I can no more pretend to be impartial about a new Black Sabbath album than I can about a member of my own family. Further, I don’t think any critic who can claim otherwise has any business reviewing 13, the first studio full-length by Black Sabbath proper since 1995’s Forbidden ended a lackluster streak with vocalist Tony Martin prior to a 1997 reunion with Ozzy Osbourne, the successor in many ways to guitarist Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler’s 2007 reunion with Ronnie James Dio that resulted in Heaven and Hell’s 2009 outing, The Devil You Know (review here), and an album which – had Dio survived his bout with stomach cancer – probably wouldn’t exist. Prior to Dio’s passing, Iommi – whose band Sabbath has always been – showed roughly no interest in getting back together with Osbourne at the fore and seemed content to let Black Sabbath’s original frontman languish on his path of a declining solo career. Sabbath had done live stints between 1997 and 2006, and in 1998 released the “Psycho Man” single to promote their aptly-titled Reunion double-live album, but another studio full-length with Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and drummer Bill Ward seemed like a daydream. Of course, it still is. In 2011, when the band announced they were together with the completion of an album in sight, the shockwave resonated far and wide, but a contract dispute with Ward resulted in Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk joining in his place for the recording of the Rick Rubin-produced 13. This would be narrative context enough were it not for 13’s being touted as an attempt to recapture the feel of the original Sabbath – untouchable records like 1970’s self-titled debut, the same year’s follow-up, Paranoid, the stonerly perfection of 1971’s Master of Reality and 1972’s Vol. 4 – and were it not for Iommi’s own cancer battle, which it’s easy to read 13 tracks like “End of the Beginning,” “Live Forever,” “God is Dead?” and “Damaged Soul” as reaction toward, regardless of whether or not they actually are.

First, whoever decided to bill 13 as a return to Sabbath’s heyday was a fool. 13 neither picks up where the band’s last Osbourne-fronted outing, 1978’s Never Say Die, left off, nor harkens back to the band’s earliest glories in any way other than periodically recycling a riff. As regards the production, it is stale in the modern commercial metal sense, and if Rubin’s stamp is anywhere on it, it holds about as much meaning in terms of authenticity as the “organic” produce at WalMart. Drums are triggered – for the most part, Wilk is a nonentity here, personality-wise, injecting simple fills and keeping a beat when called upon to do so (good work if you can get it) – guitars and bass are “corrected” and if there was any thought that Osbourne’s vocals were going to be presented in anything close to their natural state, let it be corrected by the ending apex of 13 opener “End of the Beginning,” on which he goes from his half-spoken drawl suddenly to suddenly pitch-perfect high notes for the line, “I don’t want to see you, yeah, yeah,” and then does it again – the irony being that in the prior verse come the lyrics, “You don’t want to be a robot ghost/Occupied inside a human host.” Granted, Dio’s vocals on The Devil You Know had pitch correction as well, and he sang to backup tracks on Heaven and Hell’s final tours, but he could sing! Osbourne could never hit the kinds of notes in “End of the Beginning.” In Sabbath, he had maybe three years where one would be right on a technical level to call him a singer and not only a frontman – 1974-1976 – and even then he knew better than to attempt such theatrics. It’s the first of many instances throughout of Black Sabbath playing it safe on 13, creating a sterile and in some cases cynical collection of self-aware heavy metal that only in the work of Iommi and Butler does any justice whatsoever to the band’s legacy. It’s an album they’ll be able to go out and tour on, but for fans of Sabbath who had some hope that 13 might come along and revitalize the career of one of the acts singularly responsible for the creation of heavy metal and its many subgenres – most particularly doom – all these eight tracks do is realize how foolish and unrealistic those hopes were in the first place.

All this I know, and then that utter lack of impartiality kicks in and I think of 13 as being Black Sabbath’s final album. I think of how closer “Dear Father” ends with the same sampled thunderstorm that starts their eponymous song at the beginning of Black Sabbath, the sheer foreboding meaning of that bookend in light of Iommi’s cancer – that this is it, that he’s dying – and even the lame, watered-down revisit of that atmosphere on “End of the Beginning” and the hackneyed lyrics of the following “God is Dead?” and “Loner” seem excusable as pathways to one last collection of Iommi riffs and solos, best accompanied as they’ve always been by Butler’s trailblazing bass work (the easy argument is that he’s the most vital member of the band, and 13 bears that out), and though it’s a shame Ward isn’t a part of it, shouldn’t I just take what I can get and as someone who’s had his life changed by Sabbath’s work be happy? Isn’t it enough that Sabbath have another record? Does it really need to be good, too?

Yes and no. As I said, 13 is an album that Black Sabbath – Iommi, Butler, Osbourne and Wilk or whoever they get – will be able to go out and tour arenas. They’ll put a couple new songs in the set along with the hits they’ve played on and off for over a decade, and if it’s to be Iommi’s last hurrah, no one will ever be able to say he didn’t earn it. Fans who saw them in their first run will go, younger fans will go, headbangers of all kinds of all generations, everywhere they go, the venues will be full. It will be successful. Even being panned by critics won’t matter – Sabbath have the armor of never having been a “critic’s band,” so  that even though the critics now may be two generations’ worth of Sabbath fans critiquing a hollow representation of what made them legends, they’re protected by the number of people who show up, the sheer scale of their profile. Fine. Records like Master of Reality, Black Sabbath and 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath will belong to the underground no matter how many copies they sell, and for every one oldschool Sabbath fan who refuses to see what he or she alleges is a false version of the original band, two more are willing to buy that ticket. Neither side of the argument needs the other at this point, and history is on the band’s side – with over 20 people in and out of the lineup over the years, who’s to say what’s genuine? Sabbath will do what they will do to reach as broad an audience as possible – reuniting with Osbourne instead of, say, Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, with whom Iommi recently collaborated for the Whocares benefit single, speaks to wanting to gather maximum interest – and those unable to reconcile themselves to what the band has become don’t need to have a part in it if they choose to not. If Sabbath know the difference at this point, I certainly can’t imagine they give a rat’s ass. Ward was their tie to the authenticity they purported to be tapping into for the recording of 13, and they were quick enough to let him go. Does the album need to be good? Well, it needs a logo.

Read more »

Venezuelan sludge metallers Cultura Tres have their thing pretty much down at this point. The band made their debut with 2008′s La Cura and followed it in 2011 with El Mal del Bien (review here), an album that opened doors thanks in no small part to their touring throughout both South America and Europe and helped establish Cultura Tres among the stronger and most resonant acts blending metallic aggression and weighted sludge-fueled grooves. In 2013, the Maracay four-piece return with Rezando al Miedo (Devouter Records), a 55-minute, eight-track collection that furthers the band’s anti-imperialist/anti-colonial thematic and moody atmosphere even as it affirms what El Mal del Bien established as the chosen Cultura Tres aesthetic. Tonally and sonically consistent owing to production by vocalist Alejandro Londoño — who also helmed the two prior outings and shares the credit here with guitarist Juan de Ferrari – Rezando al Miedo gradually unfolds an identity of its own over the course of repeat listens, and though even unto its morose artwork (though admittedly the cover to the third album, taken from the painting Day of Judgement by Damian Michaels, is far more haunting) it may seem to fall in line with what Cultura Tres brought to the table stylistically in their last effort, there are nuances to be had throughout Rezando al Miedo that speak to growth within the band’s approach, whether it’s the sense of space Londoño brings to his echoing vocals in the closing “Forget I’m Here” or the surprising classic rock influence that shows up in some of de Ferrari‘s solos, filtering a wide sonic heritage through Jerry Cantrell-style wah theatrics that blend remarkably well with the lower, chugging-riff layers of rhythm on “Es Mi Sangre” and other cuts throughout.

The guitar work on Rezando al Miedo is a standout factor across the board, de Ferrari proving fluid and able to drive the atmosphere of a needling insistence on “Hole in Your Head,” one of the highlights of the album. Cultura Tres – the foursome rounded out in the rhythm section by bassist Alonso Milano and imported Dutch drummer David Abbink (ex-Cheesy), who returns from the second LP — don’t necessarily rely just on the guitars to convey their moody sensibilities, however. Londoño plays a huge role as well, and though he knows to step aside and let de Ferrari hold sway toward the end of a cut like “En Esta Tierra,” his half-in-Spanish/half-in-English lyrics are a force unto themselves, his monotone drawl immediately lending drama to opener “La Selva se Muere” that stays with Cultura Tres through closer “Forget I’m Here” no matter what musical moves the band is making behind him, a summary of a decent portion of his lyrical perspective provided by the only two lines of the title-track, “Rezando al miedo/El miedo es dios” — translated to,” “Praying to fear/Fear is god.” An anti-Christian lyrical take is nothing new for metal — make no mistake, Cultura Tres are a metal band, whatever elements of doom or sludge they may incorporate; they are well at home within the churning thrash that emerges in “1492,” including Abbink — but the specifically anti-colonial edge Londoño brings to the lyrics of “Hole in Your Head” speaks to an individuality of voice and critique that the cluster of heavy metal faux-satanists is sorely missing. Coupled with the band’s ability to turn fluid rhythm changes into dynamic songwriting shifts — again, see “1492″ as it rises from a droning opening to rage and then descends again to a slower, hypnotic pulse — this perspective is a key element in what sets Rezando al Miedo apart from the output of Cultura Tres‘ peers the world over. When was the last time you heard anti-colonial sludge?

