https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Friday Full-Length: Gate 9, Moon Ranger Gone Evil

Posted in Bootleg Theater on November 18th, 2016 by JJ Koczan

Gate 9, Moon Ranger Gone Evil (2002)

I don’t care if you know this record, if you don’t. If you like it, if you don’t. If you’ve heard of Gate 9 or if you haven’t. This ain’t clickbait, this is rock and roll. You might say Gate 9‘s 2002 outing, Moon Ranger Gone Evil, is something of an obscure pick. Yeah, it is, but when I was first getting deep into heavy rock in a “Well that sounds cool” kind of way, this was an album that really resonated with me in ways I don’t think at the time I really even understood. I heard it in what was probably a two-year genre-immersion project into heavy rock — just picking through label rosters and anything I could get my hands on from the All That is Heavy store (newly redesigned) — while doing college radio at WSOU in New Jersey. Likely the connection is Underdogma Records, whose honcho, Carlton Duff, I’m sure I emailed from my .edu account and bothered for a free CD as I did for his other bands, We’re all Gonna Die, Solace (though their EP was a little later), Crom, Wooly Mammoth‘s first EP, and so on, and listening back to Moon Ranger Gone Evil now, I can hear what Mr. Duff no doubt heard in Gate 9 that caused him to pick them up in the first place. It’s in the fluid tempo changes, the play between stoner and doom, and the fact that though Gate 9 were from Norway, they had a clear Wino influence in their sound that they were willing to work within and around, whether that’s through layering samples into “Queen of Hades” or indulging proto-ritualizations in the later “Mantra of Doom.”

The latter is a highlight in concept and execution and a moment at which the trio of bassist/vocalist Jan M. Sørensen, guitarist Are Branstad and drummer/lyricist Jon A. Magnæs, were probably years ahead of their time. 14 years later one doesn’t blink at the thought of sonic heft as an act of worship, but for them to draw so direct a line across such a moody track is a standout. Add that to the rolling nod and spaciousness of centerpiece “Empress of Andromeda” — like Spirit Caravan-plus, that one — and you begin to get a more complete picture of what Moon Ranger Gone Evil has to offer in terms of scope. I’m not saying these guys reinvented heavy rock and roll or anything like that, but they put together a 43-minute flow of stoner, doom and edged toward psychedelia in a way that made the record even broader on their debut album at a time when many were just getting their feet wet in fuzz. To wit, the closing Monster Magnetism of “Transmission Overload” that jams out in a way one wishes Monster Magnet had dared to do at the time, which shows the experimentalism that the European scene would continue over the next decade to bring to the genre, extensions of which still reverberate (not to mention ring in the ear) to this day.

Having gone on at length about the era of heavy rock lost to the pre-social media age — though I’m sure there’s a Gate 9 MySpace page archived out there somewhere if anyone wants to go find it; an even bigger loss as regards these guys is probably StonerRock.com — I’ll spare you that rant this time, but even if you manage to get as far as the grunge-psych of “La Stranda Astra” some four tracks in, I think you can hear that Moon Ranger Gone Evil was at very least a debut with potential for the band to keep growing. Gate 9 released one more album, titled In the Kingdom of Vulgaria, in 2006 that had a Nazareth cover on it (they did “Holy Roller”) and to the best of my knowledge have done nothing since. If you wind up searching for them on Thee Facebooks, you get a band from South Australia who seem to be completely unrelated. Just a heads up.

Either way, Moon Ranger Gone Evil‘s still out there and relatively cheap on the secondary market, so if you’re feeling it, it’s easy enough to come by. As always, I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading.

These posts just keep getting longer. I can’t seem to stop myself from writing album reviews.

Got up very, very early this morning. Like four. And while I’m not sure how that’s going to play out in terms of overall energy level by the time 8 or 9PM rolls around, I’m glad I did because it allowed me to get that Slo Burn announcement together in time. Pretty awesome get on the part of Freak Valley 2017 and I can’t help but wonder what other shows the band will be doing — looking at you, Psycho Las Vegas. I wouldn’t expect Roadburn, but you never know. One should remember that it was Roadburn 2010 where John Garcia premiered Garcia Plays Kyuss, which begat Kyuss Lives!, which begat Vista Chino, which begat his solo band, and so on leading to his acoustic record, which is out in January.

Anyway. You’ll have to pardon my nerding out.

Next week is Thanksgiving. I expect it’ll be pretty slow as a result, at least as regards news about American bands, but as I say that, Monday and Tuesday are already full, so shows what I know. Let’s look at the notes:

Mon: Full album stream and review of the new Øresund Space Collective, new All Them Witches video.
Tue: Review of the new Wasted Theory.
Wed: New podcast (yup, that’s right) for you holiday travelers. Also for myself. Also premiere of a new Ordos single.
Thu: Probably nothing.
Fri: Release announcement/track stream from Buried Feather, interview with Truckfighters.

The Patient Mrs. and I are traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday, as we usually wind up doing at one point or another for most occasions. I’m looking forward to it. With my work and her dug deep into her own with the semester and all, it’s been a long time since we’ve been down to New Jersey to see my family — my grandmother is 101 years old and I haven’t seen her since her birthday brunch in June, for example; it’s a guilt worthy of that third digit — so it’ll be good. I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to listen to on the way too, so all the better.

Whether you’re celebrating next week or not, I hope you have a great and safe weekend and subsequent week (and, you know, general existence all the time). I’ll be around this weekend writing and catching up on email from some laptop downtime this week that held me back, but am looking forward to a couple quiet minutes as well before the rush of the holiday season begins. Gotta get those best-of lists started.

Thanks again for reading. Please check out the forum and radio stream.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

Tags: , , , ,