Gillian Carter – “The Pain Of Being Awake”

A couple of months ago, I saw the long-running, sludged-out Orlando screamo trio Gillian Carter play a DIY show with Infant Island, Amygdala, and Listless. And let me tell you: That shit ruled. The three members of Gillian Carter have that musical-ESP thing going that you can only get if you’ve been in a band with the same people for a long time. They also looked like swamp creatures and repeatedly threw their instruments high in the air. They rocked hard. Now, they’ve got a new album on the way.

Gillian Carter release a lot of music; they just came out with the two-track release Summer Songs in June. But Gillan Carter haven’t released a full-length LP since they came out with the charged, dramatic …This Earth-Shaped Tomb in 2018. Bandleader Logan Rivera produced the new LP Salvation Through Misery, and he says that the new LP is both “the most technical” and “the heaviest and angriest” record that the band has made.

First single “The Pain Of Being Awake” is a grimy, lurching beast of a track — one that sounds both scrappy and epic at the same time. Parts of it are fast enough to blur, and other parts build towers out of riffs. It’s a short song, less than two and a half minutes, but it feels like part of something vast. Rivera says that the song is inspired by “these crazy panic attacks about not having enough money, getting the record done, and feeling inadequate.” Below, listen to “The Pain Of Being Awake” and check out the Salvation Through Misery tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Life Is Hell, Hell Is Fucked”
02 “Drowning In Poison (Looking For An Escape)”
03 “The Pain Of Being Awake”
04 “Borrowed Time”
05 “Serene Landscapes Of A Violent Utopia”
06 “Forced Into A World Of Shit”
07 “Lake Of Misery/Heart Of Hatred”
08 “Crucified Upside Down”
09 “Abandoned & Lost In Time”
10 “Nothing Ahead Of Us”
11 “Living In Isolation”
12 “Watching A Friend Die”

Salvation Through Misery is out 10/7 on Skeletal Lightning.