Read more »

In some ways, it makes sense to think of the new Church of Misery album, Thy Kingdom Scum (Rise Above/Metal Blade), as a sequel to Houses of the Unholy. Like that 2009 full-length (review here), the title is a pun with a religious theme also based on a classic album — the Japanese outfit had a song “Kingdom Scum” on their first album, Vol. 1, that finally got released in 2007 with an Emetic Records reissue in 2011 (review here) and was a take on Sir Lord Baltimore‘s 1970 debut, Kingdom Come . Both Houses of the Unholy and Thy Kingdom Scum also have seven tracks with one cover from the canon of classic heavy — on the 2009 album, it happened to be “Master Heartache” from the aforementioned Sir Lord Baltimore LP, and on Thy Kingdom Scum, it’s the bluesy “One Blind Mice,” a single from Quartermass that’s been included on reissues of their 1970 self-titled debut. Both covers are even placed the same, as the fifth of the total seven tracks — track five is also a cover on 2001′s Masters of Brutality and 2004′s The Second Coming. And of course the band’s long-running adherence to serial killer-worship and raw, Sabbath-derived heavy doom rock remains at the core of what they do. Like no one else on the planet, Church of Misery are able to make familiar riffs sound new again, and Thy Kingdom Scum continues that tradition. True to its predecessor and everything the band has done up to this point, these songs offer unhinged bombast propelled by druggy grooves that reflect the madness and psychopathy their lyrics convey. As ever, each song is about a serial killer. As ever, bassist Tatsu Mikami resides at the center of the songwriting. As ever, they are among the best in the world at what they do.

Thy Kingdom Scum shares a number of similarities on a number of levels with Church of Misery‘s last effort — which along with sundry fest appearances throughout Europe and the US and extensive touring in both territories, helped establish them as one of the heavy underground’s most potent acts — but even more pivotal to its ultimate success are the differences between the two. The methodology behind their craft is largely the same, Mikami feels no apparent need to deviate and at this point, Church of Misery have turned their obsessions into their aesthetic, but the personnel involved is different. Guitarist Ikuma Kawabe has come aboard as a first-timer, and vocalist Hideki Fukasawa returns from Houses of the Unholy, but has been in and out of the band along the way, while Mikami – appropriate enough for the bassist — is the anchor as the only remaining founding member and drummer Junji Narita marks the 13th year of his tenure. Mikami‘s songwriting is also more hammered out on Thy Kingdom Scum, and some of the elements that made cuts last time around like “Shotgun Boogie (James Oliver Huberty),” “Blood Sucking Freak (Richard Trenton Chase)” and “Born to Raise Hell (Richard Speck)” so memorable find further development and realization within “Lambs to the Slaughter (Ian Brady/Myra Hindley),” “Bother Bishop (Gary Heidnik)” and “Düsseldorf Monster (Peter Kürten),” as well as the mostly instrumental opener “B.T.K. (Dennis Rader),” which makes an immediate chorus of its riff and relies on samples to carry across vocal ideas. Not an unfamiliar tactic either for Church of Misery.

While the penchant for gruesomeness has only seemed to add to the band’s charm over the years, they’ve had to get fairly obscure in their source material. Easy enough to look up who Dannis Andrew Nilsen is (the British Jeffrey Dahmer) and what he did (killed people and ate them, duh), but I have to wonder at what point Church of Misery might just decide to go back to some of the mainstays of serial killerdom and shift their approach somewhat. They started out with the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Ed Kemper on 2001′s Master of Brutality, and to go from that to John Linley Frazier and Peter Kürten begs the question why they couldn’t just write a second song about Charles Manson. Hell, there’s an entire album’s worth of material there. Why not do a whole record about the Manson Family, or Ted Bundy? Some killers, with countless books written about them and studies done, are legends worthy of another look. I’m certainly not going to complain about the surprisingly strong hook to which “Brother Bishop (Gary Heidnik)” arrives when Fukasawa guts out the line, “We shall make a new world!” or Mikami‘s ultra-righteous Geezer Butler-ing in the same song, and I guess there’s an endless supply of killers to choose from — and at this point it seems unrealistic to ask Church of Misery to write a song about anything else –  I just wonder at the need to spread the theme so thin. Would anyone get mad if Church of Misery did another song about Aileen Wuornos?

Read more »

Tropical Storm Whoever was raging outside — and by that I mean it was raining hard — but there was no way I was going to miss the Kings Destroy release party for their second album, A Time of Hunting, at the St. Vitus bar in Brooklyn with Windhand, Clamfight and Belus. The record, out on War Crime Recordings, is a killer, and as I was watching the last of the Clamfight CDs go from the Maple Forum store even as I stood in front of the stage to see them play, it was the perfect occasion at the perfect time.

Grim Brooklynite trio Belus opened the evening’s four-band bill, their feet firmly planted in a blackened type of doom that was brooding one minute, raging the next, but never quite letting go of its tension completely. They were already on by the time I got there, but I saw enough to get a basic feel for their approach, varied in tempo more than atmosphere but still effectively done in bringing a frigid feel through warmer tones than one would probably expect. They had demo tapes for sale, and though I didn’t get to pick one up (kind of backlogged on tapes, believe it or not), they gave a solid showing to the early arrivals at the St. Vitus, broiled in a specifically crusted malevolence that gave an extreme start to the proceedings.

They were more or less a surprise, but the rest of the night was about knowing what was coming and being thrilled at the twists. Clamfight and Kings Destroy are friends, bands about whom I couldn’t be impartial even if I had any interest in trying, and even Windhand I’ve seen a couple times by now, so yeah, familiarity reigned. It hadn’t even been that long since I last saw Clamfight in Philly with Borracho, Been Obscene and SuperVoid (review here), but being the nerd I am for the band, I’ll take whatever opportunities I can get, particularly as they’ve started now writing for the follow-up to I Versus the Glacier.

Speaking of, new song “Block Ship” was trotted out and fit in well with the band’s established bashers from their first two albums. Their plan for the track last I heard was to include it on a split they’re putting together in honor of their appearance in November at Stoner Hands of Doom XIII in Virginia, but I have the feeling they’re going to decide it’s too good to leave just for that and I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up on the inevitable next Clamfight full-length as well. Along with that and regular suspects “Sand Riders” and the motor-grooves of “Mountain” from I Versus the Glacier, the Philly foursome tossed in a curve with “Ghosts I Have Known” from their 2010 Volume I debut.

That wound up being the highlight of the set for me personally, with the slower, semi-Southern sludge feel and the interplay of shouts, growls and screams over top from frontdrummer Andy Martin, not to mention the guitarmonies of Joel Harris and Sean McKee. I caught bassist Louis Koble and Harris laughing on the far side of the stage during the faster section of the song while the band thrashed out behind McKee‘s squibbling solo, and it only underscored for me the good time being had by all. They’ve gotten to be pretty tight with the Kings Destroy cats following a couple weekenders and other shared gigs, so it was cool to see those guys up front digging the Clamfight set as well. It seemed too much to hope for that Clamfight would bash into “Rabbit” after “Ghosts I Have Known,” and it was, but “Stealing the Ghost Horse” made a suitable closer as it does on the record, its build vicious and clean-vocal payoff never failing to exceed expectation.

It was, it’s worth repeating, Kings Destroy‘s record release show for A Time of Hunting — their second album behind the 2010 debut, …And the Rest Will Surely Perish, which like Clamfight‘s I Versus the Glacier, was issued on The Obelisk’s in-house label, The Maple Forum – and there was no doubt by the time the five-piece dug into “The Toe” and “Casse-Tête” whose party it was. The band, in addition to being a legitimate draw at this point, seemed to import a variety of family and friends for the occasion, and but for the title-track and “Shattered Pattern,” they played the record in its entirety, if out of order, putting “Stormbreak,” which starts A Time of Hunting, after “Casse-Tête” and following it with “Decrepit,” track four on the new one, and “The Mountie” from the first album.

