I fuckin’ love The Brought Low. There’s a lot of bands I dig — more every day, it seems — but The Brought Low are local, I’ve seen them a bunch of times, I know them, and they’ve yet to disappoint musically. “Army of Soldiers” was included on their Coextinction Recordings EP last year, and I don’t know who made this video, but it sets the song to nostalgic looking video scenes, and that’s more than enough for me. Zack Kurland of Purple Knights, who will hopefully have a vast series of limited edition cassettes coming soon, sent me this clip, and I’m glad to share it with y’all.

It’s been a longer week than you’d know by looking at the course of posts on The Obelisk, but I thank you for checking in if you have (if you haven’t, blow it out your ass), and I hope you’ve enjoyed the course of the last couple weeks. Next week to come I’ll have a live review of Halfway to Gone at the Brighton Bar, as well as an interview with bassist/vocalist Lou Gorra, and a host of other reviews, including Dust Storm Warning, Scott Kelly and another one or two I can’t remember. It kind of sucks that I haven’t been able to post as much as I want the last month or so, but — frankly speaking — The Obelisk is pretty much the longest-running occupation I’ve had since I worked at KB Toys however many years back, and I’m not about to deprioritize it just because some jerks are paying me money to do something else.

I’ve had a hell of a week, and I’m working tomorrow putting together emailers and whatever else, but fuck it, I’ve got a liberal portion of wine and before I crash out, I most of all want to thank everyone who checked in over the last couple days. If you saw the Elder stream, I hope you enjoyed it. That’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing with this site, hosting tracks I genuinely think are killer for people to check out from a band I believe deserve more exposure. Hopefully you dig those tunes and get to pick up that vinyl if you’re so interested. Tony Reed dropped a line earlier today about some Mos Generator unreleased tracks, so we’ll see what comes of that, but the bottom line is anytime I can bring you music I’m stoked on, it reinforces the whole reasoning behind why I do this in the first place.

Alright, I’ve had enough wine that it’s time for watching the ball game and going to bed, but thank you again one last time for reading this week. I have a lot going on lately on a personal level — my professional jobs are eating up a lot of time, plus I’m trying to find a place to move to — but as the one dude who stands behind everything that gets posted on this site, I thank you for reading the work, whether I’ve written it or whether it’s come from a columnist, interviewee, or whatever. Expect more to come in that regard, but I’m going to try my best to get a few more opinion pieces up as well, if only because I’ve got the opinions and they’re building up on this end.

That’s enough of that. If you’re still reading, thanks. If not, well, okay. I hope you’ll check in on the forum or I’ll see you back here Monday for more whoopdeedo and good-fun-type wholesomeness.

It is a supergroup to define a generation of heavy. Guitarists Scott “Wino” Weinrich and Scott Kelly (Neurosis), bassist Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) and drummer Dale Crover (the Melvins). I remember interviewing Kelly on the occasion of the last Neurosis record and that being the first time I’d heard of the project or anything about who was involved. My reaction was fanboy honest: “Holy shit, dude.” His was too: “I know, man.”

The assemblage of these mega-influential figures resulted in a 2009 self-titled full-length, released on Neurot, and subsequent bits of touring and shows. While traveling en route to Roadburn in 2010, Shrinebuilder were held up in New York due to closed European airspace from Icelandic volcanic ash. They wound up playing a gig in the city that night, and, in addition to catching a ballgame and sundry other “we’re here anyway”-type activities, re-recorded their album’s closer “The Science of Anger.”

This new version of the song, reworked to match how they were performing it live, was released as a digital single via Coextinction Recordings. It’s available for a $2.99 download here and is all the more special for the bizarre circumstances that led to its creation. As we stand on the hopeful precipice of a new Shrinebuilder outing in 2012, I can think of no better way to celebrate this Wino Wednesday than their most cohesive outing yet.

