I’ve never been so fortunate as to see Los Angeles trio Mountain Tamer live, and for the better part of the last six years — through their MTN TMR demo (review here), their signing to Argonauta for their 2016 self-titled debut LP (review here), the jump to Nasoni and Magnetic Eye for the follow-up, 2018’s Godfortune//Dark Matters (review here), and most recently, a shift to Heavy Psych Sounds for 2020’s Psychosis Ritual (review here), as well as various singles along the way — I’ve been trying to reconcile the sinister edge in their sound. Just what it is that makes Mountain Tamer who they are as a band.
Because they’ve always been individual. I don’t think you get to notch so many impressive labels under your belt — three records, four imprints — unless there’s something unique about you, especially as a young group. After watching their ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ stream on a sunny Saturday afternoon, as well as their ‘Couchlock and Rock’ interview segment with ‘Mojave’ showrunner Ryan Jones as guitarist/vocalist Andrew Hall and drummer Casey Garcia recounted tour stories of watching a naked man on PCP be brought down by police and firefighters at six in the morning in Oklahoma, I feel like I have a little better understanding of where they’re coming from.
Angry psych. Hall noted it in his interview as well, that he was having a rough time seeing his pedal board while they played — the word “challenge” was used multiple times, which took as diplomacy-speak for “fucking pain in the ass” — but that seems only to have fueled in their performance what was already in the songs the entire time. They’re pissed. There’s a lot of psychedelia out there today, but not a lot of it is legit angry. There’s political commentary, there’s party-psych, mellow-peaceful-groovy psych, space rock, all that stuff. Mountain Tamer have found a way to hone inner disaffection into a lysergic rager in a way that no one else I’ve heard does.
It comes through on their records, and listening back to Psychosis Ritual, it’s there for sure, but the rawness of their form was front and center for the ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ stream. As they have been for the entire series, sound and production level were both top notch, and where their trippy garage noise metal might otherwise have been eaten by the expanse of Joshua Tree National Park, Hall, Garcia and bassist Dave Teget came through sounding full, mad, and purposeful. It’s not that their psych is a bummer, but if you get it drunk enough it might break something.
Teget, who was the only member absent from the interview as Jones led a taste-test of Mountain Tamer‘s new pineapple and cactus fruit hot sauce — impressively, they grew their own peppers — plays like a headbanger, and headbangs while he plays. Watching him tear into Psychosis Ritual cuts like set-opener “Warlock” and “Turoc Maximus Antonis,” I was reminded of Scott Reeder in old Kyuss videos: hair in front of face, stomping around like at any moment he might just stumble down, some straight-out circle headbangs in Teget‘s case. It was not laid back. It was not serene. It was animalia, suited to the wilder surroundings of not-a-venue as he kicked up sand along the way. Through performances by Earthless (review here), Nebula (review here) and Spirit Mother (review here), he has been the most physical player yet shown in ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ series. If this were a high school yearbook, he’d easily walk away with Most Likely to Spill Beer on Stage. I mean that as a compliment.
Only the title-track of Psychosis Ritual wasn’t played, and the three-piece brought out “Funeral of a Dog” and the downer-boogie “Living in Vain Pt. II” to close, the former finding Hall breaking out a maraca before tossing it into the sand and hitting into the next riff. “Chained” and “Scorched Earth” might’ve been the most resolutely pissed off they got, but that edge was right there from “Warlock,” and even as things smoothed out, “Death in the Woods” and “Black Noise” made sure their grungy aggro-spaciousness was given its fair shake. Kudos go to Garcia on the subtle class of his play and his ability to pull together the guitar spreading out in one direction and the bass digging in in another; these fascinating, sometimes conflicting impulses in the band’s sound.
