I have witnessed firsthand how badly listening to Glassing can fuck up the human face. Just before the Texan trio played Arctangent festival in Bristol last year, I dragged a friend with me to the tent they were playing, desperate to see his reaction to their system-shocking extreme metal. When he looked over midway through Defacer, his expression as wildly scrunched-up as Jim Carrey playing The Grinch, it reaffirmed to me how incredible this band are.
Co-founded by bassist/vocalist Dustin Coffman and guitarist Cory Brim in Austin in 2016, Glassing are one of the few new metal acts you can’t easily categorise. Their influences include everything from Neurosis to The Cure and Planes Mistaken For Stars. And, from that maelstrom of discordant sounds, they pull a fury equally rooted in black metal, sludge, post-rock and shoegaze.
It’s an audial stabbing from multiple knife edges that I’d been meaning to properly experience for quite some time. When the band unchained their 2021 album Twin Dream, I discovered it via Bandcamp and immediately got flattened by the opening track, Spire. The sluggish, down-tuned chords rolled over me like a Zamboni. But, between them, there was a memorable sense of melody – a melody that sounded like it was clambering out of the Devil’s arsehole with the intent of strangling me, but still a melody.
When Coffman’s shrieking, chargrilled vocals kicked in, I was sold. When the song inexplicably gave way to an ambient post-rock second half, I was blown away. I’ll definitely come back for more of this, I thought. Then I didn’t, letting my work pull me to other artists and albums because I’m an idiot.
Three years later – hallowed music journalist that I am – a private stream of the band’s next album, From The Other Side Of The Mirror, was flung into my inbox, and I officially ran out of excuses not to give Glassing my full attention for 40 minutes.
Thank Christ I did. The lead single of Other Side… is the aforementioned Defacer, which I think still holds the trophy for ‘Hardest Riff I Heard In 2024’. That song would kill a Victorian child. From the word go it’s a relentless onslaught, with Coffman, Brim and drummer Scott Osment dishing out a noise/sludge metal groove-fest then accelerating to a brash, blackened sprint. It somehow gets even more badass after the first verse, as Brim breaks into the best Gojira-style tap-along lead playing that Gojira never did.
Lots of other songs have that sheer, delirioius energy. Circle Down is a thrashing charge that turns into a death metal headbanger midway through because fuck you, your neck will get better eventually. Meanwhile, As My Heart Rots sounds like Deafheaven fighting a swarm of bees.
But there’s also vulnerability in what Glassing do. Other Side… flaunts some shoegaze ambience with the recuperative interlude The Kestrel Goes. On Twin Dream, there are segues of dread-filled rumbling and soaring sweetness, which quickly get dragged back to Hell by hard drums and huge riffs. It all combines into an unpredictable package, making the hernia-inducing metal smack all the more forcefully.
I’ve seen Glassing twice now – at Arctangent, then two weeks later at Pelagic Fest in the Netherlands – and I’ve joined a gym just to have a chance of surviving the pit when I catch them again next week. I can’t sit here and say this band changed my life, but I can definitely argue that they’re creatives whose subgenre-breaking rage needs to be experienced by many, many more people.
From The Other Side Of The Mirror is out now via Pelagic. Glassing tour the UK next week.