With those last two in succession particularly, Kings Destroy demonstrated just how far they’ve come in the last three years. After shows up and down the East Coast, a tour through Europe and more to come — not to mention the pedigree of the band’s members, which is an exhaustion to contemplate, let alone type — they are locked in as a band and full-on in a way I’d credit few NYC-based acts as being. True to their name, they destroyed, drummer Rob Sefcik holding “Decrepit” steady on stage with guitarists Carl Porcaro and Chris Skowronski and bassist Aaron Bumpus while vocalist Steve Murphy hopped off stage — introducing yours truly in the process; I caught “This is JJ, he’s an awkward metal guy,” but the rest didn’t come through — to walk through the crowd during the quieter break and the melodic later vocals, repeating the line “Hold on…” and talking of a brand new start. The lyrics are runes in the liner notes to the album. Good luck with that.

But the dichotomy: To go right from that into the raw, viscerally doomed groove of “The Mountie” highlighted for me the expansion in Kings Destroy‘s sound and how well they can carry across ideas, be they simple or complex. There was some not-quite-moshing going on in front of the stage, but everything was self-contained and everyone was familial, having a good time and so forth, myself included in my awkward metal guy way. Closing out with “Blood of Recompense” and their own album finale, “Turul” — the working title for the record itself — Kings Destroy saved the weirdest for last. I still hear “Too Many Puppies” in the vocal cadence for “Turul,” whether it’s meant to be there or not. There was a good portion of the room for whom the night was over when Kings Destroy were finished. The rest reaped the volume excess of Windhand as a reward.

I’d seen the band before, true, but this was the first time I’d caught them with Parker Chandler of Cough on bass. I picked up a CD of the recent split between the two acts prior to their set, and heard nothing in Windhand‘s ultra-thick double-guitar drudgery to make me regret the purchase. Frontwoman Dorthia Cottrell paced back and forth with manic intensity while Chandler, drummer Ryan Wolfe and guitarists Asechiah Bogdan and Garrett Morris emitted wave after vicious wave of low-end riffage. If even a fraction of that energy comes across on their Relapse label debut full-length (it’ll be their second LP overall), the album is going to be one that well earns its anticipation.

Only snag as regards Windhand‘s set was that I had an hour-plus ride home and had to be up in about five hours to head north to Massachusetts and continue my hunt for housing, so while I might’ve liked to stay and lost myself further in the rise and crash of each cresting undulation, I had to run. In the rain. To my car. And then drive for a long time, sleep for not a long time, then drive for a really long time. Still, it was a gig that more than justified what I considered mandatory attendance, and for seeing good friends doing good work, I was glad to be there to bear witness.

More pics after the jump.

Read more »

There are two ways to look at The Story So Far, the third full-length from Warsaw-based heavy rockers Elvis Deluxe. The first is that it’s working on a meta-conceptual level to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. The second is that it’s not. In following up 2011′s outstanding sophomore effort, Favourite State of Mind (review here), the four-piece have signed to Metal Mind Productions and constructed an album that spans their career in its eight inclusions. Five tracks up front are brand new. The two that follow were recorded in 2003, at the very beginning of the band, and the last — a finale cover of The Stooges‘ “Search and Destroy” — was recorded in 2006, around the time their first album, 2007′s Lazy (review here). So either The Story So Far is a full-length album chronicling by the band of their own creative growth up to now, or it’s a compilation with some new material and some old — an EP or a short LP with bonus tracks. I’m inclined to read it as the last of those — the short LP with bonus tracks — if only because the first five cuts flow so well together and are consistent in their recordings, whereas the other two and then the last one vary in their take and indeed in their lineup, as they feature now-departed guitarist Mechu, where guitarist/backing vocalist Bert Trust, still currently in the band, is contributing to the first five. With that reading, The Story So Far isn’t nearly as expansive or as open-feeling as was Favourite State of Mind, but at least it makes sense as an album, whereas to present the songs out of chronological order — jumping from 2013 to 2003 to 2006 — cuts into the narrative Elvis Deluxe might otherwise be constructing in their attempt to live up to the album’s title. They couldn’t very well put the new material last, lest it become the bonus tracks, but the fact that it’s up front only feeds into the idea that the band were looking to do more than just charting their creative growth. So even without factoring in the balance of the album’s runtime toward the present — half an hour of the total 41:31 is the first five new songs — the concept doesn’t hold up.

Couple that with the stylistic leaps Elvis Deluxe have made over the course of their decade, and one wonders why they’d decide to include older material in the first place unless they were under a contractual obligation to have an album of a certain length out by a certain time. That’s not to disparage the older material. Both “Out of Life” and “The Hope,” the 2003 tracks, are engaging presentations of genre, nestled somewhere in the sphere of European heavy between the post-Kyuss earlier output of Dozer and the let’s-go-ride-these grooves Lowrider brought to the table subsequently. And a Stooges cover, well done, is never something to complain about. Bassist/vocalist Ziemba still takes a clear Stooges influence if album opener “Your Godfreed” is anything to go by, so it makes sense. But neither past era can do justice to what Ziemba, Trust, guitarist Bolek and drummer Miko are constructing in the present, which takes the garage-rocking Queens of the Stone Age desert spontaneity of Favourite State of Mind and thickens the tones to add a heavy psych undercurrent, and so a clear line is drawn, especially jumping from the 8:51 “Something to Hide” — which closes out the set of new songs — to “Out of Life,” and if it’s to be taken as a complete full-length album, The Story So Far proves uneven, even if the songs that comprise it are as accomplished as they are. Perhaps it’s out of a desire to like it that I’d try to give it an alternate position — that being the short new LP with bonus tracks — but I think what the foursome were able to achieve two years ago on Favourite State of Mind earns that benefit of the doubt. Not to mention, if The Story So Far was intent on giving a narrative flow to Elvis Deluxe‘s career to date, they left out a hell of a chapter in taking nothing from the time around their second album. Maybe there wasn’t anything left, but if the last three tracks on The Story So Far are leftovers from the band’s demo and first full-length days, respectively, what’s to be gained by adding them to the newer songs here, which are more dynamic and which create a flow of their own? Certainly they ground the songs. “Your Godfreed” opens with a linear heavy psych build and languid guitar interplay rife with organic tonality and a live feel, and that’s mirrored in the new-material closer “Something to Hide,” but “No Reason,” which brings Trust to the fore on vocals, is a relatively straightforward clap-along stomper that proffers pro-grade attitude with the smokier voice of the newcomer guitarist.

Read more »

Based in Lafayette, Indiana, heavy rock outfit The Heavy Company made their debut in the form of the 2011 EP, The Heavy (Please Tune In…). It was a release that, despite raw self-production, had a number of things working in its favor — most notably a prevailing lack of pretense and natural sensibility. When it comes to hearing the follow-up first full-length, Midwest Electric, the discovery that those elements have carried over from the EP (review here) comes with some measure of relief, since it’s precisely this modest ethic that stands The Heavy Co. out from the bulk of their peers. If anything, it’s amplified on the seven-tracks of Midwest Electric, which is out on a limited CD run through the band’s own DPR Records in hopes of financing a vinyl pressing, and the album nestles itself easily into an overarching groove while maintaining sonic and structural diversity between its individual pieces. The band, down to the duo of guitarist/vocalist/bassist Ian Gerber and drummer/vocalist/guitarist Jeff Kaleth from their original trio incarnation — bassist Scott Gilkey plays on the first half of the album — elicit a strikingly organic, jammed sensibility, resulting in a full-album flow that’s unmistakably aware of European heavy psychedelia but hardly at all reaching for it sonically, instead weaving into and around American-style riff rock with understated finesse, here a Clutch groove, there an organ-laced tribute to Neil Young that sounds more like Mark Lanegan, at least in terms of the vocals. The Heavy Co. remain underproduced, but what’s encouraging about that in terms of the manageable 37-minute stretch of Midwest Electric is they turn that roughness into a part of their aesthetic, so that the opening push of “The Humboldt County Waltz” comes across with a garage sensibility, like a less urban The Brought Low underscored by a steady rumble of stoner-rocking low end, indicative perhaps of some of the sonic shifts to come as the songs play out. They never quite touch on Americana, and they never quite touch on retro ’70s rock, but there are pieces of both brought into the melting-pot-stew of their sound.

