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Band Profile
Grave in the Sky
Grave in the Sky is a side project from the Israeli noise duo Poochlatz of Maor Appelbaum and Rani Zager also known to some as veterans of local industrial metal pioneers Vultures. Formed in Jerusalem, Israel in 2006. Joined by Matan Shmuelli (ex Distorted) on drums, Grave in the Sky deliver a heavy dose of industrial-tinged sludge-doom and gritty space rock, with Appelbaum on bass and Zager on vocals, singing lyrics which are actually DVD subtitles for classic horror movies, hence their debut album name (on Heart&Crossbone): "Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired". Read more at last.fm
Grave in the Sky
Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired
Heart & Crossbone, 2007
Grave in the Sky is a three-piece from Israel that plays thick, but still raw doom-y music. The tempos are slow and the sound is a crawling, bleak wall of sound.
Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired is a super raw sounding album. Even though it does not completely sound like them, Grave in the Sky play a style of music that can easily draw some comparisons to Today is the Day, particularly the sound of the distorted vocals. The repetition of the music definitely assaults one’s ears, much the way that Khanate used to punish people. Grave in the Sky names their songs after movies, “Donnie Darko” being the bleak opener to which I was just referring. The more that I listen to the record, the more that I hear likenesses to Khanate, although Grave in the Sky does not have that overwhelming fright factor that outfit had, they do set a rather discomforting mood with the tracks on this record. Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired is a disturbing sounding record with just about every piece of instrumentation being heavily distorted which, at times in tracks like “Straw Dogs,” you can get lost in the tumult.
I’ll be honest, without a lyric sheet present, there is no way that you can understand the words at all; but it makes for an effect for sure as everyone once in a while you think that you do recognize something that is being yelled or said that is usually incredibly disturbing. If that is what Grave in the Sky is going for with the vocals, then they succeed in spades. On “The Devils Rejects” the vocals are more recognizable and just grate on the ears with an almost even pace that sounds like the vocalist is reading a list or intoning a ritual of some sort (although I am pretty sure that is not what is going on here).
Being that this is the first time that I have heard Grave in the Sky, Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired, is a weird record with which to judge a band’s work; I would play this record at a Halloween party as background music for sure. I just wish that there were some inkling as to what the band is trying to do on the record; otherwise, it kind of comes of as a novelty record. The album has rather minimal artwork and a real raw sound that could be appealing to certain people.