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Music

Gabriel Bruce Was Crushed by a Dinosaur Fossil and Also Life, but Now He's Back, with "Metal Soul"

After a devastating injury and a breakup, Gabriel Bruce offers the first glimpse into his new record 'Come All Sufferers' with the song "Metal Soul."

Photos courtesy of Gabriel Bruce

When we spoke to Gabriel Bruce in 2012, things seemed to be going well. He was, we said, "The Disco Leonard Cohen," blessed with a familiar but uniquely deep voice, all pensive and melancholy. Back then he was coming off the back of a fine EP in Dark Lights Shine Loud and would soon release the stirring Love In Arms. He was carving out a niche. Things were working nicely.

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It was natural to wonder where Bruce went after that. Things got quiet. With the release of "Metal Soul," our first glimpse into his new record Come All Sufferers, we’re starting to get a fuller picture. A debilitating breakup in 2014 sent the Londoner into a downward spiral and, soon after, he was crushed by a dinosaur—a fossil, to be precise, an occupational hazard of working in a factory for a dinosaur fossil dealer. Despite fearing amputations, the hospital managed to save his fingers, putting him on the road to recovery and offering him a chance to play again.

Gabriel Bruce's hand after the injury

If an artist’s greatest challenge is channeling pain into their work, then Bruce was burdened with a lot. The pain of both incidents hit him hard.

“Its not so much the mangled fingers, the shattered bone smiling out at me like pointed teeth in bloodied mouths," he explains. "It's not so much the searing, profound pain I remember. I don’t remember that so much. Its not that after nine days of Oramorph and Tramadol preventing my bowls from moving I finally forced a brick out that tore me and left me bloody. I remember you telling me you’d been with him. I remember seeing through tears his name come up on your phone. I remember asking you 'show me where he touched you.'"

"Metal Soul" takes this bleakness and turns it into something else, something more grand. The gothic overtones of Love in Arms has given way to a more subtle loneliness, something deeply affecting and, as ever, disconcertingly easy to nod along to. That may well be Bruce’s greatest gift—layering pain upon pain while making his listener tap along through the discomfort.

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