That’s evidenced on “The Humboldt County Waltz” well enough, but more so on the subsequent “A Groove a Mile Wide,” which is longer and more psychedelic thanks in part to a guest solo by Michael Rafalowich of Brooklyn’s Strange Haze. A cut in the tempo gives Kaleth‘s drums some sense of bounce, and the vocals seem content to ride the laid back groove through the verses, making room for ascending and descending guitar runs in between. There’s an undercurrent of psychedelic noise and effects that’s subtle, but there all the same, and it rises to prominence just before two minutes in when Rafalowich‘s solo takes hold. Gerber joins and the two guitars hold something like a mini-freakout, departing as quickly as they game as watery vocals return over more present low end and backwards cymbal washes. They cap “A Groove a Mile Wide” by delivering the title line and then seeking to embody it, and but for some of the tastier riffs to come on “Greasy Mush” and “One Big Drag,” I’d be inclined to say they got there, but the instrumental ending of “A Groove a Mile Wide” serves its purpose well nonetheless, and by the time the moodier “Neil Young” arrives, it has become abundantly clear that The Heavy Co. are working with a much wider sonic breadth this time around than on The Heavy (Please Tune In…). Quiet guitars strum out cleanly amid rising and falling organ swells and smoky vocals — could be Kaleth taking the fore from Gerber, I don’t know, but the style is different enough to make me think it’s someone else — and though distortion never feels far off, by the time it arrives, the band has successfully widened their scope and given a lonelier vibe to more accomplished songwriting. Lead notes echo out behind “Neil Young”‘s final moments, and the song ends with guitar and organ in quick succession, which does little to setup the shift into the fervently stonerized groove of “Greasy Mush,” but obviously recognizes that the latter is so immersive it doesn’t matter anyway. A riff easily mouthed along with, “Greasy Mush” makes the most of its central figure, stretching upwards of six minutes and peppering an open-sounding instrumental chorus with some of Midwest Electric‘s best bass work — the “voom”s in the would-be verses are a nice touch as well, as the band themselves say when the jam has ended. Before they get there, the guitars lead the way down an extended heavy psych jam that keeps its soothing sensibility even as it moves further away from the song’s initial idea, which is brought back at the end to excellently bookend the proceedings.

Read more »

There is an impressive slew of narratives surrounding the release of …Like Clockwork, the first studio album from Queens of the Stone Age in the six years since 2007′s Era Vulgaris and first for new label home, Matador Records. First, the jump from Interscope led some to speculate in advance if, freed from the perceived creative restraints of working with a major label, Queens of the Stone Age and the band’s auteur, guitarist, vocalist, principal songwriter and figurehead Joshua Homme — once upon a time the six-stringer for Kyuss — might return to the tonally thicker, more stripped down desert feel of the outfit’s earliest works, principally their first two albums, 1998′s Queens of the Stone Age and 2000′s Rated R, which in combination with 2002′s landmark Songs for the Deaf pairing with drummer Dave Grohl have become a gospel influence for a league of heavy rockers in the decade since. It’s a nice thought, but unrealistic. Homme, even if he was remotely interested in such a stylistic turn away from the vibe of Era Vulgaris or the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with Grohl and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, likely couldn’t capture the same tones and atmospheres. Different time, different equipment, different personnel, different interests. Like Clockwork (you’ll forgive me if I remove the ellipses for sentence flow) was never going to be that album. Second, it’s Homme‘s first Queens of the Stone Age outing since Them Crooked Vultures, and the time since Era Vulgaris marks it out as a return to the band, put on hiatus in the wake of touring for fifth full-length in 2009. They also toured in 2011 around a reissue of the self-titled. Not a reunion, then, but a return. Third, with recording sessions begun in 2011 and completed in 2012, it was executed smack in the middle of a well-publicized lawsuit that pitted Homme and former bassist Scott Reeder against former Kyuss bandmates John Garcia, Nick Oliveri – who seems to have extracted himself from the situation entirely, though he guests on Like Clockwork on the song “If I Had a Tail” — and Brant Bjork over the use of the band’s name; an action that resulted in Kyuss Lives! becoming Vista Chino for the release of their forthcoming debut. Many of the lyrics here to cuts like “The Vampyre of Time and Memory,” “Fairweather Friends,” “Kalopsia” and “I Appear Missing” — some of Like Clockwork‘s moodiest and most effective moments — could easily be read to reflect the conflicting emotions of that lawsuit. Whether or not they’re actually concerned with it at all is another matter entirely, but it’s an interpretation that could fit as well as any number of others.

Another matter entirely is the profile of the release. Where Era Vulgaris seemed a step backward in the band’s and in Homme‘s rock stardom, Like Clockwork arrives with increased prestige thanks to a number of factors, among them the return/continuation of a collaboration with Grohl, who played on most of the songs here after the departure of drummer Joey Castillo, as well as appearances from Trent Reznor (who was also on the last album), Sir Elton John, Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters, the always-welcome Mark Lanegan, new live drummer Jon Theodore (ex-Mars Volta) on the closing title-track and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys. Coupled with a pervasive and intimidating viral and social media marketing campaign that capitalized both in the aesthetic strength of graphic artist Boneface‘s artwork for the album in a series of short films and on the perceived laissez-faire attitude of Homme‘s persona that instead of the guy who sweated out a year-plus writing and recording this material, he’d be the guy who, when Elton John called and said he “needed an actual queen” in the band, would answer, “Honey, you have no idea,” as well as “event”-type live performances in advance support of the release partnered with outlets like NPR and The Late Show with David Letterman, this has made the fanfare extensive, multi-tiered and as modern as the sound of the album itself, which is no less complex or dynamic. Of the sundry stories, the one that has yet to be established so far as I’ve seen is that which has the most to do with the actual music contained on Like Clockwork‘s 10 tracks — namely that this is the record that confirms Queens of the Stone Age as the band that will age with Homme. There’s nothing about the material here that Homme couldn’t sustain, build on and revisit as his whims dictate for the remainder of his career. In short, in coming back to the band that made his career (as influential as Kyuss has been in the years since, during their time together, they were more or less a commercial nonentity) , Josh Homme has set a formula he could feasibly work with for the rest of it. The model, as they say in business, is sustainable. More over, Like Clockwork proves Homme is a strong enough presence on the album to be roughly the only factor tying it together, since although band members Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar), Michael Shuman (bass) and Dean Fertita (keys/guitar) make consistent appearances, the surrounding swirl of people on and off the record and the bipolar nature of the record’s atmosphere is such that it’s basically Homme at the center keeping it from falling apart.

That in itself is a critical narrative and a very specific reading of the album that not everyone will agree with or be interested in when it comes to listening. So be it. The fact remains that as the sunny side A opener “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” — which is an immediate lurking threat built on rumbling low end tension — transitions into the upbeat bop of the subsequent “I Sat by the Ocean” — sad lyrically but musically uptempo and lighter feeling — Homme is the constant, and he’s able to successfully steer these songs in a number of directions without sacrificing a sense of mastery. Songwriting is credited to Queens of the Stone Age as a whole but for the closer, which Homme shares with that song’s co-producer James Lavelle and Charlie May and “Fairweather Friends,” which is credited to the band and Mark Lanegan, and definitely other contributions stand out, most notably Grohl‘s drums, Reznor‘s vocals and Elton John‘s piano and vocals, but Homme nonetheless emerges at the fore and is the driving force within the tracks. He gives, specifically on “Fairweather Friends,” the performance of his career vocally. Throughout, his voice is fluid in moving into and out of falsetto, and in stepping up his game — presumably one does not have Sir Elton appear on one’s album and then half-ass it — he draws a continuity between tracks that Era Vulgaris was lacking and that still sounds less uniform than most of 2005′s Lullabies to Paralyze. There are missteps along the way in the lyrics to “If I Had a Tail,” which remains a catchy, well-written song that shows obvious awareness of its dopey premise but has one all the same, and “…Like Clockwork” itself, which feels overdone with Homme nonetheless effectively crooning out a comedown epilogue following the album’s apex in “I Appear Missing,” but in terms of the song craft, there are few acts who can so ably bring any sense of looming danger at all to material still considered commercially viable, and Like Clockwork wouldn’t have received the substantial push it has if somebody along the line didn’t think it was going to sell. Those who continue to lament the split post-Songs for the Deaf with Nick Oliveri, who to that point was the most substantial (or at least the most visible) contributor to the songwriting apart from Homme won’t find much solace. There’s next to no screaming, and the edge that still seems so sharp on those early albums has been irrevocably smoothed in the production and the arrangements, but the broader audience that Queens of the Stone Age was able to reach over the years who’ve followed them through Lullabies to Paralyze and Era Vulgaris will have no such qualms in handling the up-and-down/back-and-forth/manic-depressive tradeoffs the band makes across Like Clockwork‘s 46 minutes.

