REVIEW: Great Falls - The Bite That Grows Up

When people talk about a band “evolving”, it can often feel vague. It’s usually in reference to an artist or group’s entire catalogue, and a gradual change over time - between consecutive releases they aren’t too dissimilar, but there’s a clear difference between, say, album three and album seven. These are your CONVERGE or IMMOLATIONs of the world; it usually happens in the more extreme genres where the music is already so envelope-pushing and singular that there’s very little overlap with another group that comes to mind - the genre-bending type. These bands’ “evolutions” are marked by a very clear change in sound between albums, often with influences so direct that you can point to individual artists they come from. It seems to happen more often in modern indie spaces, so for example, bands like BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD or GEESE, who clearly go into each album with an absolute refusal to sound like the last. But in the scope of their discographies, their paths make sense.

This kind of categorisation isn’t a perfect science, of course, with many bands and artists that stray from the formula. So it’s interesting to note that many of the great and most beloved noise rock artists have taken the latter approach, despite being more stylistically reminiscent of the former camp. For a newer example, it’s hard to say that any of CHAT PILE’s records sound all that similar to one another, as they’ve kept the same heaviness from their debut, but wrote tighter songs around it, all the while playing around with genre conventions. But then you could also look at a group like UNWOUND, who continuously strayed away from their noisier post-hardcore style as their discography went on, each album more muted than the last, yet more experimental, eventually resulting in a double album with very little in the way of their roots on, say, New Plastic Ideas - both albums are masterpieces, but for notably different reasons.

Enter GREAT FALLS. They’ve only really been in the public eye since their label debut, 2023’s Objects Without Pain, an album which, while it didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel within the various genres it covers, was a clear highlight of its year, with three 8+ minute tracks on there which could all be considered benchmarks as to what noise rock bands should aspire to sound like. But they’ve been around since 2010, having collaborated with greats like THOU and building up an impressive repertoire of sounds over 16 years. But NEUROSIS’ own Neurot Records picking them up has surely given them the boost they deserve, with not only their previous album, but also Conscription, a compilation of songs from split singles and EPs that shows them deep in their mathcore pocket. It’s a short listen, but alongside Objects Without Pain, covers the majority of their range up until now - the release of The Bite That Grows Up.

It kicks off with A Small Weakness, a song whose six-minute runtime shows off an extremely impressive display of dynamics. To make it easier to follow, we’ll present a timeline - it starts with sludgy riffs in off-kilter time signatures, before winding back with what sounds like a looped sample, as Demian Johnston’s vocals come in on top of them. After several well-timed bursts of noise, the song once again hides in its shell, with a notably drum-less section, with Johnston’s pained vocals and distorted guitar that takes over the mix, adding to the agony expressed in the brief yet heartbreaking confessional lyrics about an invented group therapy session. We hear the riff from the start again, before a tempo change, frantic drums and burgeoning riffs, the guitars adding to a gradual increase in intensity as the song reaches its climax. 

Even the first track is a shining example of this album’s increased complexity compared to previous releases, with the individual tracks feeling more tightly-constructed and composed. The elaborate composition brings to mind groups like SPRAIN, where every second of each song feels extremely intentional - or perhaps a more apt comparison would be their label-mate NEUROSIS’ most recent album. They are, of course, aiming for completely different outcomes, but the attitude towards songwriting remains similar. It’s also present in a track like Hailstone Numbers, the longest track on here, as Johnston bellows these passages about grief that never quite resolve over a drone and the occasional, bleak-sounding guitar passage plays. You feel every second pass as the track builds in an almost post rock-like fashion. You heard these distorted guitars staying on the same chords, or repeating the same phrase over and over again, until the song fizzles out.

Elsewhere on the album we hear extreme dissonance like on the lead melody to Debt Ethics, which would almost feel gothic if not for the pounding wall of drums beneath it. It perfectly captures the parental anxiety of Johnston’s daughter running away in the lyrics, the admission of him losing his temper, the inner battle as to why things are the way they are. The lyrics all across the album have felt not quite stream-of-consciousness, but not fully formed either. They’re fragments scattered across the album. These various, brief thoughts that one has in day-to-day life, cut and pasted together to create a tapestry of emotion - much like the ever-changing direction of the music itself.

Closer What No One Can Give further explores this, on perhaps the most terrifying song here. Johnston’s soul is laid bare in the lyrics, there’s a mix of self-hatred, fear, and perhaps sparingly, hope. It’s hard to know where the song’s going to go at any given point. Earlier on, one note is played on the guitar, repeating seemingly endlessly; all the while the noise sections are at their most unrelenting. With a seven and a half-minute runtime, it’s a monumental closer, carrying the momentum built up by the rest of the album into one explosive finale.

When we say that GREAT FALLS have evolved on this album, there shouldn’t be much room for misinterpretation. Any artist can have higher ambitions for any given project compared to previously, but it has to show itself in execution as well, and thankfully, this album does just that. Much more ambitious songwriting, a greater understanding of tension and dynamics, and lyricism more direct in terms of the language used, yet more abstract in terms of structure than before, but retaining the anguish of their previous work. The instrumentation is an absolute joy to listen to, and it’s near-impossible to grow weary of Johnston’s impassioned delivery, putting every fibre of his being into it. We look forward to seeing them evolve further from here.

Score: 9/10

The Bite That Grows Up will be released on 16th October 2026 via Neurot Recordings.

Words: Noise Leonard

Photos: James Rexroad