Wrede / The Cruel Peace

Dutch trio Gore made their name playing stripped-down industrial noise-rock, but on their third LP, Wrede (meaning “cruel”), subtitled The Cruel Peace, they took a surprising turn for the epic. The album’s four lengthy pieces, each running around 15 minutes or more, harnessed the downtempo minimalism of their early work while adding a new focus on texture and pacing. On 25-minute behemoth “Garden of Evil — Het Bos,” for example, guitarists Frankie Stroo and Joes Bentley, bassist Marij Hel and drummer Danny Arnold Lommen wring all possible intrigue out of each lumbering, dissonant riff before moving on to the next, and build in tense, spacious, sometimes oddly lovely interludes that only heighten the impact of the next hammer blow. As a whole, the album achieves all the drama of a classic prog album while utilizing only the most minimal of materials.