Gravelle-Perinbam - Black Veil of Silence

Gravelle-Perinbam

Black Veil of Silence
​self-released; 2022

3.8 out of 5

By Jamie Funk
​

Rob Gravelle and John Perinbam are a recording duo from Ottawa, Canada. They have collaborated several times on covers of classic rock songs which started when they decided to cover the song “Dream Police” by Cheap Trick. The duo decided to come together more recently to write and release a song called “Black Veil of Silence.”

The duo recorded the song in their home studios. As an engineer myself I will say recording fast paced metal as they do here is no easy task. On that note the recording has a good amount of fidelity, the dynamics are intact and the drums sound crisp and drive. 

Gravelle mentions that artists like Rik Emmett, Yngwie Malmsteen, James Hetfield, Marty Friedman and John Williams are some of his influences. I will say I picked up on that before even reading it. The ’80s metal vibe in particular is fairly obvious to hear if you grew up on it like I did all those decades ago. Suffice it to say if you can appreciate the aforementioned artists this should be an easy song for the win column.

“Black Veil of Silence” is almost six minutes long and there’s not much fat on this song. They don’t mess around and start with a couple crashes cymbals, guitar and before you know they lock into a groove and you get a powerful but brief guitar solo. 

Right before the thirty-second mark the vocals come in. The lyrics were a little hard to make out here and there but the themes again felt reminiscent of metal bands like Megadeth, Black Sabbath and other like-minded bands. Words like darkness and shadows would pop and this song seemed to have a sense of lore.

The singing is solid, dynamic and there are points where the vocals do seem to have a different affectation. It was a little hard to tell who was singing though but there did seem to be vocal harmonies which helped punctuate different sections of the song.

It’s around the three-minute mark the band goes hard in the paint with a great instrumental section. This isn't a lush breakdown however. Instead the song gets more intense culminating to a double bass drum section which leads to  guitars and an Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” hammer ons. They aren’t through yet as the song reaches great heights by changing the timing and going into an ascending uphill trajectory. The vocals do somewhat surprisingly show up once more which I thought was cool. 

​Regardless if this is your cup of tea or not this is an epic song from a duo that has tremendous technical skill. I would argue that even if you don’t care much for the technical stuff the aesthetics can be appreciated as well. Take a listen.

official website

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