Young Baltimore rockers The Flying Eyes offer bag-packed voyage-ready psychedelia amid one of the world’s most potent and vibrant doom scenes. If this makes them stand out, they hardly seem concerned. Their recent collection of two EPs, released as a self-titled full-length through Trip in Time, shows heavy blues American melancholy mixed with smart and urgent rock. They groove well beyond their years.

The story (as seen after the jump) goes that drummer Elias Schutzman, guitarist Adam Bufano and bassist/vocalist Mac Hewitt still considered themselves incomplete until vocalist/guitarist Will Kelly came along. Perhaps it’s that unwillingness to be — like so many others — a trio without a frontman that sets The Flying Eyes apart from their rocking peers. Whatever it is, the energy and vibrancy of their music stands testament to the success of the “getting together” process. When it’s the right people, it just sounds better.

Schutzman took time out recently for a Q&A exchange that’s available for checking out immediately after the jump. Hope you dig and thanks for reading.

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As the Middletown, Maryland instrumental trio Admiral Browning embrace their inner carnival barker on the 2009 EP, Magic Elixir (Dancing Sasquatch Records), it becomes increasingly difficult to place them in one genre or another. There’s something heavily progressive about the riffing and soloing of guitarist Matt LeGrow, but the songs, which are largely led by the guitar, could still be classified as stoner, if only for that. The rhythm section of Ron McGuiness (bass) and Tim Otis (drums) are just as ready to lead the charge, and at any moment and a quick switch from part to part, they might. The music is adventurous, familiar and inspired. Straightforward and somehow not.

Magic Elixir opens with “Vortexer,” showing at 8:56 Admiral Browning’s knack for allowing a song to evolve naturally. Though I don’t doubt considerable cognition goes into their writing process, the flow works at least for the most part. They stay away from verse/chorus structures, which is fair since without vocals they have neither, and the linear path “Vortexer” takes feels every bit as correct as it possibly could. Samples throughout the EP provide a spoken element, and at no point does it feel like something else is missing.

“Ol’ Martini Man” and “No Good Stones” follow immediately. The former at its root has a heady stoner boogie but rather than solely repeating the same progression over and over, uses it as a foundation for further development. “Ol’ Martini Man” comes off more straightforward than “Vortexer,” but not so much so that the songs don’t work one to the next. Likewise, the transition to “No Good Stones,” which is based around acoustic guitar and a sample running its entire 3:48, is as fluid as one could expect. “No Good Stones” keeps to a more staid tact, the guitar peppered with bluesy lead lines but holding basically the same rhythm the whole time.

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Before I took the (literally) three seconds to fact-find on the situation with Baltimore psych-blues rockers The Flying Eyes’ self-titled Trip in Time debut, the fact that the album was split into two parts had me searching for some conceptual or sonic split between them, mining the tracklist for clues and trying to understand what it was about the first five tracks the band would want to call Bad Blood and what about the back half that would lead the four-piece to dub it Winter. It was an exhaustive search. The significance of three out of the five Bad Blood tracks end with the word “Me” in the title grew with each listen. I thought for sure “Red Sheets” (track seven of the total 10) held a clue beneath its retro fuzz riffing. Certainly the peacocks in Kiryk Drewinski’s album art mean something.

But yeah, it’s a compilation of two EPs, one named Bad Blood and one named Winter. Less thrilling than an underlying spiritual union of metaphysical sonics, perhaps, but at least it’s a fucking answer.

Two immediate thoughts when listening to The Flying Eyes opener “Lay with Me,” in order: (1.) alright, that acoustic guitar is pretty cool, and (2.) wow, this guy sounds like Jim Morrison. The “this guy” in question is guitarist/vocalist Will Kelly, whose powerful vocals not only are reminiscent of the spindly “poet” whose work still mesmerizes would-be deep 13 year olds the world over, but also are a good portion of the reason The Flying Eyes pull off their sound. The brazenness of his approach, backed by bassist/vocalist Mac Hewitt on the more compact, atmospheric “Better Things,” is a means of putting the listener precisely where the band wants and a constant that provides a connection between the sundry musical shifts beneath. Almost wistful notes on “Better Things” give way to organ and riff dance hall stomp on the first EP’s title cut — both of which can be attributed to guitarist/organist Adam Bufano — but Kelly’s voice links the two tracks with each other and with the rest of Bad Blood and Winter.