Its two sides themselves stand somewhat in opposition overall, but the real rollercoaster on a track-by-track basis, as the aforementioned “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” launches the album with a sense of moody fearfulness, start-stop guitar peppering steady bass and low end rhythm while flourishes of piano add a classic feel and Homme‘s vocals play into the theme, returning to the lines, “If life is but a dream/Wake me,” more insistent than melancholy, though that vibe is present as well in the music, whereas “I Sat by the Ocean” answers back with an immediately more engaging, pop sensibility, a more blatant hook, and friendlier feel. Castillo – who plays on the first two tracks, the subsequent “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” and side B opener “Kalopsia” — is well suited to the track’s straightforward push, and the interplay of Homme and Van Leeuwen on guitar amid the handclaps of the bridge only enhances the spirited feel, opening to more keys in a pretty chorus that’s too smooth to be live-sounding, but not wholly unnatural either. It’s with “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” that Like Clockwork unveils the chiaroscuro at the center of its methodology, pulling the listener into a depressive sinkhole with a simple piano line, lyrical tales of insecurity, vulnerability and falling apart, a bluesy solo deep in the mix that’s a short but effective cue, and a linear build that plays out gracefully as the verses and choruses trade between them. Homme asks, “Does anyone ever get this right?” even as he touts some level of naive triumph in the lines, “You think the wost of all is far behind/The vampire of time and memories has died/I survived/Hooray,” but there’s no real sense of hope conveyed and it’s the questioning that serves as the takeaway impression. That makes “If I Had a Tail” — Oliveri‘s return on bass, Grohl on drums, Lanegan and Tuner joining Homme on vocals — a transitional middle-ground between “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” and side A finale “My God is the Sun,” and it’s a role the song plays well. Homme plays off bubblegum pop in the verse section “Gitchee gitchee/Oooh la la/Doo run run/You won’t get far,” still more hopeless than teasing, but not as outright miserable as on the previous cut, the song given an underlying sense of swagger from Grohl‘s drums and Oliveri‘s bass, which is relatively understated but works in a few choice fills before the would-be drama of the chorus “If I had a tail I’d own the night/If I had a tail I’d swat the flies” opens to a disco interlude and makes way for an attitude-laden guitar solo leading back to the verse. They repeat the cycle and build off the last chorus to a section of insistent “Uh huh”s and “oohs” — Lanegan most prominent here — as Grohl revels in closing and opening his hi-hat and the riff gets bigger and thicker to finish, cut right before a short lead line that appeared earlier returns to end, leading to some backwards sampling transitioning into the propulsive rocker, “My God is the Sun.”

Read more »

It was going to start early and I knew that, so I split out of the office a couple minutes after 5:30PM to get to The Grand Victory in time to catch openers Tarpit Boogie kick off the evening’s lineup, which also featured Infernal Overdrive, Black Thai and Mighty High. Even so, I was late. I rolled in around 8:15 for an 8PM start and managed to catch most of the NJ-based instrumental trio’s set for what I later confirmed was their first show.

Their tones and general ethic was pretty familiar to me, seeing as how bassist John Eager and guitarist George Pierro and I used to be in a band together, and though I thought it might be strange to watch them on stage playing different songs as Tarpit Boogie, actually, it was a reminder of what a fan I always was of their playing in the first place. Rounded out by drummer Chris Hawkins and reportedly in the process of hammering out material with a new vocalist, Tarpit Boogie set right to skirting the line between funkified stoner riffing and sludged-out slowdowns.

Of course, it being their first show, they were obviously getting a feel for their approach, but songs like “AmanaplanacanalpanamA” and “Hackman Caine Theory” showed the two sides at work in their sound, and the unpretentious heavy riffing went over well with those early assembled at The Grand Victory, myself included. All the bands on this bill were acts I’m pretty friendly with on a personal level, but getting to see the first Tarpit Boogie gig made the night even more special, and I was glad I made it in time to catch them. To hear them tell it later, it was a close call on their making it for the start of their set as well.

The whole night was slated to end early — I think The Grand Victory had a DJ coming in or something like that (which I don’t begrudge a club that puts on good shows; gotta make your money) — but as I had a drive to Massachusetts to make the next day, that was only a convenience from my angle. Infernal Overdrive, who’d also trekked in from Jersey, or Black Thai, come down from Boston, might have felt otherwise, but if they did, they didn’t show it. The two bands with very different takes on heavy rock were doing a weekender together, playing in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the next night with Wasted Theory, and they both featured new material from forthcoming releases.

In the case of Infernal Overdrive, most of what they played was new, and while I recognized “Viking” for the several times I’ve seen it live now and “Duel” from their Last Rays of the Dying Sun debut (review here), a lot of the set was unfamiliar and moodier, taking some of the brazenness of the first record and making it more melodically complex and pulling back on some of the tempo. A four-piece on a small stage, they were tight in more than just how solid they sounded, but still made good use of their time in belting out tunes that they’ve obviously been busting their collective ass writing, and even though their set seemed short, they showed that the time since their first batch of songs made their way to the public hasn’t been misspent. Before they were through two songs, I was reminded of how much I’m looking forward to their next album.

Like their touring partners, Black Thai have only grown more stylistically diverse. The double-guitar foursome made their debut in 2010 with the Blood from on High EP (review here), a potential-loaded five-songer from which only two of the total five songs played came, and while elsewhere the band — guitarist/vocalist Jim Healey (known for both his solo work and formerly of We’re all Gonna Die), guitarist Scott O’Dowd (also of Cortez), bassist Cory Cocomazzi and drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Cortez and Roadsaw) — dug deep into riffy grooves and bluesy solos, it was the ultra-dark centerpiece of their setlist that stood out. Centered around what might easily have been a black metal progression if not for Healey‘s delivery, which, even at his shoutiest, retains a sense of melody, it was an immediate shift from everything I’ve heard to date from Black Thai and a genuine surprise.

The good news? It worked. They not only were able to execute the more extreme feel crisply and emphatically, but they tied it together with the rest of their material as well, which might have been even more impressive. Returning to the EP, they finished with “333,” which also closed Blood from on High, and went from a brooding tension to maddening swirl with an efficiency that betrayed the song’s actual tempo. For the unexpected elements at work, Black Thai were a thrill, but what made it even more enjoyable was to see how well they’ve come to work together in the last few years. Save for Hemond — who brought his Vistalites for the occasion, where both Tarpit Boogie and Infernal Overdrive had used the house kit — their stage persona is pretty subdued, nobody thrashing around not that there’s much room for it at The Grand Victory anyway, but they’ve only gotten tighter in the now handful of times I’ve seen them and this was no exception.

It was left to Brooklyn’s own Mighty High to round out the evening, and the stonerly punkers did not at all disappoint. Fronted by Chris “Woody” MacDermott, who contributes the Spine of Overkill column to this site, Mighty High released their Legalize Tre Bags (review here) full-length through Ripple Music last year, and they continue to blaze out short, speedy blasts of Motörhead riffs in a public service reminder to the world that it takes itself way too seriously and should probably just get over it. “Chemical Warpigs” showed up early in the set, shouted out to the recently departed Jeff Hanneman of Slayer, and familiar cuts like “Breakin’ Shit,” “Cable TV Eye” and “High on the Cross” were delivered on time and in style, guitarist Kevin Overdose taking the lead vocal for the beginning of the latter, which Woody shouted out to “any Blackfoot fans out there.”

By then, people had started to make their way into The Grand Victory, but Woody, Overdose, bassist Labatts Santoro and drummer Jesse D’Stills didn’t come on quietly and they wouldn’t go that way either. “I Don’t Wanna Listen to Yes” continues to be high on my list of favorites, and the brand new “Two-Hour Lunchbreak” hit pretty close to home, in overall attitude if not chemical consumption. “Kick out the Jams” ended the set, as ever for Mighty High, and with their painted leather jackets hung up behind them, they treated the MC5 classic like the manifesto it has become, throwing it in the face of, well, everything and everyone there. I didn’t see it to be sure, but it’s almost certain that, whoever the DJ was coming in, he promptly went home to rethink his life and meditate on Stooges albums. One would have to expect, anyway.

Between a new band, two acts working the kinks out of new songs ahead of recording and Mighty frickin’ High topping it off with some recent creations of their own — not to mention the chance to see good friends kicking ass — I left The Grand Victory feeling refreshed and reminded of just why it is I continue to go to shows in the first place. It wasn’t about being seen, or about some buzz act who’ll disappear in six months or a year, it was about unbridled, unfettered enjoyment of the process and about four different takes on the single idea of “heavy.” Even after four bands one into the next into the next into the next, I got in my car and put on a CD for the ride home.

More pics after the jump. Thanks for reading.

Read more »

Four years between albums seems like a long time. But in the span since Naam released their self-titled debut LP on Tee Pee Records in 2009, the Brooklyn-based outfit have issued a 7″ of Nirvana covers, two reissues of their debut Kingdom EP (review here) — the latest of which is a vinyl out through Italy’s Heavy Psych Sounds earlier this year — and 2012′s The Ballad of the Starchild EP (track stream here), which introduced keyboardist/organist John Weingarten, who’d already been playing with Naam live for some time by then and since has been made the permanent fourth member of the band alongside guitarist/vocalist Ryan Hamilton, bassist/vocalist John Preston Bundy and drummer Eli Pizzuto. Naam did all this, plus toured in the US and Europe, so when it comes to a question of whether or not there was a delay in crafting Vow, their new sophomore full-length, the more appropriate line of query seems to be if they weren’t so busy they just forgot to make it. Either way, the highly-varied 12-track collection shows a considerable amount of growth from the heavy psych of the self-titled, and with Weingarten on board, Naam have nearly perfected a slowed-down version of Hawkwind‘s space rush that at some of its most satisfying moments nestles into thick rolling grooves and still presents a feel open enough so that neither periodic ambient freakouts like “In and Thru” nor the moody shoegazing of “Skyscraper” are out of place alongside the swaggering rhythm of “Midnight Glow” or “Pardoned Pleasure” and the rousing culmination the penultimate “Beyond” provides.