Conspicuously absent was Mad Alchemy. The famed psychedelic lightshow purveyor has been on board for at least part of each stream to-date, but Mountain Tamer played the entirety of their set by sunlight, so I guess that was that. Kind of hard to light up the desert when you’re competing with a literal star. Fair enough. The 36-minute set will nonetheless make for a killer live record (not that I’ve heard it, but yeah, I have; don’t tell anybody), to be delivered in the US by ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ itself and in Europe by Heavy Psych Sounds. If they haven’t yet, Mountain Tamer should consider doing their next LP completely live in the studio. If ever there was a heavy psych band tailor-made for Steve Albini, here they are.
‘Live in the Mojave Desert’ is slated to continue in two weeks with Stöner, the anticipated new collaboration between Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri. Worth noting that Mountain Tamer were ‘Vol. 5’ in the series and Stöner ‘Vol. 4,’ but if we’re running out of order, my only response is a shrug. Jones and his company of humans and drones have proven at this point they can put on a show. I’m happy to tune in, whatever number we’re on.
Mountain Tamer, “Living in Vain Pt. II” from ‘Live in the Mojave Desert’
Posted in Reviews on December 21st, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Kind of a spur of the moment thing, this Quarterly Review. I’ve been adding releases all the while, of course, but my thought was to do this after my year-end list went up, and I realized, hey, if I’ve got like 70 records I haven’t reviewed yet, maybe there’s some of that stuff worth considering. So here we are. I’ve pushed back my best-of-2020 stuff and basically swapped it with the Quarterly Review. Does it matter to you? I seriously, seriously doubt it, but I believe in transparency and that’s what’s up. Thought I’d let you know. And yeah, this is going to go into next week, take us through the X-mas holiday this Friday, so whatever. You celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine. Let’s roll.
Quarterly Review #1-10:
Boris, No
As a general project, reviewing Boris is damn near pointless. One might as well review the moon: “uh, it’s big and out there most of the time?” The only reason to do it is either to exercise one’s own need to hyperbolize or help the band sell records. Well, Boris doesn’t need my push and I don’t need to tell them how great they are. No is 40 minutes of the widely and wildly lauded Japanese heavy rock(s) experimentalists trying to riff away existing in 2020, delving high speed into hardcore here and there and playing off that with grueling sludge, punk, garage-metal and the penultimate “Loveless,” which is kind of Boris being their own genre. Much respect to the band, and I suppose one might critique Boris for, what?, being so Boris-y?, but there really isn’t a ton that hasn’t been said about them because such a ton has. I’m not trying to disparage their work at all — No is just what you’d expect as regards defying expectation — but after 20-plus years, there’s only so many ways one wants to call a band genius.
Kind of a soft-opening for Edinburgh’s DVNE as an act on Metal Blade Records, unless of course one counts the two songs on the Omega Severer EP itself, which are post-metallic beasts of the sort that would and should make The Ocean blush. Progressive, heavy, and remarkably ‘next-wave’ feeling, DVNE‘s awaited follow-up to 2017’s Asheran may only be about 17 and a half minutes long, but it bodes remarkably well as the band master a torrent of intensity on the 10-minute opening title-cut and answer that with the immediately galloping “Of Blade and Carapace,” smashing battle-axe riffing and progressive shimmer against each other and finding it to be an alchemy of their own. Album? One suspects not until they can tour for it, but if Omega Severer is DVNE serving notice, consider the message received loud, clear, dynamic, crushing, spacious, and so on. Already veterans of Psycho Las Vegas, they sound like a band bent on capturing a broader audience in the metallic sphere.
There’s no questioning where Hydra‘s heart is at on their debut full-length, From Light to the Abyss. It belongs to the devil and it belongs to Black Sabbath. The Polish four-piece riff hard and straightforward throughout most of the five-track offering (released by Piranha Music), and samples set the kind of atmosphere that should be familiar enough to the converted — “No One Loves Like Satan” reminds of Uncle Acid in its initial channel-changing and swaggering riff alike — but doomly centerpiece “Creatures of the Woods” and the layered vocal melodies late in closer “Magical Mind” perhaps offer a glimpse at the direction the band could take from here. What matters though is where Hydra are at today, and that’s bringing riffs and nod to the converted among the masses, and From Light to the Abyss offers no pretense otherwise. It is doom rock for doom rockers, grooves to be grooved to. They’re not void of ambition by any means — their songwriting makes that clear — but their traditionalism is sleeve-worn, which if you’re going to have it, is right where it should be.