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If you look at the math, I should be there. It’s Clutch, it’s New Year’s, it’s Jersey, they’re performing the entire self-titled and filming it for a DVD, and I still have use of both my legs. Really there’s no excuse for my absence, and I can only imagine the heartbreak the band will feel at my not being there. I can just see Neil Fallon on stage now, gleefully bouncing his way through “50,000 Unstoppable Watts,” suddenly looking out on the already-melted Starland Ballroom crowd, realizing I’m not there, and — perhaps not mentioning it out loud, because he’s a professional — but maybe tearing up a bit. Little tear in his eye.

But, although the reasons for going are plentiful, the unfortunate rationality of sitting this one out seems to have won the day. I will not recommend you follow me in this course of action — if you’re lucky enough to have Clutch tickets for a New Year’s show, you damn well better use them — but here are my reasons for not seeing one of my favoritest bands rock in 2010:

01. Starland Ballroom.
I’m not even going to debate the matter. Last year around this time, Clutch played Starland and it was so packed I had to leave early. When Starland Ballroom fills up, it is not only a fire hazard, but one of the most unpleasant places to exist in the entire world. You know that scene in Rambo: First Blood Part II when the Russian guy comes after the not-Viet Cong have been torturing Rambo and cuts open his chest for no good reason? It’s like that, only with overpriced Bud Light. Plus, they charge $6 to park in their parking lot, which as far as I’m concerned is like paying the gorilla to rape you.

02. I don’t have a ticket.
And the show’s sold out. Might make things difficult if I suddenly decided to make the trip.

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I’m hitting the road in about an hour — holiday travels — but I wanted to take a quick second and wish everyone a happy Xmas and say I hope you get some time off work, school or whathaveyou, and a chance to relax and the rest of it. The music industry at large shuts down next week, but I’ll be here. We’ll finish up the top 10 of the year and maybe talk about some shows and other stuff to wind down 2009. Meantime, be safe, be well, be merry. Enjoy Victor Griffin and Place of Skulls doing “Silver Cord Breaks” from With Vision — one of the best traditional doom records of the decade.

Cheers.

Put to tape in 1987, the six tracks that make up the studio-recorded portion of Reactor’s The Real World are a classic metal obscurity that comprises the best of the day’s heavy elements with just a touch of doom groove underlying. The band was born of the Maryland scene with lineup connections to Pentagram (most notably Joe Hasselvander who was in and out of the band on guitar), and their until-now-forgotten songs make their way out thanks to the fine work of Pittsburgh’s Shadow Kingdom Records.

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I find Shadow Kingdom’s ethic of unearthing bands like Reactor to be incredibly noble in the past, nor will I now. The Real World isn’t about to make anyone rich. It’s not a “Special 10 Year Anniversary Reissue” of something still in print. This is an original compilation of a lost metallic gem, put out because the label feels passionate about it. Because it sounds cool. Because how awesome would it be if 20 years from now someone came to you and wanted to put out your band’s original demo? This is love of metal in its purest form.

The songs themselves are pretty barebones metal, and it’s pretty clear from listening to the simple, punk-like structures of “Meltdown,” “Terrorist” and “Greenhouse” that Reactor was just getting started. “(When Your) Number’s Up” and “Real World” are a little more complicated, but the unquestionable high point of The Real World is the memorable “War Machine,” which most effectively blends the catchy, upbeat tone of the earlier material with Cold War-era social worry and a touch more complex melodicism. The chorus of, “The war machine is hungry/Feed the war machine,” says more than it even means to about the time in which it was written.

