Few rules in life I’d be willing to call absolute, but I think it’s safe to say that if you’re walking through the woods and you run into a dude in a creepy clown mask, your day just got a whole lot worse. It’s a lesson we should be teaching our children, really.

We last heard from heavy rocking Swedish foursome Ponamero Sundown in 2011 with the album, Radio Eléctrica (review here), a straightforward bit of Euro heavy brought to light by Transubstans Records. The clip you’ll find below, which splices the aforementioned PSA about forest clowns (also dudes in pig masks, we can’t forget them) with performance footage of the band, is for the song “The Dice” from that album, which Ponamero Sundown are due to follow up this year if they want to keep the two-year pace they established between their ’09 debut, Stonerized (review here) and the sophomore outing.

Those suffering coulrophobia may want to avoid, but everyone else, feel free to enjoy:

Well, they’re from Sweden, and they rock, so I guess they have my vote. It doesn’t take much time to head over to the link below and cast a quick vote for Ponamero Sundown — whose Rodeo Eléctrica album was released earlier this year — to play the Sweden Rock fest, so I figured I’d post the news in case anyone has a spare second and a half to help out.

Dig it:

Great news from Ponamero Sundown camp! The band has been picked out for an ongoing competition to play at Sweden Rock Festival next June. The three bands who get the most votes get to play at the festival and Ponamero Sundown are among the 100 out of 1500 who got picked! Now we need your help in order to get this awesome stonerfuzz rock expedition spreads the riffage at the festival. The link where you can submit your votes is below, anyone can vote once a day, no registration needed. Thanks!

http://www.swedenrock.com/index.cfm?lg=2&pg=574

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.

Listening to Rodeo Eléctrica, Stockholm rockers Ponamero Sundown’s second offering through Transubstans, I had to go back and make sure I had the right band. From what I recalled of the four-piece from their Stonerized debut (review here), they were gleeful in their stoner-rockingness, a little boozy, and primarily fuzzed out in the Swedish tradition. Rodeo Eléctrica, on the other hand, is slick and almost commercial sounding in its overall affect, the band forsaking the unassuming good times of “Alcoholic Deathride” and “Doctor of Evil” for the straightforward crunch of “1025” and the processed-sounding drums that launch the album on opener “Evil Wand.” It’s a shock, but had I not heard Stonerized, Rodeo Eléctrica probably wouldn’t sound so different from a lot of the less-fuzzed end of European stoner rock. Certainly the post-Colour Haze extended jam ethic that’s taken hold south of Scandinavia in Germany and The Netherlands doesn’t apply to Ponamero Sundown, but what they’re doing on Rodeo Eléctrica’s 13 tracks should still be familiar enough to anyone who’s heard their labelmates and countrymen Abramis Brama or Stonewall Noise Orchestra.

What Rodeo Eléctrica most has in common with Stonerized and with the above-noted Swedish acts is its consistency of songwriting. In a way the album feels very pieced-together from necessary components – they have the softer cuts in “Sorrows” and “Fathomless Nothingness,” the interludes in “Rodeo Eléctrica Part I” and the acoustic “Not the Time,” the slower, more contemplative “The Ghost” and plenty of upbeat rock in between on songs like “Sorrows,” “The Dice,” “1025” and “Shot for Glory” – but however familiar these elements might be, Ponamero Sundown put them to excellent use and place them precisely where they need to be for the record to work. The production is a major factor in the sound shift and in a lot of ways, it sounds like they had a checklist of what a heavy rock album needed and then set about filling it in their writing. As the final moments of “The Ghost” pick up and the song leads into Rodeo Eléctrica’s most memorable cut, “Goddess of the Sun,” I won’t deny they pull it off, but it’s worth acknowledging that Ponamero Sundown – guitarist Anders, bassist Oliver, vocalist Nicke and drummer Peter – sound conscious of every move they’re making here, and no matter how crisp the recording is or the quality of the songcraft, that the inevitable sacrifice is a feeling of spontaneity and novelty in the finished product.

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Waving out the open windows of a speeding supercharged boogie van fueled by riffs and secondhand smoke, Swedish stoner rockers Ponamero Sundown don’t care if it’s grass, gas or ass — everyone rides for free. As they issue their first full-length following several demos, the aptly-titled Stonerized (Transubstans), this fuzzsome foursome emit 12 tracks of classic ’90s-style stoner groove brought into the 21st Century with modern production and slick tones.

There’s a little bit of everything within the genre of stone, and even some elements drawn from without — the chorus riff of “Curtain Call,” for example, seems to be culled from Annie Lennox‘s “Sweet Dreams” — but mostly one can point to a riff or a segment and place it somewhere within the canon. “Rotten Religion” is a little darker, but “Live the Lie” sparks a bowl of And the Circus Left Town-era Kyuss and “Doctor of Evil” resonates old Dozer and Truckfighters‘ thoughtful neo-fuzz. It’s a balance of what you’d expect and what you’d probably expect a little less. Some Colour Haze-style guitar leads the way for “Intermission (Heartbreak Disease),” which ultimately warps into a The Awesome Machine-style build. Ponamero Sundown mix it all well enough to come out with an individual sound, if one well in place within its scene.

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