Now bear witness as Wino and Scott Kelly turn feedback into your gods:

Coextinction Recordings was founded late last year by the formidable team of Dave Curran (Unsane, Players Club, Pigs), James Paradise (Fresh Kills, Players Club, Pigs), Chris Spencer (Unsane) and producer Andrew Schneider (Pigs, Slughog), and has already had digital releases from the founders’ bands as well as Shrinebuilder, Goes Cube and Julie Christmas, among others. Their ninth release — aptly titled Coextinction Recordings 9 — is a three-song EP from New York rockers The Brought Low.

Boasting the songs “Army of Soldiers,” “Black River” and “Don’t Give Up Your Good Thing,” The Brought Low‘s Coextinction EP (produced, not surprisingly, by the band in conjunction with Schneider) distills the elements that make the band among the finest their overcrowded city has to offer. The opener is a classic Brought Low barn-burner, “Black River” finds bassist Bob Russell taking the lead for some mid-paced classic rock stomp, and on the seven-minute finale, “Don’t Give Up Your Good Thing,” the trio — Russell, guitarist/vocalist Ben Smith and drummer Nick Heller — slam on the breaks and deliver the twanged-out melancholy as only they can.

The band and Coextinction were kind enough to allow me to host “Army of Soldiers” for streaming on the player below, so please check it out. Under that, you’ll find some insight from Smith and Russell about the three songs. Thanks much to all parties involved for kicking ass.

The Brought Low‘s EP is available for a whopping $2.99 at Coextinction‘s website: http://www.coextinction.com

[mp3player width=460 height=120 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=the-brought-low.xml]

“Army of Soldiers”

Ben Smith: The result of listening to too much NWOBHM in Bob‘s truck last tour. Originally the lyrics were about knights and dragons but I couldn’t sing them with a straight face so Bob suggested, “Make it about being a kid in Queens and getting fucked up on angel dust and doing graffiti.” Done.

Bob Russell: If you ever stood in the freezing cold somewhere in the woods wearing only your denim jacket and Cons just so you could listen to your Celtic Frost tape and drink a few cans of stolen Budweiser with your friends, then the army of soldiers wants YOU.

“Black River”

BR: “Black River” is about doing bad things. You may not want to do ’em, but you know you’re gonna do ’em. I wrote it while having to walk across the English Kills to work on a shitty construction site right between a waste transfer station and a demolition transfer station. I always wondered what you’d find at the bottom of that water.

BS: Bob’s jam. He had given me an acoustic demo of it and I instantly thought we could turn it up. Fulfills my dream of The Brought Low sounding like The Band using Marshall stacks.

“Don’t Give Up Your Good Thing”

BS: Wouldn’t be a Brought Low release without a weeper.  Had the first two verses for like 10 years but didn’t write the last verse until a few months ago. Whenever I bring in a ballad I always worry the dudes won’t like it yet they always do, which makes me very happy.

BR: I think this is the most glacially-paced song we’ve recorded. We reckoned it begs for horns and keys and stuff but here, in its sparse version, it works kind of sweet. This is also the first time I’ve seen Ben play a Strat. Just attach yourself to Nick‘s ride cymbal and don’t make any plans for the next seven minutes.

Get The Brought Low’s Coextinction EP here

I’ll have more on this in the next couple weeks, but I wanted to get the news out there in case anyone didn’t see it on the forum that The Brought Low — otherwise known as New York‘s best rock band — will be putting out a new EP digitally through Coextinction Recordings come July 15. The material follows the trio’s usual scope of fire-breathing rockers and woeful hungover melancholy. At a little over 13 minutes long, it’s quite a roller coaster.

Here’s the news from the band:

The Brought Low will be releasing a new three-song digital EP on Coextinction Recordings this July 15, 2011. We cut three new songs with producer Andrew Schneider about a month back and they will be available for download at the Coextinction website: http://www.coextinction.com.

Song titles are “Army of Soldiers,” “Black River” and “Don’t Give Up Your Good Thing.”

We should be posting some song clips in the near future.

Also we just booked our first show of the fall on Saturday, Sept 24, 2011, at The M Room in Philadelphia as part of Philly Fest‘s Small Stone Records showcase with Roadsaw, Gozu, Throttlerod, Sun Gods in Exile, The Might Could and Ironweed.