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Normally I do this kind of thing on Friday, but since I lost most of yesterday to road time, I figured I’d make up for it with a few weekender posts. And since the sun’s out and I’m feeling alright, Sixty Watt Shaman seems to be the way to go this time around. I don’t know whether this band is back together or broken up or what, since they haven’t put out a record since 2002 but seem to be playing reunion shows now and again — or are at least rumored to — but “All Things Come to Pass” still rules, so enjoy.

Earlier today, I thought to myself, “Gee, you know, I haven’t heard anything about a ridiculous amount of Clutch releases in a while.” Then, wouldn’t you know it, I come home this evening and sitting on the floor from the PR wire (because, oh yes, the PR wire is a ticker tape machine and definitely not an email inbox) is notification that the seminal Maryland blues rockers are planning digital and physical reissues of their three DRT Entertainment albums through their Weathermaker Music label, a new live DVD and special edition vinyls of, well, a ton of stuff. All for the best. We wouldn’t want the band to sit still for five minutes, now would we?

Here’s the info:

On December 15th, Clutch will issue a double vinyl package of their latest studio effort Strange Cousins from the West through the band’s self owned label Weathermaker Music. This vinyl edition will feature two tracks that cannot be found on the CD version. The first is the recently recorded �Metroliner Special� and the second is an extended version of the band’s latest single and video, �50,000 Unstoppable Watts.� The first 4,000 pieces of Strange Cousins from the West vinyl will include a coupon for a free digital download of all 12 songs through the band’s website, www.pro-rock.com.

Also this Fall, Weathermaker will make available for digital purchase, the former DRT Entertainment catalog which includes Blast Tyrant (2004), Robot Hive/Exodus (2005) and From Beale Street to Oblivion (2007). Weathermaker plans to reissue all three of these in 2010 with a heavy dose of bonus material. Double vinyl packages are in the works for these as well.

For now, look for the digital release of Robot Hive/Exodus on November 30th to be followed by Blast Tyrant on December 18th. Due to the high amount of digital demand for the band’s 2007 single �Electric Worry,� Weathermaker has already issued From Beale Street to Oblivion on November 7th to coincide with the song’s inclusion in the popular video game Left 4 Dead 2 and its television commercial.

To end 2009, Clutch will headline shows in Washington DC, Sayerville, NJ, Charlotte, NC, Boston, MA and Albany, NY. These concerts will be filmed by producer and director extraordinaire Agent Ogden and featured on the Strange Cousins from the West DVD package to be released in the spring of 2010.

While in Maryland last Thursday and Friday for Stoner Hands of Doom X — the allegedly last in the 10 year tenure of the festival, which continued without me through Sunday — I managed to sneak away from the main room in Krug’s Place for a while and hit the bar area, where there was set up one lonely vendor with a ton of good shit. Most of it wasn’t necessarily SHoD-applicable, but had I needed to purchase a bootleg copy of Power Metal or Projects in the Jungle by Pantera, I could have done so easily on my way to the bathroom.

Power Metal is hilarious, by the way, if you’ve never heard it.

Uncharacteristically, I only grabbed two CDs from his several laid out boxes thereof. The first was Croatan’s Curse of the Red Queen and the second was Sonic Witchcraft, by Soulpreacher. Both were maybe five bucks, about the price I was paying for a Leinenkugel at the bar, and though the former features such good time hits as “Gravity 1, Sisyphus 0″ and “Rebel from the Waist Down,” it was the Soulpreacher record that stuck out as more of a surprise.

Maybe that’s because I knew nothing about the band and only bought the disc because, like the Croatan, it was released on Man’s Ruin, but either way, when I popped it in my car player to listen, the out and out misery of the sludge emanating from the speakers was unbelievable. I was surprised to learn in the decade since Sonic Witchcraft’s release (and with a new lineup) the band has adopted a more European doom style, influenced by Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but there’s no taking away from the wholly American tinge to 10-minute opener “Blues for a Blackened World” or the Southern death-boogie of “Empty and Hollow.” They’re from North Carolina, whether they like it or not.

