EP Review: This Is What Your Hands Were Made For

Three years after their first short player The Shadows We Cast Years Ago, Auckland band Grym Rhymney released their second EP This Is What Your Hands Were Made For via Swamp Kult Records. The metalheads share a precise and melodic five-track record of energetic and sincere proportions in the culmination of their two-year project. Their expansive sound is influenced by a plethora of genres in which the members make admirable use of.

Opening with a Led Zeppelin-y guitar intro for The Nail In The Coffin, the EP then kicks into higher gear with the thundering vocals of Hamish Clark and Albi Ingram and overdriven guitar of Spencer Jew and Ingram. The title is as deliciously ironic as its concern about not being able to “see a way forward.” As its intro suitably switches to their usual sound, it’s as if growth and foresight cannot be achieved. This, however, is not the case for the five-piece band.

Unfortunate similarly breaches the waters of its laid back, romantic intro to then unite epic gat riffs and drum fills with roaring lyrics.

Although The Heathen Remains is consistent with the overall arc of Izak Kennedy’s expert rhythm and Jamie Stuart’s bass, and its main melody offers another smart track for catharsis, I do start to question the need for the track to be above five minutes.

Featuring additional vocals from Ginge, the memorable head-turner Blind Respect picks the six-string back up above-shoulder in its concept of self-worth and remaining true to oneself. It’s a bold and empowering song that would sound incredible live.

The title track, which features underground artist HeyLee Manzeron, finally strips things back to a seven-minute closer that leaves me pumped to believe in myself and the power of music. This lasting impression comes from the emotional sonic journey of the higher trills and lower voicings, which allow space for instrumental narrative.

This Is What You Hands Were Made For makes me hope or, at least, think that the band would easily succeed in exploring more genres and perhaps even meshing them with their metallic sound, rather than positioning them as introductions. Whatever the band does next, their hands are certainly capable and made for inciting the headbanging hordes of music to rise up from the underground.