Track of the Week: Grove takes aim at political cowardice with fiercer seethe on ‘Break a Sweat’
Amid the ever-fantastic Bristol underground, industrial bass MC bomb Grove returns after a couple of years licking their wounds for ‘Break a Sweat’ with the city’s Spinny Nights label, an incendiary blast of serrated trap and digital belligerence flexing a political seethe that still burns unabated.
Grove’s return couldn’t have come at a more pertinent time.
As the Western political class turns its back on the colonial murder meted out in Gaza and wields the oppressive arm of the state to crush any protest or dissent in the face of such moral failure, Grove manages to reach into the depths of their rage and wrestle a clarion call that validates the anger while pointing toward a beckoning hope in the distance, as distant as it may feel.
Every sonic weapon in Grove’s dystopian dancehall arsenal feels sharpened and deadlier than previously heard on ‘Break a Sweat’.
The beats seize ooze with mechanised fury, the backing spectral vocals cast a phantasmic layer over the tech-punk pummel, and Grove’s lyrical spits at the US imperial machine hit an electrical bullseye with well-aimed barb, “Crazy Uncle Sam, he’s going down too / All the global North dressed in their red, white, blue”, making clear who Grove’s enemy is.
“This corruption reflects a deeper sickness of humanity – where lies spread like wildfire, life is cheapened, and division and censorship thrive in poisoned yet fertile soil,” Grove has stated.
Adding, “The important caveat is that Hercules didn’t defeat the Hydra alone; he worked with Iolaus, who cauterised each wound to stop new heads from growing”.
Replete with James Storm’s incisor saxophone and audio of Irish TD Thomas Gould’s impassioned denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Dáil Éireann, ‘Break a Sweat’ marks Grove’s welcome return to Bristol’s bristling and cutting-edge subterranean and beyond.
Swirling righteous rage and political rigour that muscles its way to the front, Grove conjures an ungodly racket for the communities and classes forced into silence by the political rot from above.
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