With a crowley rock aesthetic already firmly in their grasp, Philadelphia trio Heavy Temple emerge from the ether bearing an early bit of organic, autumnal tonality and a nascent experimental breadth. Their debut demo comes in the form of the single track “Unholy Communion,” which tops 13 minutes and features enough fuzz for at least twice that, bassist/vocalist Elyse “Nighthawk” Mitchell standing at the fore of the mix with an authoritative command both of her voice and presence in the songs alongside guitarist Shawn “Rattlesnake” Rambles and already-former drummer Andy “Bearadactyl” Martin, who anyone who’s happened by this site once or twice will probably recognize from Maple Forum alums Clamfight.

For anyone who heard that band’s latest record, it offers little to no context for even the percussive style employed on Heavy Temple‘s “Unholy Communion,” which is headed to more patient, richly psychedelic and unfolding moods. There are more effects employed than I care to or could count, but one of the most encouraging aspects of “Unholy Communion” is that as far out as Heavy Temple go — and yes indeed, they go — no indulgence feels unwarranted. Martin has established a strong, tom-running beat by the time Mitchell arrives, rising to a swell as Rambles‘ guitar picks up a churning, progressive riff, and she unleashes a chorus of long-held notes over the emergent storm of the music, backing off only to allow Rambles space for a solo to begin an instrumental exploration.

There’s a structure at work, but it’s obscure befitting the band’s somewhat cultish aesthetic. As “Unholy Communion” veers toward the five-minute mark, Mitchell coos out a verse over tense bass and the drums’ steady beat, and the build begins again, one part into the next into the next — that last being the chorus paying off the anxious vibe prior. The riffs are intricate but accessible, turning in the chorus with a fill that in another context might be stoner rock before dropping out altogether for a droning stretch that at first calls to mind King Crimson‘s “Moonchild,” but soon moves into more active territory, Martin punctuating a steady-if-minimal riff that Mitchell can’t seem to help topping with echo-laden vocals.

That riff — you’ll know it when you hear it — is the basis for much of the second half of the song, and rightly so. In capital ‘h’ Heavy tradition, they do just about everything with it they can over the next few minutes, raising it up from its unassuming creep, making it as heavy as it’ll go, giving it vocals, adding effects, theremin, and the shouts that serve as a driving apex within “Unholy Communion” as it marches out its distorted course. Past 10 minutes in, Heavy Temple shift back toward the opening progressivism — Martin returns to that drum beat — but the weirdo theremin noise remains and the atmosphere is changed as Rambles follows his leads wherever they might take him. The drums announce the change coming, but it’s no less satisfying when the three of them turn the song upside down and with just over a minute to go, lock into a return of the chorus, somewhat slowed, to give the track closure and a frightening sense of accomplishment.

Ending with some last-second cello from Mitchell, Heavy Temple seem to be announcing that anything is fair game within their sound, and I for one look forward to where their sonic push takes them next. I knew they had something cool going on earlier this year when I was fortunate enough to catch them at The Eye of the Stoned Goat 2 in Delaware, but I don’t think that gig could’ve foretold the spirit they’ve been able to capture in what it’s still important to remember is just their first recording as a band. They’ll need to find a new drummer (Martin having split amicably), but I know when they do I’ll be eager to hear what they come up with next.

Heavy Temple, “Unholy Communion” (2013)

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Heavy Temple on Bandcamp

Immediately on This Mountain Waits, the vibe is “old soul.” The second album by UK-based heavy blues rocking five-piece Pearl Handled Revolver, the 11-track collection released on King Mojo Records never, ever veers into vintage production or departs from a modern feel, but there’s a classic sensibility underscoring the songs all the same. It comes across in the throaty, excellently-mixed vocals of Lee Vernon and in the synth, Mellotron and other key work of Simon Rinaldo, who fleshes out the melodic depth of Andy Paris‘ guitar while Oli Carter‘s bass and Chris Thatcher‘s drums hold down smooth grooves, tossing a little funk into “The Red, White and Blues” but keeping a straightforward edge to This Mountain Waits opener “Do it Again.”

