I have to start with writing actual posts at some point. My natural bent as a researcher is towards being a completist, and my tendency would be to exhaustively research every band and release and song ad nauseam before writing anything about it. But this isn't a book-length history, an academic publication, or even on online review site. It's a blog, and what's more a WiX blog -- no need for pretense here. I just need to start writing. In this sense, Grace's 2003 release The Tele Tele Tubbies is an ideal choice, because it sets aside the epic aspirations of its peers and discovers something special in the process.
Extreme metal has long (if not always) featured a theatrical affinity, and not just in a general sense. Operatic elements have frequently been used to enrich and expand the scope of black metal and death metal alike, and grindcore has a definite fetish for vaudeville and the cabaret. The Tele Tele Tubbies likewise evokes a sensibility of the stage, but this time a little-remembered-yet-oft-reviled form: the operetta. Here the melodic lines are concise and effective, the rhythms simple and clear. Where peerless masterpieces like Lykathea Aflame's Elvenefris enrapture with their expansive and effusive scope, Grace here presents the modesty of musical melodrama with a self-assurance and conviction that is frankly astonishing. And it WORKS. You can almost imagine these same riffs ringing out from a cello section at a sunny Sunday Mozart matinée, while various characters take the stage for the opening "When She Sold Her Soul". And with an 18-minute runtime for the whole release, there's a bread-and-butter competence to the composition: though thematically cohesive as a whole, this is no magnum opus, nor is it meant to be. This is a standard staple of the company's regular repertoire, light and almost low-brow, but executed with a contented and classy professionalism. Make no mistake, this is solid death metal; blast it loud and rock out.
I look forward to exploring Grace's music more in the future. I only just recently caught wind of these tech-death troubadours, and their plain-Jane name doesn't do you any favors when it comes to Googling around for more info. Hailing from Southern Bohemia (a region rich in extreme metal deposits), Grace seems to have been started in the mid-90s by two members of Scapegoat - drummer Patrik "Duffy" Nejedlý and bassist Roman Křenek - with several years' overlap between the two bands. With the addition of guitarist Petr Kučera, the trio set their stylistic sights on melodic death metal in the classic Swedish vein (the band specifically references Hypocrisy, Grave, Unleashed, Entombed, Dismember, and Edge Of Sanity as influences), and knocked out a couple of demo recordings at Studio Shaark in Bzenec (southern Moravia). [Of these two, I've only been able to find a copy of 1998's The Snapper; the earlier demo The Enemy (1996) continues to evade.] Response from the 'zine scene was positive, and the band enjoyed moderate success for several years. Then a "pause" intended to last only a few months turned into a sabbatical of almost two years. It was after this extended break that the band came together again, this time with the addition of vocalist Honza Šoc, to start developing the material that would eventually become The Tele Tele Tubbies, which they finally recorded in 2003 at a studio in the village of Poličná (near Valašské Meziříčí, just on the Moravian side of the border with Silesia).
There seems to be some confusion as to exactly what kind of release The Tele Tele Tubbies was intended to be, with various online sources listing it sometimes as a full-length, other times as an EP, promo, or even demo. But it hardly matters. This is a great little gem of unique music, and it deserves a listen if you get the chance. I haven't located lyrics for the songs yet, but if I do I'll add them to this post later. One last closing observation, simply because it makes me smile: the two members Nejedlý and Křenek seem to have been the core of the band through it's entire 20-year history, and as drummer and bassist surely formed the bedrock of the group. But since, like many Czechs, their last names are also actual words, it's funny to think about them as such, because "nejedlý křenek" would roughly translate as "inedible horseradish". Chew on that for a while.