They debuted their new sound and two new guitarists replacing Mike Avery with 2004’s Lost Words demo but eeked out another EP, When the Black Sunn Rises… the Holy Men Burn (Game Two Records) with the original lineup in 2000 and a demo in 2002 before Avery left for law school (“Your honor, I’d like this Eyehategod riff to be read into evidence”). They’ve allegedly got a new album called All the Drugs are Failing, but damned if it’s for sale on their MySpace or website. There’s a couple tracks from it on the MySpace anyway and it’s nowhere near as skin-curdling as their earlier work, so maybe it’s for the best. In the meantime, I’ve got Sonic Witchcraft drilling a hole in my eardrum and I think I’m starting to like it. Hail the fuzz of “Sunday Morning Revelation.”

…But when you think about it, is there really such a thing as a bad day for free Clutch? The groovinest Marylanders have an exclusive non-album track called “Metroliner Special” from the Strange Cousins from the West sessions they’ve made available for free download at their website, Pro-Rock.com. I haven’t even had the chance to listen to it yet, but can only imagine it rules, being Clutch and all.

If you didn’t yet, check out The Obelisk’s interview with guitarist Tim Sult here. Goes great with listening to free goo.

In case you missed the news, Strange Cousins from the West sold 13,000 copies its first week out, which is actually less than 2007’s From Beale Street to Oblivion, which debuted with 15,000. However, because since that time sales in general have continued to suck — plus that whole economy collapsing thing I keep hearing about — the 13,000 was enough to push Clutch into the Billboard Top 40 for the first time in their career at #38!

Congratulations to the band on this new milestone. If only Casey Kasem was still doing Casey’s Top 40 and could introduce the single, “50,000 Unstoppable Watts.” “Here’s a little song about anthrax, ham radio, and liquor…” Awesome.

It was my return journey to The Sound Garden in the beery Fell’s Point section of Baltimore, and in addition to an Al B. Sure in store performance (it was wrapping up just as I walked in and I got a hug from him as he was leaving the makeshift stage), I happened upon the self-titled album by Californian experimentalists Journey to Ixtlan. It’s one of few albums I’ve purchased in recent history that when I found it was both brand new and totally unrecognized. If I’m going to take a chance on something, usually it’s used and cheaper. Journey to Ixtlan (Aurora Borealis) set me back $18, and for that reason, I’m not going to give it a full review. Not fair to anyone who sends me records for free.

Nonetheless, as a bit of buried treasure, Journey to Ixtlan bridges the long gap between pre-”Los” Natas and SunnO))), with a dark Southwestern drone permeated by chants and distant instrumentation. Not that I knew that at the time. All I knew was what I read on the sticker on the front of the digipak (which I fortunately found came from the label’s website), and it went as follows:

Riding out of the desert like the ghosts of future past in a dune buggy powered by dreams come Journey to Ixtlan. Totally heavy, very psychedelic, and utterly sun kissed this is the sound of New Age Doom & Occult Desert Rock. Journey to Ixtlan are an anonymous badass rock band of desert dwellers, in some cases living outside the law at the very margins of society, who converge infrequently to render their physical surroundings in psychotropic sound. Their heavy sound owes as much to Doom Metal as it does to Psychedelia, as much to Now as it does to Then, as guitar, bass, drums, keys and vocal chants intertwine like shamanic smoke.

They trimmed out some of the stuff about purported philosophical connections to Carlos Castaneda’s 1972 book of the same name (Castaneda being a pupil of Don Juan Matus — taken as a moniker by a Peruvian desert rock band), but honestly, after reading, “Riding out of the desert like the ghosts of future past in a dune buggy powered by dreams,” there was no way I wasn’t going to buy this record. I also got Demons and Wizards by Uriah Heep. No regrets.

