brickwall, and across nine tracks the relentless maximum-loudness density starts to fatigue. “Regards” pumps audibly under the compression, “Repulsion” and “Thumb Skin For Dinner” flatten their natural dynamics into a wall so dense that the already-defensive bass disappears entirely, and “Sun of Scum” crushes its live-session aggression until the drum transients have nowhere to go. There is a difference between the productive filth of a genre built on ugliness and a mix simply squeezed until everything occupies the same overloaded band, and the record crosses that line often enough to wear on you before the finish. The nastiness is intended and mostly earned, but a hand less committed to sheer volume would have let the songs breathe and hit harder.
Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone. is a committed, atmospheric, genuinely unpleasant debut from a duo with a clear vision and the songwriting instinct to make grindcore mean something. It is at its best when it slows down and lets the dread pool, at its most tiring when it just piles on the density, and the loudness-war master is the main thing keeping it from the next tier. For anyone who wants their grind heavy on mood and rooted in hardcore, the kind that leaves a bruise rather than a blur, there is a lot here worth enduring. Play it loud, but maybe not all at once.
Theme-driven neo-industrial grindcore that lives on atmosphere as much as speed. The strongest moments pull back from the blast into something slower and more suffocating: “Dissonance” breathes an enormous, minimal, spacious intro before collapsing into a monolithic cavernous fuzz wall with guitar and bass fused into one mass, and “Brushed by the Storm” opens in murky, room-heavy dread, all overloaded low mids and organic undefined drums, more doom than grind. When the duo work the seam between grind, sludge and noise, letting a track rot before it detonates, they have a real identity. The reservation is the master: too much is pushed to the brickwall, and across nine tracks the maximum-loudness density fatigues. “Regards” pumps under the compression, “Repulsion” and “Thumb Skin For Dinner” flatten their dynamics until the defensive bass vanishes, and “Sun of Scum” crushes its live-session aggression until the transients have nowhere to go. The filth is intended and mostly earned, but a lighter hand at the master would have let the songs hit harder.
Standout tracks: Dissonance, Brushed by the Storm, Good Grief