The sophomore outing follows a mostly-numerical series of EPs and the 2011 full-length debut, Colossus, and with Vernon‘s vocal approach, live-feeling echo and periodically jazz-minded influence in the keys, some measure of Doors comparison on quieter cuts like the riding-on-the-storm “Josey,” “Rattle Your Bones” or the more raucous earlier stomper “Johnny’s in the Basement” is inevitable, and by all accounts it’s not something Pearl Handled Revolver are unaware of. Still, the pervading feel of the album is original, and familiar aspects are offset by curves like the piano-into-organ-led “Hourglass,” which develops some of the band’s moodier moments into a deceptively rich build. Carter provides a classy performance on bass front to back, and while the keys by their very nature sometimes take the focus away from the guitar, Paris does an excellent job in reinforcing the dynamic on a song like “Hello Mary,” grounding the ’60s psych feel of Rinaldo‘s keys with a distorted strum to go with Thatcher‘s hi-hat verses.

A sort of apex seems to take hold with “Rabbit Hole,” which kicks into insistent bursts of low and high end volume before embarking on a winding transitional line that gives This Mountain Waits not only a thicker tonality — probably their “heaviest” stretch of the album as it moves into a darker headspace — but a prog-leaning sensibility as well. Vernon is a steady presence at the fore, but where his singing could easily fall into the category of unfortunate heavy rock vocalists who are way too far in front of the music and over-the-top in their whoa-momma-yeah bluesiness, he’s better balanced all around with the music behind, so that the drama of “Honeycomb” comes across without distraction. Ultimately, as the title line is delivered as the last of the album, it’s the overall balance that is working most in This Mountain Waits‘ favor, since for the aesthetic the band has taken on — progressive, classic, heavy, blues rock — there’s little margin for flubs, and though the tracks sound wholly natural, they’re also crisply presented and clear-headed in where they want to move.

That accomplished feel lends credibility to Pearl Handled Revolver‘s adopting of the more classic aesthetic and the fact that they manage to get through This Mountain Waits without falling prey to the trap of sonic redundancy makes the album even more on the winning end. As my first experience with the band, I found This Mountain Waits to be engaging and cohesive with an individual take on a broad range of traditions, and easily worth the effort of a listen. How they might continue to develop the intricacies presented here is anyone’s best guess, but in the meantime, their blues are infectious.

Pearl Handled Revolver, “Rattle Your Bones” official video

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Pearl Handled Revolver’s website

King Mojo Records

You know how it goes by now. Very few people are born into stoner rock or doom. Most come to it via some other kind of underground music, be it punk or metal. In the case of Tumbleweed Dealer founding guitarist/bassist Sébastien Painchaud, it’s the latter. Painchaud was a member of metalcore technicians Ion Dissonance and has played with The Last Felony among a host of others. Last year — so the story goes — he got high and then Tumbleweed Dealer happened. Tale as old as time: Beardy and the Riff.

Tumbleweed Dealer partners Painchaud with fellow former The Last Felony member Felix Roberge, who handles bass live, and drummer Carl Borman of respectable Quebecois stoner-doomers Dopethrone, and the resulting debut full-length plays out with some underlying semblance of technicality, but sacrifices nothing in overlying groove to get there. Painchaud adds smooth bass fills to hypnotically repetitive guitar lines, and though some turns feel jagged on the gleefully bud-reverent “How to Light a Joint with a Blowtorch,” Tumbleweed Dealer‘s entry to the sphere of capital-‘h’ Heavy is a formidable one in more than just the length of some of its track titles.

The band made their debut with last year’s Death Rides Southwards — distributed through Moshpit Tragedy Records — but as a first album, Tumbleweed Dealer finds their sound well cohesive, active but laid back, and not too insistent in its changes, but not redundant either. Shades of newer-school Southern metal twang show up in some of the post-Baroness guitar work, but Painchaud gives “March of the Dead Cowboys” a slower, moodier sensibility at the record’s center, and the context gets richer for it. Later, as “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” and “Dark Times a’Comin'” trade off Earth drones and post-rock crescendos, respectively, I can’t help but wonder if Tumbleweed Dealer are just beginning to show their hand stylistically with these seven tracks and what sonic shifts future outings might offer.

I guess we have a while to go before we get there, since Tumbleweed Dealer‘s Tumbleweed Dealer was just released at the end of April, but for an album so brimming with potential, it’s hard not to speculate on what the future might hold.

Tumbleweed Dealer, Tumbleweed Dealer

Honing classic tonality and a sense of fluid experimentalism, desert rock upstarts Fever Dog make a strong statement of intent on their new single Lady Snowblood, proffering organic burl and power-trio chemistry offset by synth drama and stonerly boogie. The are only two tracks on the thing, but both “Lady Snowblood/Child of the Netherworlds” and “Hats off to Andrew Bowen (Live Version)” go a long way in hinting that Fever Dog have more going on than fuzz riffs and Kyuss-derivative idolatry.