In its totality, Vow is a flowing conceptual work best taken on as a whole, stylistically ambitious but without the so-often-corresponding pretense, and at a vinyl-ready 37 minutes, it’s best taken as a whole. Naam recorded with Jeff Berner at Galuminum Foil, who also handled The Ballad of the Starchild and the Nirvana covers single 7″, and the pairing suits them well, since for all of the effects and organ swirling around the songs, Hamilton‘s vocals and the backing support that Bundy and Weingarten supply sound natural and are well balanced within the multi-tiered mix. Songs vary in approach on an almost per-track basis, and while those who caught wind of Kingdom or Naam might think of cuts like “Vow,” “Of the Hour,” “Midnight Glow” and “Beyond” as anchors, anyone who caught wind of The Ballad of the Starchild is better prepared for the atmospherics, context and diversity the other songs on Vow provide, be it the space-country rambling of “Laid to Rest” or the sweetly echoing keys of closer “Adagio,” which is just one of several instances throughout on which Weingarten is put in the role of driving the material. That was the case with “Exit Theme,” which rounded out The Ballad of the Starchild in (very) similar fashion, but here, the synth and organ plays a central part in Naam attaining the textures even of a guitar-driven cut like “Vow,” Hamilton, Bundy and Pizzuto following the forward motion of the progression while Weingarten gives the song its swirl without distraction from the rhythmic push, striking a hard balance in a manner that sounds so natural it’s almost obvious.

Of course, Naam‘s penchant for effects and pedal work hasn’t changed, and that only adds to the fluidity as “Vow” leads the way out of the synth-heavy opener “A Call” and into the transitional drum echoes of “In and Thru,” which in turn moves back to the molten space rock of “Pardoned Pleasure,” Weingarten adding a late ’60s organ sound to the song’s already memorable verse descent and chorus while Hamilton‘s vocals come to the fore atop airy guitar, solid bass and impressive tom runs from Pizzuto. There’s a lot going on, and some of the vocal patterning seems rushed, but they cool down in the midsection before another freakout ensues, subsides and the acoustic/synth exploration “Laid to Rest” offers a brief 1:49 glimpse at alternate-reality Americana. That may be where side A of the vinyl ends — it would make sense with the swell of synth tying everything together and the organ that starts up the intro-sounding “Brightest Sight” at the start of side B, but I don’t actually know — but the tracklisting actually splits in half following the relatively raucous “Of the Hour,” which picks up from its quiet, flowing intro to a formidable stomp, moody vocals from Hamilton and Vow‘s richest groove and most memorable hook, Bundy backing Hamilton in the chorus, which has a cadence that in its last two lines that keeps reminding me of Talking Heads, though that’s almost certainly not its intent. Howls and shouts pervade the next verse before the chorus interrupts and Pizzuto adds momentum to the kick drum in the second half of the song to fill out an already righteous progression as an instrumental outro leads the way toward the quiet contemplations of “Skyscrapper.”

Read more »

Chances are, when you tell the dudes in Philly-based four-piece Kingsnake they sound like Clutch, they’re going to agree. The groove-heavy rockers follow-up their 2010 Book of Promise debut with One Eyed King of the Blind, a nine-track/41-minute outing that underscores the influence in funk-derived starts and stops and the vocals of rhythm guitarist Bill Jenkins. Working in this sphere is also nothing new for the outfit, who in the last decade released two full-lengths, 2003′s Hell or High Water and 2004′s American Rickshaw, and 2005′s Locomotive EP under the moniker Sugar Daddie before switching banners to Kingsnake in 2006. American Rickshaw was produced by Clutch drummer Jean-Paul Gaster, who also is prominently thanked in the liner notes of One Eyed King of the Blind and was in Book of Promise as well, and Kingsnake supported Clutch at the Philly stop on their most recent tour, so the connection is legit on more than one level. And it’s not one Kingsnake make an attempt to shirk throughout these songs, whether it’s the cowbell showing up at the end of “Too Little, too Late,” the “Mr. Shiny Cadillackness”-esque swell of guitar beginning “Fang of the Cobra,” the organ on that song and “Whispering Eye” or the acoustic blues treatment in the first movement of “Know the Way Down.” It becomes a “they know it, you know it, we all know it” kind of situation as the penultimate “Mercy” introduces listeners to a “black-haired whiskey mama” whose proportions are no doubt as thick as bassist Matt Kahn‘s tone, and the idea seems to be that if they don’t try to pull a fast one like they just made all this stuff up right now, it won’t matter and we can all throw back a few beverages, party down and have a good time.

Whether or not a given listener is going to be able to make that leap depends entirely on that listener, but it’s worth mentioning that Jenkins, Kahn, lead guitarist Brian Merritt and drummer Matt Farnan have been together well over a decade and that however much it may sonically owe to the aforementioned Maryland outfit, One Eyed King of the Blind also presents Kingsnake as a band with formidable chemistry and the ability to make difficult rhythm changes sound fluid and natural. That is to say, a lot of bands sound like Clutch, but they don’t all do it this well. Also in Kingsnake‘s corner is their complete lack of pretense and straightforward songwriting mentality. Tracks vary in the impressions they leave, but songs like “Fang of the Cobra,” the subsequent “Mountain Girl” and the shorter “Mala Suerte” prove memorable even in spite of their immediate familiarity of tonal smoothness in the guitar and Jenkins‘ gruff, Fallon-style bluesy delivery and cadence. There’s boogie momentum right from the start of “Bullets and Kisses,” which launches One Eyed King of the Blind, and the foursome only letup on the throttle when they find some advantage in doing so. Interestingly, as Clutch has grown bluesier over time, so have Kingsnake, and where Sugar Daddie were once brash enough to see American Rickshaw released through hardcore-minded Thorp Records, these songs present a mature course in their mid-paced stomp, “Bullets and Kisses” opening wide to a fervent Blast Tyrant-style groove that finds complement in the immediate rush of “Too Little, too Late” setting the stage à la Robot Hive/Exodus for the arrival of the organ on “Fang of the Cobra.” By then, even if you’ve never encountered Kingsnake before, they’ve made their intent clear. And again, whether you come along for the ride on One Eyed King of the Blind is up to you. To borrow a phrase,  “the party boat is here.”

Read more »

Somewhat contrary to the monstrous and somehow still nipple-inclusive design of the album’s cover, the self-titled debut from London-based trio Bright Curse is a thoroughly human and natural-sounding affair. The three-piece, who arrived in London by way of France, offer four extended tracks and an intro that run a heavy psych gamut from the sweet jamming of Colour Haze all the way to the open-spaced vibing of earliest Witchcraft, and while the stylistic shifts they make are interesting enough, what works best about the album is the smoothness with which the lineup of Romain (guitar/vocals), Sammy (bass) and Zach (drums) transition between stretches of bare sonic minimalism to effective fuzzy propulsion, making the most of tradeoffs between loud and quiet in a manner usually reserved for post-metallers while still keeping a focus on the heavy and grooving straightforward aspects of their songwriting. Following opener “A Sonic Wave,” which sure enough is a minute-plus of a single undulating riff, “The Hermit” sets a structural pattern that “Unknown Mistress,” “What’s Beyond the Sun” and closer “Mind Traveller” will all follow to one degree or another that departs from verse/chorus interplay to an instrument-driven build that gives each track both its length and its sense of dynamic apex. What keeps Bright Curse‘s Bright Curse from sounding redundant as a result of this structural similarity is the stylistic shifts between the songs, so that though patterns may repeat, the context for those patterns comes across as fluid and malleable, and the band, which recorded the songs at Rock of London Studio with JB Pilon, who’s since taken over bass duties in place of Sammy.

