A mere two weeks ago, I posted notice that the kind souls at the All That is Heavy webstore were having a mega-sale with discs and t-shirts at 25 and 50 percent off. I also confessed that I did this only after going in and solidifying my own purchase. Well, the box showed up Wednesday and I’ve been making my way through the goods ever since. Here’s what I picked up:

The Body, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood
Paul Chain “The Improvisor,” Cosmic Wind
Church of Misery, The Second Coming (Diwphalanx reissue)
Leif Edling, The Black Heart of Candlemass
The Gates of Slumber, Villain, Villain
500 Ft. of Pipe, Dope Deal
500 Ft. of Pipe, The Electrifying Church of the New Light
Masters of Reality, Pine/Cross Dover (American version)
Mustasch, Parasite!
OJM, The Light Album
OJM, Under the Thunder
OJM, Volcano
Ponamero Sundown, Stonerized
Raging Slab, Raging Slab (2009 Rock Candy reissue)
Sgt. Sunshine, Black Hole
Sin of Angels, In the Grip of Despair

Stuff like the 500 Ft. of Pipe and Mustasch I’d had my eye on for a long time. The psyched-up Fu Manchu fuzz of the former has been a delight long awaited. With The Body, I felt like I was finally giving into the hype, but at the sale price, decided it was now or never. Ponamero Sundown I wanted to listen to again before reviewing the new one and couldn’t find my old sleeve promo — apparently I’ve never heard of YouTube — and Masters of Reality I bought solely for the different label name on the side of the disc. It’s not the first time I’ve done that with them.

OJM I wanted to backlog since reviewing Volcano, and I included Volcano too because I didn’t have a full copy. The Raging Slab I very much enjoyed last night after work, imagining what new wave/no wave New Yorkers must have thought of them busting out those songs in 1989 and seeing the old pictures of drummer Bob Pantella, now of The Atomic Bitchwax. Sgt. Sunshine‘s a little stranger than I expected, but still pretty cool, and listening to it now, I think I might’ve already owned this Sin of Angels CD.

The rest I haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s worth noting that even with the drastically slashed prices, Dan and Melanie — the above-noted kind souls — included a freebie in the form of Black Materia, by Black Materia, which is rife with Anathema-style sorrow and metallic melody, in addition to being a Final Fantasy reference. Dig it.

The sale’s still on, but I don’t know for how long or anything like that. Hopefully I’ll have time to recoup some funds for another round before it ends, but even if not, I think I did alright the first time. If you missed the link above, check out the list of goods here.

I didn’t exactly have the money laying around, but I did exactly have a few drinks in me, and being in such a state over this past weekend, I decided to partake in one of my favorite rituals: the drunken internet record buy. My longstanding wish list over at the All That is Heavy webstore was the target, and I just picked up a couple discs before crashing out for the night: Kaleidoscope by Siena Root, Antarctic Abyss by The Deep Blue and Italian rockers OJM‘s first album, Heavy.

The Siena Root was the last piece to complete their CD discography, and I reviewed that The Deep Blue album nearly two years ago and still couldn’t get it out of my head, so I figured a purchase of the full non-promo copy was long overdue, but it was the OJM I was really interested to hear. Their 2010 album Volcano (review here) had been in my head again since reading Vincebus Eruptum for most of last week, and while I’m not saying I’m embarking on a journey through their entire catalog, I’m not not saying it either. We’ll see how it plays out.

In the meantime, what I found with Heavy — released in 2002 on Beard of Stars Records — is a stoner rock album every bit of the quality of earliest Dozer (if arriving several years later), paying tribute to the deserts of lore with fuzzy riffs, occasional doomed excursions and that kind of unabashed fuzz that mostly European acts can get away with proffering today. Even cooler is that the record was produced by Italian guru Paul Chain (of earliest/best Death SS and his several solo incarnations, including Paul Chain Violet Theatre and P.C. Translate), giving it direct lineage to the classic underground.