“Hats off to Andrew Bowen” particularly owes much more to Hendrix than anything commonly belonging to the desert genre, but even “Lady Snowblood/Child of the Netherworlds” show the young outfit as capable of enacting a strikingly natural, jammy groove that brings the listener along to the extent that, when it breaks into the bizarro Floydian synth, one is hardly jarred at all by the change. Indeed, the second of the two extended cuts has its freakout on both ends, going from the instrumental push to theremin-inclusive guitar vibing that results in headphone-worthy psychedelic atmospherics. The three piece of guitarist/vocalist Danny Graham (also theremin), bassist Nathan Wood (also noise) and drummer Josh Adams (also synth) made their full-length debut with the aptly-titled CD Volume One on Interstellar Overlord Records, which was no less ably riffed or stylistically intriguing, a cut like “Since I Met You” blending Melvins-style vocal snarl with the bell-bottomed garage fuckall that inspired that band in the first place — a break of fuzzy noise thrown in just to throw off, it would seem — but the single shows them working in longer form than the vast majority of the full-length, and they’re suited to it, both in the moodier blues stretches and the unexpected turns that answer them.

Both the single and the full-length have the vocals pretty forward in the mix — obviously it’s less of an issue on “Hats off to Andrew Bowen,” which is instrumental — resulting on “Lady Snowblood” in a kind of younger Alice Cooper sneer, but when it comes to the guitar, bass and drums and the extras Fever Dog have working in favor of their material, there’s little about the Lady Snowblood single I can find to take issue with, and it would seem that as much as the notion of “desert rock” conjures a specific notion in the mind of the listener, there are still some around intent on expanding that definition even as they continue to refine it. Very cool sound, lots of places they could go sonically. One to watch for sure.

Fever Dog, Lady Snowblood Single (2013)

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Fever Dog on Bandcamp

Fever Dog at Ozium Records

With a CD pressing limited, I presume, to however many the band felt like spraypainting, Wizard Fight make their debut on the new The Beast Lives Demo. The Hastings, UK-based trio recorded the three tracks live on March 11 and initially put them on a cassette, but the CD followed not far behind as they’ve begun to play more shows, discs spraypainted green with stenciled pink logos as above in a sleeve with photocopied artwork — a bit of a classic touch to go with the band’s heavy-footed sludge stomp.

The three tracks themselves keep the formula pretty simple. Riffs, screams and growls, a few tempo changes and a consistent level of aggression keep The Beast Lives Demo well within the realm of the straightforward, and the trio — guitarist/vocalist Luke Bolton (Rise of the Simians), bassist Dave Sage and drummer Daniel Kinsey (ex-Steak) — seem just fine with that. Across “The Devil Rides,” “Wizard of Black” and “Thine Enemies,” the three-piece settle into a solid groove that ebbs and flows while also keeping a strong sense of momentum moving within and between the songs.

Frills are slim to none — a sample at the beginning of “The Devil Rides” — but especially for a first demo recorded live, that winds up being part of the appeal, and though it’s abundantly clear throughout all three of the tracks at Wizard Fight are getting their bearings in terms of writing songs as a unit, their sense of structure works well on “Wizard of Black” as they move fluidly from the chorus to the instrumental ending, wherein they lock in the demo’s best groove as a precursor to the burly riffing that takes hold on “Thine Enemies,” closing out with a semi-metallic chorus that Bolton tops in post-Superjoint Ritual fashion.

They’ve got some work ahead of them, but considering The Beast Lives is as rudimentary as a release can get — a live demo — Wizard Fight sound tight and like they have a good idea of where they want to be in terms of sound. I wouldn’t ask anything more of a release like The Beast Lives than that, and hopefully it sets the band up for something to grow on the next time out. Until then, in true demo spirit, they’ve made the songs available as a free download:

Wizard Fight, The Beast Lives Demo (2013)

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Wizard Fight on Bandcamp

Already on their first LP, Buenos Aires-based four-piece Montenegro have hit on an interesting sonic blend. Taking elements from desert rock, surf, spaghetti west and South American folk, the heavy rockers start out with a leg up on Confusos Recuerdos Después del Coma (Sick-o-Delic Records), comprised of four relatively extended tracks totaling about 35 minutes. The shortest of them, the mostly-instrumental “Soluciones,” might be the most interesting of the bunch, with guitarist Gonzalo Rubio García inserting driving leads between alternately funky and driving riffs, choppy-waters surf and finally rolling grooves topped by vocalist Agustin Girolami, but even on the opening “Ideario,” Montenegro distinguish themselves within the range of post-Los Natas Argentinian heavy.

