Ablach to the Future: Scottish Grindcore Historians Get Their Learn On

Take out your number 2 lead pencils, boys and girls because this is a test. What exactly to do you know about Scottish history? Bonus points for not referencing either Braveheart or Highlander. Or we could skip all that tedious pedagogy and just headbang to Ablach’s debut EP instead.
Two covers aside, Aon (Gaelic for “one”), is an 18 minute crash course in Hibernian Gaelic [Ed's note: st00pid Americans and their incorrect adjectives] history that clips along at a crusted grindcore pace. Though the uneven production left me a tad cold, I haven’t been able to get the meaty little plastic slab out of my head. In a genre paralyzed by lyrical conceits you can quantify on the digits of a single appendage, to hear a band reach for something personal and meaningful in a grindcore context was startling in its originality. Turns out, that really wasn’t the band’s intention at first.
“There was no premeditation when it came to style of music or indeed lyrical content when the guys first entered a room together,” Ablach guitarist Bazz said. “The noise came naturally and our first batch of songs continued on from where Filthpact was leading in its Scottish tendencies. Once the band name was decided upon the whole concept became a bit more obvious to us.”
And by obvious he means strip mining all eras of Scottish history without wallowing in neo-pagan rejectionism of the modern world or saccharine peons to an era where dying of easily preventable illnesses at 35 was considered a life well lived.
“Lyrically it's about the darker side of reality, but from Scottish sources old and new,” Bazz said. “Personally it's mostly the really old stuff that we know very little about, the ambiguous ‘Picts’ and their carved monuments we still puzzle over.”
Turns out there’s plenty of darkness to puzzle over from a country that coined a word – Ablach – to distinguish mangled corpses from your more run of the mill variety.
“I also thought it was screwed up that one word was created for such an occurrence, but it turns out that Gaelic words are a little broader in definition than in English,” Bazz said. “So the same word would be used in other circumstance, ie. a burned out car, post-wolf attack (when we had such creatures roaming wild) livestock etc.”
With that kind of linguistic brutality near at hand and several centuries worth of atrocities to pull from, Ablach don’t stand to lack for inspiration. Indeed, Bazz said the Scottish sextet is already at work on their second LP, which, naturally, will be named Dha.

G&P Review: Ablach

Ablach
Aon
Blastworks

One summer Earl Thorfinn went raiding in the Hebrides and in various parts of Scotland. He himself lay at anchor off Galloway where Scotland borders on England, but he sent some of this troops south to raid the English coast, as the people had driven all their livestock out of his reach. When the English realized that the vikings had arrived, they gathered together, made a counter-attack, recovered all that had been stolen and killed every able-bodied man among them except for a few they sent back to tell Thorfinn this was how they discouraged the vikings from their raids and looting. The message was put in distinctly abusive terms.

Orkneyinga Saga
Circa 1200

The Icelandic saga writers had such a droll sense of humor, don’t you think?
With so many pressing problems that need to be screamed at and blastbeat into submissions, grindcore has very rarely bothered itself with the past or culture or heritage. Instead those concepts have been left to *shudder* folk metal or black metallers who have embraced their Norse heritage with a fervency that just might get them added to a Southern Poverty Law Center watch list one day.
Scots Ablach (which is Gaelic for “mangled carcass,” according to the band) are the square peg in grindcore’s round hole, crafting crusty 90 second lessons on their nation’s history from the first highland tribes to imperial era scuffles with the English.
So the sextet presents us with songs about Scottish farmers being evicted from their land to make way for sheep (“Na Fuadaichean”), apocryphal wedding night rituals (“Jus Primae Noctis”), witch trials (“Confessit & Declait Furth”), and the national love of the fruits of the grain (“Whiskey Violence”). With only 13 songs in 18 minutes, two covers (Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” and Terrorizer’s “Corporation Pull In”) feels a bit like padding, however. But the band knows its way around a catchy grindcore tune.
The wild card on Aon, however, is the production. The band seemed to be going from an old school Morrisound scooped guitar tone, but instead it all just sounds very hollow and distant, as though there’s a whole channel missing. While it’s not necessarily a deal breaker, I do think it limits Ablach’s reach. That hiccup aside, Aon is a solid debut from a band that’s actually found a unique identity with something different to say.