If you want to check out Journey to Ixtlan for yourself and see if they’re worth $18 of your hard-earned, you can do so at this location.

Hard to believe, I know, but over the course of their nine studio offerings, Maryland groove gods Clutch have gone from Eastwest hardcore-tinged upstarts to established blues rockers putting out albums to ever-greater fanfare, most recently via their new self-run label, Weathermaker Music. Released just yesterday (July 14), Strange Cousins from the West is in many ways the archetypal Clutch record for 2009. It hones in on the direction the band has taken since 2004’s Blast Tyrant — the beginning of the DRT Entertainment era, which culminated with 2007’s From Beale Street to Oblivion — planting mature riff-led rock songs with varying degrees of blues elements deep in the cerebral cortex of the audience while vocal madman Neil Fallon weaves tales of sleestaks and time spent in county lockup. If you can get past “Let a Poor Man Be” without a new brain-tattoo, consult a physician.

The man behind some of the catchiest guitar lines in stoner rock history, guitarist Tim Sult, recently sat down for an in-person chat at the House of Blues in Atlantic City, NJ. Clutch was headlining a bill with Wino (featuring Clutch drummer J.P. Gaster) and Shadows Fall, who replaced a missing Monster Magnet. The interview took place deep in the bowels of the Showboat casino, in some back room where on another night high roller executives might mingle with bored-looking women half their age and the scruffy likes of yours truly most assuredly would not be allowed.

Sult (like bassist Dan Maines, to whom I spoke a few months back about Clutch side-project The Bakerton Group) was humble to the point of being puzzled why I’d want to talk to him, but though our discussion was relatively short, it nonetheless gave me something to look forward to in that night’s set. Hope you click that “Read more” doohickey and dig it as much as I did.

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Tack an hour onto the Parkway ride to Atlantic City because it was July 3 and you get me arriving at the Showboat Casino literally two minutes before my scheduled interview with Clutch guitarist Tim Sult (coming soon), rushing up the escalator to find the main room of the House of Blues and promptly sitting for 25 minutes while the band finished their sound check. When The Patient Mrs., who had dropped me off and gone to park the car, came into the building, told her via phone from the backstage kitchen to just cross the rope and walk in like she knew what she was doing. She did and when my interview was done, we met up and went to grab a slice of crappy boardwalk pizza before the show started.

Monster Magnet was supposed to play, which would have at least been convenient since I elected to stay home the rainy Saturday night in May when they hit Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, but for reasons unknown, it was not to be. Speculation, rumor and innuendo was all the explanation I was able to get out of anyone at the show. Massachusetts‘ Shadows Fall somehow became the fill-in for the middle slot, and their fit betwixt Clutch and opening trio Wino (featuring their namesake guitarist/vocalist and Clutch’s J.P. Gaster on drums) was awkward to say the least, but they made a go of it and did their thing nonetheless. I was one of many late 20-somethings in the crowd who gave a perceptible “Oh yeah, this song,” when they played “Crushing Belial.” It had been a while since I heard that.

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A little while back, Maryland gods Clutch premiered the track “50,000 Unstoppable Watts” over at MetalSucks. Well, now, because they’re generous types, they’ve uploaded a fancy newfangled widget with new song “Abraham Lincoln,” “50,000 Unstoppable Watts” and some cool video footage of the band recording and doing their thing. Strange Cousins from the West is out July 7 on the band’s own Weathermaker Music. Widget autoplays after the jump.

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In case you missed it, our friendly friends over at MetalSucks posted the track “50,000 Unstoppable Watts” from the new Clutch album, Strange Cousins from the West. They are good souls indeed, and the song, unlike the material on the Joe Barresi-produced last album, From Beale Street to Oblivion, has guitars you can actually hear. Thanks, J. Robbins!

Now, I know you’re wondering what kind of exclusive Clutch goodies The Obelisk has to offer. It’s a valid concern. After the jump, you can see just how up to date and in the loop this site is when it comes to getting Clutch stuff that no one else can.

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