If you want to feel young compared to someone else, I’ll humbly submit the method by which I discovered Jacksonville, Florida, duo Hollow Leg: I saw their logo on a t-shirt. That’s right. Not on the internet, not through some popular blog or forum posting, but on some dude’s shirt at the recent Earthride show in NYC. How old am I? Well I’m that old.

Keeping that in mind, imagine how surprised I was to find out the kind of raucous shenanigans Hollow Leg got up to when I finally checked out their MySpace, only to discover that it’s just two guys in the band! What will they think of next?

Like a lot of duos in this post-Black Cobra/post-Om society, Hollow Leg made up for a lack of players with a thickness of tone. Guitarist/vocalist Brent riffs like he means it on “Spit in the Fire” with singing that, at its cleanest, reminds of Today is the Day‘s unsettling later output, and full-on growls that don’t seem cheesy or overly metal, but rather fit the material nicely, appropriate for the chaos behind them.

Drummer Tim hits heavy and hard on “Caretaker,’ only accenting the plod of the song. Hollow Leg do a good job of mixing up the pace, paying homage to the doomier side of their noise/stoner influence while also keeping in mind that it’s the groove that’s going to best carry across the material. Longer songs like “The Return” or the rougher-edged “Warbeast” have plenty of room for Hollow Leg to change up their approach, and the band does so fluidly, which you can hear for yourself on the internet if you’re less than 77 years old, or if you’re like me, you can read all about it… on some dude’s t-shirt.

Tags: Florida, Hollow Leg, Jacksonville, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 2:28 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.