Review & Full Album Premiere: Iron Lamb, Blue Haze
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on October 25th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Iron Lamb’s Blue Haze in full. Album is out Oct. 26 on The Sign Records.]
Despite a storied pedigree in the more extreme ends of metal, Iron Lamb rock. Period. I’m not sure how else to put it. Blue Haze, issued by The Sign Records, is the Stockholm-based five-piece’s third full-length following 2015’s Fool’s Gold, and it’s a sharp LP at eight songs and 37 minutes given to modern interpretation of a classic heavy rock mindset. Not necessarily uncommon either in general or coming from Sweden specifically — plenty of classic heavy to go around — but what Iron Lamb bring to their third record is a nestle-into-niche sensibility that makes the most of grown-up punk tendencies and the throaty vocals of Daniel Forn Bragman (Tyrant) in order to make a place for itself where the Hammond on closer “Dead Beat” isn’t out of place and neither is the pure Motörhead charge of “The Hunt.”
Those UK megalegends are a primary influence on Iron Lamb, which is comprised of Bragman, guitarists Johan Wallin (Scurvy, Gallow) and Jens Bäckelin (Martyrdöd, Sanctuary in Blasphemy), drummer Thomas Daun (Dismember, Insision, Repugnant) and bassist Daniel Ekeroth (Tyrant, Usurpress) — who actually wrote the book on Swedish death metal; it was called Swedish Death Metal and well worth a read as I recall — but much of that influence can be traced to Bragman‘s style, which even in the piano-laced “Erase/Rewind” keeps a gravely approach. Blue Haze is the second record with Bragman as frontman — Gustaf Lindström (Repugnant, Ghost) handled vocals on the punkier, rawer 2011 debut, The Original Sin — and despite that low-hanging fruit of influence tagging, it’s easy to hear Iron Lamb coming more into themselves this time around. Part of that might be owed to working with Martin “Konie” Ehrencrona, who handles the aforementioned piano and Hammond, recorded and mixed the album and has a pedigree as well of working with the likes of In Solitude, The Oath and Tribulation at the analog-minded Studio Cobra in Stockholm.
Presumably Blue Haze was tracked to tape as well, which makes sense given its later-’70s affinities — Thin Lizzy, maybe some Scorpions, etc. — but they make no real show of retroism in tone or presentation, instead producing an atmosphere that’s dark but not theatrical and well suited to the pointedly straightforward structures at play in the songs, which stay tight in a four-to-five-minute range and make not even the pretense of avoiding pretense because there’s nothing in that regard to avoid. Like I said at the outset, they rock. They’re not looking to do anything else and they don’t need to. They clearly know what they want to sound like and how to make that happen. Though there are some speedier moments, like the careening “Into the Night” (with keys and Mellotron by Andreas Sandberg of Negative Self) and “Erase/Rewind” or “(Fallin’ Like) Dominoes,” which follows, Blue Haze is by and large slower and less frenetic than was Fool’s Gold (the oddly goth standout “Leave Me Be” on that outing notwithstanding), and that’s something easily traced to the band having a better idea of who they want to be.
In that regard, Blue Haze feels much like the second or third album that it is (second with Bragman, third overall), since it demonstrates a maturity of approach from opener “Apocalypse Express” — not sure who plays the keys there, presumably Ehrencrona — that finds Iron Lamb in sure control of their sound while still having a natural energy to carry it across without being staid or overly samey in their tracks. Their gallop is confident, their riffing brash like it’s 1978 but not entirely given to NWOBHM showiness, and as “Bound by Gravity” gives Daun a platform for impressive tom work, Bäckelin and Wallin offer highlight solos and rhythms leading to a spacier slowdown in the second half that’s not at all psychedelic but still has a sense of atmosphere held together by a pushed-forward bassline from Ekeroth.
Tellingly, it wraps with a quick return to speedier fare ahead of the bass leading the way into “Into the Night,” and that’s of course emblematic of the structure at play throughout Blue Haze and the character Iron Lamb bring to their songwriting. The tracks do not feel overly composed in the sense of trying to out-clever either the listener or the band itself. The band range, but aren’t trying to blindside anybody with gimmicky turns of aesthetic, and there is complexity in the interplay between the two guitars even on the penultimate “The Iron and the Lamb,” which is the shortest cut at 3:47 — ahead of the finale, “Dead Beat,” the longest at 5:31 — which finds room for a chugging underpinning to a rampage of a solo in its second half, right before a deft return to the hook. And in rounding out, “Dead Beat” offers anything but, with a fervent strut that reminds of earlier (not earliest) Judas Priest as heavy metal began to take shape from the rock of the prior generation. Iron Lamb make themselves comfortable in that between-space, willfully standing on the threshold of different styles without giving themselves entirely to one or the other or the other; metal, rock and punk.
Instead, they bask in the fluidity that such refusal allows them, shifting subtly throughout Blue Haze with a sense of turning expectations on themselves and creating an individualized sound. That would seem to be the intention, and it’s successful, but while there’s obvious thought and passion put into the craft and production, and an overarching atmosphere as a result, there’s also nothing to take away from a natural vibe throughout these songs and performances, and while I can’t speak to how Iron Lamb might come across as a live act never having seen them play, they very clearly have put themselves to the task of bringing that electricity to the studio. Fair enough. The bottom line, I’m afraid, is the same as the top line: Iron Lamb rock. There isn’t another way to put it, and to try to put it another way would be doing an injustice to the material throughout Blue Haze. You can keep reinventing the wheel if you want. These guys will be over here cracking their next beer and blowing asses out of the room. Cheers.
