Not that it’s short on heads-down, crusty sludge pummel, but I’ll allow for the fact that in choosing a track from Portland, Oregon, four-piece Stoneburner‘s Sickness Will Pass, I perhaps didn’t pick the most representative cut of the whole. Part of that is because I just happen to think “Marriage,” which comes from the band’s Seventh Rule Recordings debut — due out for release a week from today — is a killer song, and one that does a good job balancing the sub-psychedelic hypnosis present in the mostly-instrumental two-guitar outfit’s sound with their viscous tonal tsunami. There’s something melodic in it too, but it’s like they buried the melody alive and then dug it back up before putting it on the record. I like that.

And yeah, it may not be as plodding as the malevolent “Run Boy…” or as deranged as “Elesares,” but the band — who opened the Portland date of the Decibel tour and who’ll also be supporting Sleep when they hit Nuemo’s in Seattle on June 4 — don’t just do one thing all the time, and that makes it a little harder to pin down just one track to stream. Of course, that works in the album’s favor, and Sickness Will Pass winds up giving the impression that not only will the sickness not pass, but that it will gradually consume you until your flesh turns to chewed meat and falls from your bones. It’s not what you’d call “uplifting,” unless you’re thinking in the sense of hoisting yourself over the ledge on the roof of a building before jumping off.

The sonic diversity and consistent quality of Portland’s scene continues to impress even someone like myself, who’s about as far as you can get from it while still being in the same country, and being just a week out from Stoneburner dropping the considerable heft of Sickness Will Pass on what are no doubt the soon-to-be-broken toes of unsuspecting sludge-heads everywhere, I’m thrilled to be able to stream the bleak complexity of “Marriage” in all its seven-minute wretched splendor. Please find and enjoy it on the player below:

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=stoneburner.xml]

Stoneburner‘s Sickness Will Pass is due May 22 via Seventh Rule Recordings. For more info, check out the band on Thee Facebooks or hit up their Bandcamp page, where you can also stream album opener “Christian’s Charity,” or the Seventh Rule webstore, where one might stumble upon a wide host of goodies, from the Pacific Northwest and otherwise.

Tags: Oregon, Portland, Seventh Rule, Stoneburner

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 11:34 am and is filed under audiObelisk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.