Album Review: Greywind - 'Severed Heart City'
For a while, it looked as though Greywind were going to have their career cut off at the knees. Afterthoughts has aged incredibly well, a sleeper hit debut album that took the scenic route to find an audience in the early days of 2020’s lockdown, long after the duo’s previous major label home cut the cord after release in 2017. Well, they fumbled the Killarney sibling duo hard, and Steph & Paul O’Sullivan aren’t about to take things lying down this time; that they’re back almost a decade later speaks volumes, and their hard-edged, anthemic emo has levelled up in the meantime. Think Futures-era Jimmy Eat World with My Chemical Romance’s conceptual slant and you’re halfway there.
Severed Heart City is a world of pure feeling and high drama, presented as an allegory on the ripple effects of trauma, and Steph O’Sullivan’s got a voice to match, delivering a show-stopping performance on penultimate ballad ‘The Scarecrow’, which displays the band at their most stripped-back and vulnerable. We’d call it a lyrical gut check even by this pair’s standards, on a record containing 10 songs with heart firmly displayed on sleeve; messy, real and raw with autobiographical detail aplenty. Emotional wreckage is explored as a murder scene on opener ‘Acid Rain’, building on the growth displayed on 2024’s Antidote EP and taking that in a more expansive direction that feels like a logical next step after a creative rebirth.
There’s also a staggering economy of songwriting throughout; a pleasingly direct album that’s there and gone in little over half an hour, meeting the criteria for ‘all killer, no filler’ with ease. ‘I.K.A.M.F.’ takes a whopping 20 seconds to get to its sky-scraping chorus and scrapes over the two-minute mark, powered by a sense of vicious catharsis. The candid nature of the album’s lyrical content is part of the whole package, and the likes of ‘Happy :):’ paint an unflinching portrait of depression set to a soaring melody; it’s that sense of contrast that makes it so compelling and an early album highlight, standing out even amongst the likes of ‘Waterfall’ (you really can’t beat a well-placed guitar solo) and the synth-flecked ‘Swerve’, the latter of which is an example of Greywind’s sound at its most titanic.
There isn’t an ounce of fat on Severed Heart City, and the fact that the O’Sullivan siblings are seizing a second chance like their lives depend on it is testament to their unshakeable belief in what once seemed like a project blighted by circumstance and bad luck. In the same way that the record traces over the wounds of the past and charts a course forward, Steph and Paul have had to wade through setbacks and false starts that would have sunk countless bands; and indeed, many others have formed and folded since Afterthoughts uncertainly made its way into the world nine years ago. Songs like ‘Let’s See If You Can Float’ and anthemic closing track ‘Cope in a Coma’ go a long way toward justifying the pair’s second chance; much like its creators, Greywind’s long-gestating new record is bruised, defiant and alive. Worth the wait? You bet.
Words by Gareth O'Malley