Feedback buzz starts the song, but soon the low rumble of bassist Luciano Marchisio comes on and is an immediate tonal argument in the band’s favor. Marchisio sets up the central figure that soon enough drummer Santiago Lago and García join, the latter adding space echoes to the wavy progression, giving a nod to slow space that also shows up later in the noisy midsection of closer “Santa Cruz.” A jammy feeling is built and maintained through the course of “Ideario,” and when Girolami adds words to the vibing, his voice sounds high and dry in the mix above the instruments, but in an airier section that follows as they near six minutes into the track the balance is better, and by the time they get to the whoops and shouts on “Soluciones,” it’s hardly an issue at all.

Indeed, on the 10-minute third cut, “Tiempo Fractal,” I’d argue the vocals go a long way in making the song, finally providing an answer to what Yawning Man might’ve sounded like had they ever hired a singer, guitars tripping out over strong rhythms and snare march from Lago to setup Girolami‘s entry point, which is met with Delmar-style smoothness following speech either spoken or sampled, Marchisio having thickened out the groove for a call and response that leads to a heavier rush as Montenegro head toward seven minutes in the development of what’s basically been one part. García gives his delay pedal a workout, but winds up with a memorable instrumental hook anyway, and though the vocals are high in the mix toward the end once again, the positive impression has already been made.

Closer “Santa Cruz” uses spoken vocals as well, amid dueling bass and guitar wah swirl and nestles into an solid lead-led groove lent personality by Lago‘s sleepy crash work before breaking down nearly to silence to set the foundation for Confusos Recuerdos Después del Coma‘s final build. Here too the guitar is at the fore, but at 5:41, Marchisio introduces a more foreboding line, and the guitar soon returns to top it with dense fuzz and open-spaces leads atop steady drum thud. Girolami‘s work is done, but the instruments do a more than solid job of carrying Montenegro‘s debut to its finish, surprisingly peaceful despite some moments of chaos within.

It will be interesting to see how Montenegro endeavor to work in some of the variety of influence they show on “Soluciones” in with the desert rock and heavy psych aspects of their sound going forward — if indeed they decide that’s to be their project — but already on Confusos Recuerdos Después del Coma they have a strong sense of aesthetic that’s met with warm tones and engaging grooves. The album is available for free download at the Montenegro Bandcamp, from whence the following player was also hoisted:

Montenegro, Confusos Recuerdos Después del Coma (2013)

Montenegro on Bandcamp

Montenegro on Thee Facebooks

Space. Sometimes it’s full of riffs. At least that’s the vision of the cosmos laid out by Dutch instrumental heavy rock trio Gigatron2000, who make their debut in the form of the half-hour full-length, The Cosmic Desert Cruise. Grooving out in the unpretentious spirit of Karma to Burn, the guitar/bass/drums three-piece keep to a straightforward approach throughout the album’s 12 tracks, so that each one winds up a crisp riff-led excursion, usually between two and three minutes long, that gets in and gets out and doesn’t waste too much time on extras, either stylistic or in terms of arrangement. Samples crop up here and there, and closer “Starcommand” has a bit of swirl preceding its chugging apex, but Gigatron2000 make themselves at home in the trenches of riffery and wind up with some pretty appealing if familiar nod as a result.

The longest of the bunch is the title-track, “Cosmic Desert Cruise,” which comes on at the halfway point and reaches to 3:48, but the ensuing “Ion Cannon” shaves two minutes off that for a faster rush, and the penultimate “Background Radiation Shielding” is hardly as long as its title, checking in at 1:44. But though they’re short, Gigatron2000‘s songs aren’t lacking for substance or discernible structure. They move quickly from one to the next — marked in places as opener “Ancient Hyperdrive” is by use of samples — and because The Cosmic Desert Cruise as a whole is short, it gives a sense of the band being in a hurry, but nothing here is underdeveloped either. You can hear it in the tempo change on “Ancient Hyperdrive” and in the slowdown that hits later into “First Contact” before drummer Sarban Grimminck picks up the rhythm again to cap with a lead-in push for “Positronic Accelerator.”

