Album Review: Dissimulation by .gif from god

How delightfully unexpected to find a new .gif from god album appearing over the transom here at Auricular HQ! This local metallic hardcore sextet have remained an incendiary live-act throughout their decade-plus career, but have only managed to release one six-song EP of new material since their 2019 debut, Approximation_of_a_Human. That 2023 collection, Digital Red, was a concise firestorm of high-speed metallic rage and brutal mosh breakdowns, which made up for its relative lack of dynamics across its 18 minute runtime with an unrelenting wall of frantic noise. Which, of course, is what .gif from god fans want.

But over a longer canvas, there is quite a bit more room for dynamics, and that’s why it’s such a delight to finally get another .gif from god full-length, seven full years after their first. They’ve had plenty of time to woodshed and workshop this current collection of tunes, and the higher level of variety and creativity that appears across Dissimulation‘s 15 songs and 36 minutes is where that increased runtime bears fruit. From song to song, there quite a few different stylistic avenues explored, even as this album retains .gif From God’s essential building blocks: dissonant chords, rapidly shifting tempos, harsh roaring/screaming dual vocals, and absolutely pummeling breakdowns.

The full-length runtime allows for an increase in mood setting as well as dynamics, and there’s a particular ambient guitar melody that hums quietly through several interludes across the album’s length, creating a sort of atmosphere for Dissimulation‘s harsh explosions of sound to float across and giving further power to the moments in which its calm atmosphere is brutally shattered by pummeling drums and harsh screams. .gif from god’s earlier material seemed to draw from the same sort of sass-core that birthed Seeyouspacecowboy and The Callous Daoboys, but by this point in their career, evolution has occurred, and they’ve somehow moved in several different directions at once without ever losing cohesion or departing from their foundations in harsh metallic hardcore.

An example of this evolution shows up in “Life Like A Sickness,” which pulls from somewhat obscure first-wave metalcore groups from the final years of the 20th century, including Suicide Nation, One Eyed God Prophecy, and Kill The Slavemaster. This track integrates Scandinavian black metal flourishes into a harsher, more brutal approach that is more squarely rooted in hardcore. Later, “Turn From the Ruin” finds them bringing in more melodic vocals in a manner that was pioneered by popular mid-00s metalcore groups like Atreyu or Underoath. However, .gif from god does this in a much heavier fashion that keeps the few songs of theirs that use this technique from sounding like every early-00s nu metal band’s inevitable radio single. Instead, it sort of feels like Ozzy Osbourne stepping into the studio to sing a chorus with Slayer or something. In other words, it’s fucking awesome.

Album centerpiece “A Gift From God,” the closest the band has come to writing a manifesto in song form, is the longest song of the band’s career thus far, and shows the most dynamic range. The song begins with a dragging cadence, piano and drums looping around one another over downtuned bass rumbles and the sound of that broken amp from Sonic Youth’s “Providence.” This eventually lands in a place that is even more firmly in the melodic metalcore territory dipped into by “Turn From The Ruin,” with gothic vocal melodies suddenly giving way at the halfway point of the five-minute track to an ominous thundering vamp that builds for multiple minutes a la one of those long songs Pg. 99 (or Pageninetynine, depending on what era of the band you like better) used to end their albums with. In the final 30 or so seconds of the song, everything culminates in a truly pulverizing breakdown that stands as a (perhaps unwitting) homage to The Now’s legendary self-titled EP, one of the highwater marks of Y2K metallic screamo.

The last half of the album features quite a few more anthems of modern metallic hardcore rage, including the memorable lead single “Volatile Simian Nervous System,” but the most interesting track in the later portion is “Burnt House Horizon,” which dispenses with all of the heaviness and noise to instead begin with atmospheric piano and then move into a mournful dirge that simultaneously evokes the work of Neurosis and Richmond’s own Ostraca (two members of which are also part of .gif from god, so the resemblance is unlikely to be coincidental). Moody sung vocals begin the track but are soon overtaken by the usual screams and roars of the band’s dual vocalists. However, the music never moves into the band’s usual metallic hardcore territory, instead remaining moody and piano-driven throughout. The fact that this song shows up between two standard .gif from god ragers without taking away from either of them, nor being diminished by its much heavier surroundings, is perhaps the best example Dissimulation offers of how skilled .gif From God have truly become at the art of dynamics.

Don’t get me wrong, longtime fans will surely NOT see this album as a weakening of this band’s intrinsic power and fury. Much of its runtime is still devoted to raging hardcore terror, even if it has moved away from the group’s screamo-based roots in the direction of more scathing metal sounds. However, it’s a true compliment to .gif from god’s creativity and artistic skill that this collection of 15 tracks can move as far away from the band’s usual baseline as it does, without ever skimping on even an ounce of power. If anything, the shifting moods and dynamics that mark Dissimulation are what make it such a memorably brilliant album. For those of you constantly seeking the most intense, earthshaking musical experiences you can have at any given time, this album gets the highest possible recommendation. Doubtless one of the best slabs of heavy music in any subgenre that this city will produce in 2026. Take note.

Dissimulation is streaming now via Prosthetic Records. For more updates, follow .gif from god on social media.