The element of contrasting loud and quiet stretches is immediate almost from the start, as “A Sonic Wave” gives over its established rolling groove to the subdued low-end beginnings of “The Hermit,” which Sammy opens in ambient rumbles while Romain adds punctuation on the guitar for the first minute until the vocals kick in and the stage is set for Zach‘s entry a short while later and a push not far off from some of what Elder has managed to hone commences, though it moves more into a modern European heavy psych jam, Romain taking a rising solo that the bass follows as Zach holds the flow together. There’s only really been one verse so far, but the song has come a long way, and the instrumental build winds up providing the crux of the motion as it continues to play out, rising to full-toned heights before locking into a sizable riffy groove before the five-minute mark and from there crashing into the from-the-ground-up build that will comprise its last couple minutes, Romain repeating the takeaway line “In my head…” that also appeared earlier in the song as the first lines as setup for another run through the verse and the heavier part of the song. “Unknown Mistress” works in more of a shuffling vein with an effective chorus and delivery from Romain of the title line and a more immediate groove. Here too, Bright Curse take their time in letting the track unfold, but the clearer divisions between verse and chorus — though less ambitious stylistically — suit them well and showcase a knack for the straightforward as well as the less predictable that adds depth to the album. Around the halfway point of the song’s 7:27, they break into a still-moving just jazzier atmospheric stretch that carries past the six-minute mark before a Tool-style return finds Zach adding palpable stomp. They pick up the pace to end somewhat raucous, but a final nod to the chorus gives a last-second sense of symmetry to the whole affair, which never came off as that out of control to start with.

Read more »

Whatever else you might want to say about Cathedral‘s catalog as it’s developed over the course of their massively influential more than 20-year run, the band has always made the album they wanted to make. Even during the British doom legends’ mid- and late-’90s period of wandering through the stoner rock wilderness — see 1996′s Supernatural Birth Machine and 1998′s Caravan Beyond Redemption – they didn’t wind up there by happenstance. Still, their legacy will always be for morose, stomping, thoroughly British doom, and it’s that side of their approach that their fans have most clamored for over the years. Their last studio outing, 2010′s The Guessing Game (review here), offered two discs of classic prog-influenced songs that asked much of their audience but offered much in return. Where the prior full-length, 2005′s The Garden of Unearthly Delights, had sought to marry some of the rock and doom sides together, The Guessing Game marked the band’s 20th anniversary with a bold and uncompromising progression of their sound. The results were never going to be as heralded as the band’s earliest works on landmark albums like 1991′s Forest of Equilibrium debut (presented in its entirety on the Anniversary live album; review here) or the subsequent offerings The Ethereal Mirror (1993) and The Carnival Bizarre (1995), but again, it was the album Cathedral felt compelled to write, and that was what mattered at the time.

Now Cathedral have called it quits, played their last live show, made their last video and the somewhat cleverly titled The Last Spire (released through Rise Above/Metal Blade) is reportedly to be their final album. One never knows for sure — surely over their time together the band must have amassed suitable fodder for rarities collections, live albums, greatest hits, cover records and so forth — but if it actually is the end of their run, The Last Spire is also the point at which the album Cathedral wants to make meets with the album that fans want to hear. It is an 56-minute victory lap that — far from actually sounding like one — presents eight songs of the dark, dreary doom that has come to be thought of as traditional in no small part because of Cathedral‘s crafting of it. The band’s lineup of vocalist Lee Dorrian, guitarist Gary “Gaz” Jennings, bassist Scott Carlson and drummer Brian Dixon present some progressive moments reminiscent of or at very least nodding toward The Guessing Game – the synth interlude that interrupts the sluggish lumber of “An Observation” comes to mind; David Moore‘s contributions of Hammond, Moog, synth and mellotron aren’t to be understated in establishing The Last Spire‘s murky atmosphere — but in their structure and in their intent, cuts like the early “Pallbearer,” “Cathedral of the Damned” and “Tower of Silence” underline the doomed feel for which Cathedral have become so known both in their home country and abroad. They are Cathedral at their most Cathedral. And rightly so. One couldn’t possibly hope for more of them than that.

The aforementioned trio occur sequentially following the intro “Entrance to Hell,” which finds Dorrian repeating the phrase “Bring out your dead” — which in my mind always goes right back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but he sells it well — over suitably plague-addled atmospheres, with “Pallbearer” as the longest track on The Last Spire at 11:39 and marked aside from its strong hook by the backing vocals of Rosalie Cunningham behind Dorrian‘s signature semi-spoken delivery and the chorus of “War, famine, drought, disease” repeated to memorable effect. There’s a mournful acoustic break in the middle, but by and large, Jennings, Carlson and Dixon sound big, thick and threatening, and when the acoustics (backed by organ) give way to the resurgent groove and faster push of the song’s peak movement, the effect is fluid and entirely metal. They end slow and offer a more mid-paced distortion on “Cathedral of the Damned,” which is marked out by the spoken guest vocal by Chris Reifert of Autopsy and the line “Living in the shadow of a damned cathedral,” which may or may not be Dorrian dealing with his own legacy and the prospect of moving on after ending the band. Either way, it’s the riff and the buzzsaw guitar tone that stands out most as the band meet their longest track with the shortest full song (that is, non-interlude or intro), slamming head-on into the chorus as they do with no diminished returns on the subsequent “Tower of Silence,” the pair affirming Cathedral‘s potency on all levels as they round out The Last Spire‘s first half, whether it’s the vocals, Jennings‘ righteous solo, the heavy nod of the bass and drums, or the overarching catchiness of the chorus itself: “A tower of silence/Is waiting for me/Looming before/An astral sea.”

Read more »

Almost nothing is certain, and when it comes to doubly-drummed Georgian progressive sludgers Kylesa, even less than that. Yet when it comes to approaching their sixth full-length and second for Season of Mist, the 11-track Ultraviolet — or really any new Kylesa album — the one thing the listener can be sure of going into it is that it will be a step beyond its predecessor. At this point, I don’t think the band would release a record that wasn’t. Ultraviolet‘s predecessor was 2010′s Spiral Shadow (review here), which changed their course from jagged, crunching sludge to a more smoothed out and progressive sound — a shift that they’d built toward on 2009′s Static Tensions (review here) in some ways but come nowhere near materializing as completely — and one that, as ever, divided their fanbase into those who could get on board and those who couldn’t. This seems to happen on a nearly per-album basis with the Savannah natives.

While we’re talking about expectation, I’d anticipate no less for Ultraviolet in the long run, but Kylesa have never had a problem picking up new fans along the way to fill the spots of those who couldn’t get past one period or another of their ongoing progression; they’ve maintained a reputation as a hard-touring band for years and rightly so. Rooted in the work of guitarists/vocalists Phillip Cope (also theremin and production) and Laura Pleasants, there are consistencies of sound to be heard between full-lengths, and sure enough between Spiral Shadow and Ultraviolet as well, but save for very few moments throughout the latest, the band would be all but unrecognizable to anyone who jumped from 2005′s To Walk a Middle Course or 2006′s Time Will Fuse its Worth right to it, and no doubt that’s the intent: Progress. Joined by drummers Carl McGinley and Eric Hernandez and bassist Chase Rudeseal (the latter of whom may or may not have actually played on the recording), Pleasants and Cope have never failed to draw a distinct line from one outing to the next, and though it’s an outgrowth of elements from Spiral Shadow like the pop hook of “Don’t Look Back” or the dreamy ambience underlying “To Forget,” that’s no less true of Ultraviolet than it has ever been.

Single-word titles on five of the 11 cuts on the 39-minute album — namely opening trio “Exhale,” “Unspoken,” “Grounded,” and closing duo “Quicksand” and “Drifting” — would seem to hint at some stripped-down sensibility or simplicity of approach, but the fact is Kylesa have never been so melodically switched on or engaged. Cope and Pleasants trade vocal parts immediately and effectively on the insistently-riffed “Exhale,” chugging distortion creating a jabbing tension topped by call and response shouts before a swirl takes hold that the drums(s) underscore with a thud less frantic than it has been in the past, but still indicative of two players at work. I suppose on a structural level, Ultraviolet‘s opening salvo is somewhat simplified, but the atmosphere becomes more complex as “Unspoken” opens with subdued guitar and a wash of effects, Cope coming in as the song kicks off with a semi-spoken line that Pleasants — whose ascent as a vocalist continues unabated — answers back with layered melodies. The most memorable stretches of Ultraviolet are still to come, but the momentum “Unspoken” helps create and its prog-toned guitar solo in the second half act as a precursor to some of the album’s most intriguing moments, giving way to the familiar winding structure of “Grounded”‘s central riff, readily accessible to anyone who’s followed the post-Mastodon course of Southern US heavy metal, Pleasants handling the verse and Cope taking what probably would be the ensuing chorus if it was ever repeated. Instead, they build on the instrumental for a bit and round out with layers of Pleasants‘ vocals, ending with just her voice to set up the shift to the more thickly toned and aggressive “We’re Taking This.”

Read more »

Some harsher vocals from guitarist Jeff Maurer add a darker, metallic edge to the proceedings, but at its heart, French trio Surtr‘s second album, Pulvis et Umbra, is traditional doom all the way. Whether you run it back to Saint Vitus and The Obsessed or Count Raven and Reverend Bizarre, it rounds out to the same downward spiral of riffs and misery. That seems just fine by the Lorraine outfit, who release the album on Altsphere Production as the follow-up to 2011′s World of Doom debut, as the material shows no real ambition to transcend beyond the occasional flash of early Viking metal (read: Bathory) influence on a song like “Three Winters of War” in its reaching past genre, and the band are decently suited to their style. Production throughout is clear but largely flat and shifts in tempo offer little change from the mood, which is as dreary as one might expect across the seven-track/42-minute full-length, and while perhaps unremarkable in offering a groundbreaking take on doom, Pulvis et Umbra — the title translating from the Latin to “Ashes and Dust” — stands as an able execution of genre and a cohesive release nonetheless. It ain’t gonna change the world, but as doom for doomers, one could probably find bands with much less to offer than Surtr, depending on how deep into the mire one wanted to look.