Bassist Kevin Kentie and guitarist Gerben van der Aa work mostly in tandem throughout The Cosmic Desert Cruise, and that helps give some of the material a more punkish vibe, but on the whole, Gigatron2000 are playing heavy rock for heads who know what they’re getting when they sign up for a solid half-hour of riffs. The band released a limited tape edition of the album through Tartarus Records that’s sold out, and have CDs for sale the first 100 of which were packaged each with a little robot toy or spaceship (as seen above), but apparently the final robot has gone as well, so kudos to the band both on the sales and the incentive. I mean, who doesn’t want a little toy robot?

In light of that, and the crunch that pops up in Gigatron2000’s riffs, and the fact that though they seem obsessed with space in that let’s-turn-ourselves-into-comic-book-characters (awesome) kind of way, they don’t actually give in to playing psychedelic space rock, The Cosmic Desert Cruisemay be one for those already well converted to the ways of the riff, but it’s still a satisfying and intriguing listen for all that, and Gigatron2000‘s no-frills ethic is bound to continue to serve them well as they press onward into the solar system. I’d be interested to see them work a narrative course into the music — there’s some of that on the Bandcamp page set up for the tape, but none on the CD itself — but for a start, these tracks hold up just fine on their own.

Gigatron2000, The Cosmic Desert Cruise (2013)

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Tartarus Records on Bandcamp

Irish bashers Weed Priest do it big on their self-titled debut. Exclusively. The six-track collection of thoroughly stoned riffs and burly echoes arrives in a green-tinted matte-finish digipak that gives little hint of the heft actually contained within the trio’s dark, vaguely cultish material, and it’s already received a due amount of “OMG”eification from critics drawn in by the album’s downtrodden melange of cycle after cycle of lumbering largesse, riff building on riff through telegraphed changes at minimal but still grooving paces, only ever getting up to speed to slouch back into its apparently terminal atmospheric defeat. Well fine. The record sounds big. And it’s heavy. There. I said it too.

More than that — because fucking everything is heavy — Weed Priest‘s Weed Priest is impeccably produced to maximize that heaviness, and though one might think I’m just gearing up to toss out an Electric Wizard comparison, I’m actually not going to do it. The Galway-based trio of Adrian Elatha (drums), Ragas Walpurgis (bass) and Adam de Monlung (guitar/vocals) have way, way more in common with Sleep than they do with thee Wizard — who are otherwise responsible for so much of the weedian fare coming out of the Isles — but I guess if you want to take it all to its most primordial level, it’s all Sabbath at heart, and Weed Priest show little interest in shying away from that, a Zoroaster-type semi-psychedelia emerging out of the Ufomammut-style stomp of their extended opener “Final Spell.” It’s a cool sound, and they put it to solid use across the self-titled, the cavernous vocal sound giving even the shorter “Erichtho” — a paltry seven minutes long — a consistency in its sense of space with the opener or the later “Weed Priest” and “Day of Reckoning” to come.

The band formed in 2008, this is their first official release following a 2011 demo, and if what you’re looking for is a bash-you-over-the-head-with-tone onslaught of pot and horror worship (a clip from the 1972 movie The Devil starts off), then there’s little about Weed Priest‘s Weed Priest that isn’t going to be your favorite new Bandcamp link. A marching chug on “Walpurgia” pretty much sums up the crux of the full-length: It’s not about reinventing stoner metal or doom so much as taking the familiar and making it their own. I don’t know if caking it in reverb is enough to get that done over a long term, but they did hit on a distinct sound for their first long-player that at least gives them a base to work from next time out, and as “Thy Kingdom Gone” adds to the psychedelic push in its midsection en route to the massive one-two punch of “Weed Priest” and “Day of Reckoning,” there’s nothing to say Weed Priest don’t have something to offer beneath their resin-coated exterior for those who’d pay their debut repeat visits.

I’d be interested to hear how they cut their runtime down perhaps to accommodate a future vinyl offering, hitting around 40 minutes instead of Weed Priest‘s just under 61, but the longer stretch does work well to emphasize the repetition and the put-you-in-a-trance riffs, which seem to find their own morass between “Weed Priest” (11:14) and “Day of Reckoning” (13:52), neither song so much wandering into a jam as hammering down upon its central idea. For a bit of symmetry, “Day of Reckoning” echoes the sluggish thud of “Final Spell,” but really, it’s a symmetry that’s been present throughout the largely unipolar release, and though there are hints of melody in the guitar here and there, they’re so buried under the tonnage of the ultra-pivotal riffs around which the song is based, that it’s hard to keep focus on anything but that. Which is the idea. Which is why it works.

Weed Priest, Weed Priest (2013)

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Weed Priest on Bandcamp