Album Review: The Growl - What Would Christ Do??

9 May 2013 | 11:49 am | Justine Keating

What Would Christ Do?? is noisy and messy as all hell, but it’s the kind of noise that has been meticulously thought out and the kind of mess that still retains an inexplicable kind of structure

As a unit, The Growl have been making music together for the past three years, but individual efforts combined, the Western Australian outfit has a collective six years of musical history backing it. The band is made up of five guys lifted from different Fremantle bands, the five clearly knowing a thing or two about making music, which they've made clear as day in their debut album, What Would Christ Do??.

Frontman Cameron Avery (who doubles as the drummer for Pond) has a voice that couldn't be better suited for the dissonant, clunking swamp-blues garage-rock of the album – a sound that is revealed in a sudden thud 30 seconds into the opening track, Eleven. For those first 30 seconds, his voice is nice (a whiskey-sipping bluesman kind of 'nice'), but beyond that, the reverb is increased and his vocals switch from crooning to wailing and are encompassed by the stomp of an almost jungle beat amidst grizzly guitars.

While the album is mostly rooted in chaos, Liarbird introduces the more accessible nature of the album, revealing its pop leanings in claps between drum beats and a constant-sounding piano beneath Avery's falsetto howling and “ooh”ing.

What Would Christ Do?? is noisy and messy as all hell, but it's the kind of noise that has been meticulously thought out and the kind of mess that still retains an inexplicable kind of structure and never so much as sidles towards discomfort – kind of like the mess on your desk you refuse to tidy; everything is exactly where it needs to be.

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