Dead Meadow guitarist/vocalist Jason Simon follows 2016’s Familiar Haunts (review here) with the genre-spanning A Venerable Wreck, finding folk roots in obscure beats and backwards this-and-that, country in fuzz, ramble in space, and no shortage of experimentalism besides. A Venerable Wreck consists of 12 songs and though there are times where it can feel disjointed, that becomes part of the ride. It’s not all supposed to make sense. Yet what happens by the time you get around to “No Entrance No Exit” is that Simon (and a host of cohorts) has set his own context broad enough so that the drone reach of “Hollow Lands” and sleek, organ-laced indie of closer “Without Reason or Right” can coexist without any real interruption of flow between them. The question with A Venerable Wreck isn’t so much whether the substance is there, it’s whether the listener is open to it. Welcome to psychedelic America. Please inject this snake venom and turn in your keys when you leave.
You won’t hear me take away from the opening psych-scorch hook of “Mindbreaker” or the fuzzed-on, boogie-down, -up, and -sideways of “Black Annis” which follows, but there’s something extra fun about hearing Frog Island’s Cherry Choke jam out a 13-minute, drum-solo-inclusive version of “6ix and 7even” that makes Raising Salzburg Rockhouse even more of a reminder of how underrated both they are as a band and Mat Bethancourt is as a player. Look no further than “Domino” if you want absolute proof. The whole band rips it up at the Austrian gig, which was recorded in 2015 as they supported their third and still-most-recent full-length, Raising the Waters (review here), but Bethancourt puts on a Hendrixian clinic in the nine-minute cut from 2011’s A Night in the Arms of Venus (review here), which is actually less of a clinic than it is pure distorted swagger followed by a mellow “cheers, thanks” before diving into “Used to Call You Friend.” A 38-minute set would be perfect for an vinyl release, and anytime Cherry Choke want to get around to putting together a fourth studio album, well, that’ll be just fine too.
It’s a special breed of aggro that emerges as a result of living in the most densely populated state in the union, and New Jersey’s Pariiah have it to spare. Bringing together sludge tonality with elder-style New York hardcore lumbering riffs on their Trip Machine Laboratories tape, Swallowed by Fog, they exude a thickened brand of pissed off that’s outright going to be too confrontation for many who take it on. But if you want a middle finger to the face, this is what it sounds like, and the six songs (compiled into four on the digital version of the release) come and go entirely without pretense and leave little behind except bruises and the promise of more to come. They’re a new band, started in this most wretched of years, but there’s no learning curve whatsoever among the members of Devoid of Faith, The Nolan Gate, Kill Your Idols, Changeörder and others. I’d go to Maplewood to see these cats. I’m just saying. Maybe even Elizabeth.
So you’ve got both members of Holly Hunt in a four-piece sludging out with spacey synth and the band is named after a Star Trek character? Not to get too personal, but that’s going to pique my interest one way or the other. Saavik — and they clearly prefer the Kirstie Alley version, rather than Robin Curtis, going by drummer Beatriz Monteavaro‘s artwork — are damn near playing space rock by the end of “He’s Dead Jim,” the opener of their self-titled debut EP, but even that’s affected by a significant tonal weight in Didi Aragon‘s bass and the guitar of Gavin Perry, however much Ryan Rivas‘ synth and effects-laced vocals might seem to float overhead, but “Meld” rolls along at a steadier nod, and “Horizon” puts the synth more in the lead without becoming any less heavy for doing so. Likewise, “Red Sun” calls to mind Godflesh in its proto-machine metal stomp, but there’s more concern in Saavik‘s sound with expanse than just pure crush, and that shows up in fascinating ways in these songs.