Alright, maybe that’s not cooler than the sound of the album itself, which thrills with the straightforward come-find-me undiscovered gem “As I Know,” the swaggering “Strange Dreams” and the seething blues-based “You Come” while also leaving room for a Stooges cover of “TV Eye.” The songs are mostly short, but eight-minute closer “Theorem” has some acoustics and added complexity to its instrumental structure that’s a definite insight into the progressive path OJM has gone down since. I won’t lie and say I’m not tempted to fill in the blanks with 2003′s The Light Album and their Michael David (MC5)-produced 2006 outing, Under the Thunder, but if anything, take that as a statement of how much ass Heavy and Volcano kick in the first place.

If you thought you’d already partaken in all that stoner rock of the late ’90s/early ’00s had to offer and you haven’t yet checked out OJM, you’ll be glad you did. I think as the years go on, there’s something about the heavy rock made in the five or six years post-Kyuss that’s going to stand it out among what came before or since, but either way, Heavy is a cool record, good songs, killer grooves, and you can’t go wrong with that. Rest assured, I’ve bought way worse while under the influence.

Of the various Italian stoner rock bands I’ve come across who follow a more traditional approach to the genre — acts like El-Thule, Black Rainbow and Void Generator — Treviso’s OJM might be the most characteristically individual. By that I mean that within a genre of classic and desert rock influence, they still manage to come out sounding distinct in their musical personality. Volcano (Go Down Records) is OJM’s fourth studio full-length since forming in 1997, and as it unites the band with the accomplished production of Rancho de la Luna’s Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age, earthlings?, The Giraffes, etc.), it hones a refined and polished approach to the genre of stone that, rather than aping the likes of Kyuss or Fu Manchu, modernizes and refreshes the approach.

They called the album Volcano in honor of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull that wrought so much havoc on Northern Europe this past Spring, cancelling thousands of flights all around the world, including that which would have brought Catching to work with OJM in the flesh. Volcano was recorded at Red House Studio in Senigallia, and the four-piece wound up collaborating with Catching via Skype, presumably passing files back and forth via some fascinating and futuristic transfer protocol. A credit to both parties, then, that the album sounds as good as it does. Led by its founders, drummer Max Ear and vocalist David Martin, OJM’s brand of rock knocks heads with classic garage thickened and updated, offering catchy Monster Magnet-style hard rockness on “I’ll be Long” and “Cocksucker” with guitarist/backing vocalist Andrew Pozzy (who used to play bass) turning down the fuzz as compared to a song like “Rainbow” to bring out a different feel.

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I’ve been to Italy once in my life, for my honeymoon early in 2005, arguably the height of anti-American sentiment in Europe. Nonetheless, The Patient Mrs. and I basked in the glory of the Trevi Fountain above and many other of Rome‘s famous artifacts and tourism highlights. It was a beautiful country that I could have easily spent a lifetime getting to know.

This Where to Start comes by request, and I’ll confess to being no expert on the Italian scene, such as it is. Unlike Sweden, which has been a hotbed for heavy rock decades running, Italy doesn’t have the reputation of producing a killer desert or psych scene in particular, but what it does have as a diverse array of individual acts whose contributions to their respective subgenres has been considerable.

Through labels like Black Widow and Beard of Stars (both of which sign international as well as domestic Italian bands), Italy has had a slew of killer bands over the years. Here’s but a sampling to which I hope you’ll add in the comments section. Artists and albums to start with:

Paul Chain, Park of Reason: I started with Whited Sepulchres and it was a mistake. Paul Chain‘s catalog is intimidatingly huge, as it runs from his time in Death SS in the early-’80s to now in Translate, but if you stick with his solo stuff and Paul Chain Violet Theatre, you should be alright.

Ufomammut, Eve: These guys might be the best drone metal act on the planet right now. To put it simply: their doom is bigger than your doom. Most people will tell you start with 2004′s Snailking, and if you buy vinyl, they’re right, but it can be pricey on CD, so I went with the latest, Eve, instead. Either way you win.

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