The album begins with “Rise Again,” organ holding a melody line under Maurer‘s guitar, Julien Kuhn‘s bass and Régis Beck‘s drums initially but seeming to fade away once the slow crawl of the track’s central progression is introduced. Straightforward through and through, Maurer has a traditional metal inflection to his cleaner singing that’s instantly familiar as “Rise Again” plays out, Kuhn offering a few engaging fills in the open spaces left by the guitar. Gradually, they solidify to a forward thrust, but it’s not until the final minute that they really pick up the pace and Maurer reveals a screaming approach that’s soon layered with growls underneath to varying success, capping with barks of “Rise! Rise!” to act as an apex before the Viking-style drum thud of “Three Winters of War” sets the tone for the riff before dropping out to make way for it. This time it’s the verse that’s more active and the chorus that slows down. Fine. Maurer‘s voice reminds a bit of Slough Feg‘s latter day incantations, but without the Celt-folk idiosyncrasies, keeping the melody in line with Kuhn‘s able basslines, which actually wind up providing most of the character the band shows throughout. That’s not to take anything away from Beck or Maurer‘s performances, they’re just more straightforward, and even when “Three Winters of War” shifts into its Cathedral-style ending progression, there’s no sense of flourish to be found from either of them.

Read more »

To my knowledge, The Book of Knots hadn’t done a live show since July 2007, when they took the stage at Manhattan’s Gramercy Theatre with a slew of guests to support their then-new second album, Traineater. I was there and it was grand. From Jon Langford (The Mekons) to Carla Bozulich (Evangelista) to Aaron Lazar (The Giraffes), the stage was in constant flux around Book of Knots steady members Carla Kihlstedt (vocals, violin), Joel Hamilton (guitar), Tony Maimone (bass) and Matthias Bossi (drums), grounded only by the consistent brilliance of the woefully underdiscovered material, songs like “Midnight,” “Hands of Production” and “The Captain’s Cup” ringing out through the not-packed but thoroughly-appreciative room in what I to this day consider one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, hands down. And I’ve seen a few.

Joined by Faun Fables and Skeleton Key, what may indeed have been The Book of Knots‘ second gig in six years was a different kind of family affair. I walked into Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory – my first time there since it moved from its old location on Leonard St. in Manhattan — to find Faun Fables already on stage and a goodly portion through their set, the duo of Dawn McCarthy and Nils Frykdahl seamlessly blending mountain folk spirit with art rock theatricality — both wore gowns and McCarthy brought one of her young daughters on stage while the other slept in the audience — and a fittingly earthy vibe. I recognized Frykdahl‘s voice immediately from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, of which Book of Knots‘ Kihlstedt and Bossi were also members, though other than his vocals, Faun Fables shares almost nothing in common with the sadly defunct, ultra-dark avant metal outfit.

Still, they were more than enjoyable in that look-at-those-very-talented-weirdos kind of way, McCarthy echoing her own yodels in the closer with striking believability, if not much setup for Skeleton Key, a long-running NY-native post-noise rock four-piece (with whom Bossi once played) with jagged riffs and a double-dose of percussion in a standard kit and secondary cymbals, canisters and other found items that were thoroughly banged on. Most of what they played came from their first LP in a decade, last year’s Gravity is the Enemy — the material striking a blend between New York City’s ’90s noise-punk lineage and the heavier end of indie, without fear of the occasional rockabilly twang or slide guitar interjection — but between percussionist Benjamin Clapp recruiting Kihlstedt and others to run through the crowd with big paper mache marshmallow heads on and returning later to take a French horn solo in a similar fashion — they were hardly short on the avant elements either. Actually, knowing almost nothing about the band going into their set, they were exciting to watch.

Bassist/vocalist/founder Erik Sanko announced toward the end of their time that his mother has passed away on Sunday, and that added further emotionality to the already-striking “Roses,” the closer from Gravity is the Enemy and penultimate inclusion before “Wide Open” from 1997′s Fantastic Spikes through Balloon. When they were finished and Sanko came back out to retrieve his bass, the crowd goaded them into one more song, so they did “Roost in Peace” from 2002′s Obtanium, clicking sticks to keep the rhythm under the folksy melody line and memorable chorus. They seemed glad for the chance to do the encore, even if somewhat surprised to have been asked.

In 2011, The Book of Knots made their debut on Ipecac with Garden of Fainting Stars (review here), their third album behind the aforementioned Traineater on Anti- and their 2004 self-titled debut, released by Texas imprint Arclight. It was the final installment in a vague thematic trilogy, the first record centering around the nautical, the second the rust belt, the third aerospace — sea, land and air, roughly — and whether or not they’ll follow it with further tales of industrial decay and cruelties both personal and at-large remains to be seen,  but they hardly sounded finished at Knitting Factory. With guitarist/backing vocalist Jon Evans and keyboardist/backing vocalist Michael Jinno, Kihlstedt, Bossi, Maimone and Hamilton took the stage and bled before the audience even realized they were starting into the dreary moodiness of “All this Nothing” from Garden of Fainting Stars.

“We are purveyors of that type of music,” Bossi announced on mic from behind his kit, and sure enough, the remainder of the night proved him right, through from their very beginnings, The Book of Knots have been a richly dynamic band, moving from these ambient, still-melodic droning sections of sparse atmospherics to intense, crushing distortion and correspondingly weighted rhythmic thud. Rules are minimal and followed as whims dictate, but the songs are cohesive, and in the case of this set, flowed well together. It was late when they got going, and some of the setlist was cut out to make room, but “Tugboat” from the first album and the Traineater title-track showcased excellently the sonic variety in The Book of Knots‘ approach, Maimone‘s steady low end, Evans and Hamilton‘s guitars, Jinno‘s keys and even Bossi‘s drums and vocals all coming into and out of focus along the way.

Kihlstedt, who also has an album forthcoming with Bossi under the duo guise of Rabbit Rabbit, did most of the singing, her voice smooth and bluesy over “Traineater” and no less suited to the more active Garden opener “Microgravity,” which followed the spoken idiosyncrasies of “Hands of Production” and foreshadowed some of the heft to come in the latter half of the set. Frykdahl returned for a vocal/guitar spot on “Moondust Must” — he was the night’s only guest — which even the band acknowledged would be the most upbeat sounding thing they’d play. It was, and though I never got to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum during their day, I was thankful to get a glimpse at some of their expanded roots in Frykdahl and Kihlstedt‘s combined singing.

The high points were still to come, however. I had been glad to see “Pearl Harbor” on the setlist. I’ll confess it had been a while since I broke out the self-titled for a listen, so I didn’t remember precisely why I was glad to see it, but I knew that it being there was something to be happy about, and once they kicked into the slow, full-weight drudgery of the track’s second half, I immediately remembered the reason. Bossi pounded out a stomping but complex rhythm, Hamilton kept his I’m-a-producer’s cool while Evans punished his guitar with each strum on the other side of the stage, but it was Maimone‘s bass that left the greatest impression, each swell of the riff cycle resulting in a “voom” you could feel in your chest standing in front of the stage. It was even more satisfying for not having it so fresh in my memory, and a reminder of how much I lived with that self-titled when I first heard it, now nine years ago.

They followed and closed out with really the only song that possibly could have followed “Pearl Harbor,” “Salina” from Traineater, which never fails to send a shiver up my spine. It was a highlight in 2007 and remained one last night, and though it was late, I couldn’t help but hope for an encore of pretty much whatever they wanted to do — loud, quiet, whatever. No such luck on that, but “Salina” was more than one could ask for without being greedy, all six players locking into its build and noisy, deconstructed ending, Kihlstedt delivering one last highlight performance.

I already had a copy of Garden of Fainting Stars, and though I wanted to hit the merch table and see if there was anything to be had from the members of Book of Knots‘ other projects — be it Rabbit Rabbit, Two Foot Yard, Pere Ubu, etc. — it wasn’t to be, and I shuffled out of the Knitting Factory and back down the block to where I’d parked. It may not have been the same scale as six years ago, but for the chance to see this band as a band, almost entirely on their own, the show only confirmed for me how massively underappreciated The Book of Knots have been over the course of their time together. Not that I didn’t feel that way anyhow, but it’s nice to be proven right every now and again.

More pics after the jump. Thanks for reading.

Read more »