There’s been a dark vibe all along nestled into Mountain Tamer‘s sound, and that’s certainly the case on Psychosis Ritual, with which the Los Angeles-based trio make their debut on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s their third full-length overall behind 2018’s Godfortune // Dark Matters (review here) and 2016’s self-titled debut (review here), and it finds their untamed-feeling psychedelia rife with that same threat of violence, not necessarily thematically as much as sonically, like the songs themselves are the weapon about to be turned on the listener. Maybe the buzz of “Warlock” or the fuckall echo of the prior-issued single “Death in the Woods” (posted here) aren’t out there trying to be “Hammer Smashed Face” or anything, but neither is this the hey-bruh-good-times heavy jams for which Southern California is known these days. Consider the severity of “Turoc Maximus Antonis” or the finally-released screams in closer “Black Noise,” which bookends Psychosis Ritual with the title-track and seems at last to be the point where whatever grim vibe these guys are riding finally consumes them. Mountain Tamer continue to be unexpected and righteous in kind.
Hypnotic Estonian psychedelic krautrock instrumentals not your thing? Well that sounds like a personal problem Centre El Muusa are ready to solve. The evolved-from-duo four-piece get spaced out amid the semi-motorik repetitions of their self-titled debut (on Sulatron), and that seems to suit them quite well, thanksabunch. Drone trips and essential swirl brim with solar-powered pulsations and you can set your deflectors on maximum and route all the secondaries to reinforce if you want, there’s still a decent chance 9:53 opener an longest track “Turkeyfish” (immediate points, double for the appropriately absurd title) is going to sweep you off what you used to call your feet when that organ line hits at about six minutes in. That’s to say nothing of the cosmic collision later in “Burning Lawa” or the just-waiting-for-a-Carl-Sagan-voiceover “Mia” that follows. Even the 3:46 “Ain’t Got Enough Mojo” lives long enough to prove itself wrong. Interstellar tape transmissions fostered by obvious weirdos in the great out-there in “Szolnok,” named for a city in Hungary that, among other things, hosts the goulash festival. Right fucking on.
The first Population II album, a 2017 self-titled, was comprised of two tracks, each long enough to consume a 12″ side. Somehow it’s fitting with the Montreal-based singing-drummer trio’s aesthetic that their second long-player, À la Ô Terre, would take a completely different tack, employing shorter freakouts like “L’Offrande” and “La Nuit” and the garage-rocking “La Danse” and what-if-Jefferson–Airplane-but-on-Canadian-mushrooms “À la Porte de Demain” and still-more-drifting finisher “Je Laisse le Soleil Briller” amid the more stretched out “Attaction,” the space-buzzer “Ce n’est Réve” while cutting a middle ground in the greaked-out (I was gonna type “freaked out” and hit a typo and I’m keeping it) “Il eut un Silence dans le Ciel,” which also betrays the jazzy underpinnings that somehow make all of À la Ô Terre come across as progressive instead of haphazard. From the start to the close, you don’t know what’s coming next, and just because that’s by design doesn’t make it less effective. If anything, it makes Population II all the more impressive.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 26th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
There’s been a menacing undercurrent to Mountain Tamer‘s take on psychedelia since their inception, and it would appear that the forthcoming Psychosis Ritual will continue that thread at least in some measure. The Los Angeles trio have newly unveiled “Warlock,” track two of the seven-cut release, and the song brims with freak-punk intensity, churning riffs around wide-spaced echoes that seem to radiate ill intent, not in that hey-let’s-go-kill-ladies kind of way, but definitely in some fashion that’s up to no good. And that likes being up to no good.
Dark magic, and whatnot. I said last week when the band got signed that they’d probably have a track up to go with preorders. Look at me, seeing patterns.
Preorders for Psychosis Ritual are open and available through Heavy Psych Sounds, and the album has been confirmed for a Sept. 25 release date, which also happens to be my wedding anniversary. Guess it’s a Friday this year. In 2004, it was a Saturday.
