With Coronet Juniper, Gridlink appeared to close their career on an immaculate swansong, an album that functioned as both a farewell from the band and a definitive statement within grindcore itself. Against that sense of finality, the band’s return with Perfect Amber arrives as an unexpected but significant coda.
Though Amber Gray and Orphan were already landmark works within the genre, they often carried the impression of being transitional efforts, pointing toward the more fully realized vision of Longhena and Coronet Juniper. Perfect Amber, however, disrupts that narrative. By restoring the additional guitar and bass parts omitted from the original recordings due to the limitations of 16-track equipment, Gridlink presents these albums in their intended form. The result is not merely a remaster, but a redefinition, a revelation of what those early records were always meant to sound like.
None of the original tracks have been re-recorded or removed, yet the addition of these long-missing elements elevates Amber Gray and Orphan to the same level as the band’s final two classics. Guitarist Takafumi Matsubara, reprising his role from Longhena and Coronet Juniper, contributes the absent guitar lines originally composed for the sessions but never captured. Meanwhile, Mauro Cordoba, absent from the first two releases but an integral part of the band’s later work, provides the necessary bass presence. His low-end foundation enriches the music with a depth and weight that the original versions lacked, granting these songs a newfound power and completeness within Gridlink’s discography.
What makes this recording remarkable is how vividly it reveals the band’s melodic palette. Gridlink weave their blend of post-hardcore and Japanese heavy metal influences into the framework of their already frenetic, hyper-technical grindcore. The result is a series of miniature anthemic epics, songs so dense they make much technical death metal seem sparse, yet so sharply written that they remain strikingly memorable.
Gridlink’s legacy was already set in stone as one of grindcore’s greatest bands, the group that pushed the genre to limits that once seemed inconceivable, leaving behind one of the finest discographies in the history of extreme metal. Perfect Amber rewrites that history by revealing the true form of their first two records, cementing Gridlink not only as masters of their craft but as arguably the greatest grindcore band of all time.
Outstare the pattern
The waxwing scowls
Pitched downwards
Resigned with bitterness