Album cover and details came down the PR wire:
Heavy Psych Sounds to announce MOUNTAIN TAMER brand new album PSYCHOSIS RITUAL – presale starts TODAY!!!
Today we are extremely proud to start the presale of the MOUNTAIN TAMER brand new album PSYCHOSIS RITUAL !!!
Psychosis Ritual is the sum of Mountain Tamer’s first decade of exploration into the psychedelic arts. The album takes the band on a journey through the occult rhythms and tones of worlds forgotten. Each track is a new chapter of Mountain Tamer riffing their way into uncharted territory. For this ritual, you are the sacrifice…
Mountain Tamer is Andru Hall (Guitar/Vocals), Casey Garcia (Drums), and David Teget (Bass). Psychosis Ritual was recorded and mixed by Salem’s Bend guitarist Robert Parker, with mastering by Mike Tarsia at Sigma Sounds Studios. This recording is the most cohesive and lucid experience Mountain Tamer has yet to offer.
The album artwork by photographer Dillon Vaughn and tattoo artist Derek Pratt only adds to the singular vision of Psychosis Ritual by providing beautifully lysergic visuals that are inseparable from the music itself.
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 18th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
For those in the States, I know a good portion of Heavy Psych Sounds‘ distribution was formerly handled through the All That is Heavy store. How that whole situation has shaken or will shake out, I don’t know, but it seems to have gotten ugly from my limited, reading-posts-on-social-media-based understanding. Nonetheless, the Italian imprint which by now is one of the world’s foremost purveyors of quality heavy pressed forward, and Los Angeles upstarts Mountain Tamer are a choice snag. The band issued their “Death in the Woods” single (posted here) last year to coincide with a tour that also followed the arrival of their second album, Godfortune//Dark Matters (review here), which came out in 2018 through Nasoni and Magnetic Eye.
There isn’t an exact release date given for Psychosis Ritual, which will be Mountain Tamer‘s debut for Heavy Psych Sounds, but preorders start on June 24 and I’d expect more info, artwork and maybe even a song premiere around then as well.
Until next week, then:
Heavy Psych Sounds to announce a new band signing: US heavy rockers MOUNTAIN TAMER!!!
We are so stoked to welcome in our roster a brand new band.
Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the Los Angeles based heavy rockers MOUNTAIN TAMER !!!
The band will release their brand new album Psychosis Ritual via Heavy Psych Sounds.
ALBUM PRESALE STARTS JUNE 24th
SAYS THE BAND:
For Psychosis Ritual, we really wanted to work with a label that could bring our music to a new audience and make our long time fans proud. To sign with a label that has done so much for rock n roll and worked with legendary artists has been a dream come true!
BIOGRAPHY
Mountain Tamer takes the expansive vision of pure psychedelia and pares it down through the brooding and focused lens of doom and stoner rock. Guitarist/vocalist Andrew Hall, drummer Casey Garcia and bassist Dave Teget, formed their signature fusion of heavy psych rock in 2011 just outside of San Francisco. Now based in Los Angeles, Mountain Tamer’s cult following is built on their DIY ethics, inimitable songwriting, and in your face live performances. After self-releasing several demos, the band released their s/t debut album in 2016 on Argonauta Records.
Mountain Tamer toured heavily following the release, playing with notable acts along the way such as Fatso Jetson, Weedeater and Dead Meadow. In 2018, Mountain Tamer teamed with Magnetic Eye and Nasoni Records to release their sophomore album, Godfortune// Dark Matters to critical acclaim for its unique approach and genre bending aesthetics. The band rode this success to a full US tour and appearances at SXSW in 2019. The band quickly followed up with a taste of their upcoming album, Psychosis Ritual, with their single, Death in the Woods. Although only a teaser of their next work, it has quickly become a fan favorite.
MOUNTAIN TAMER is:
Andrew Hall – Guitar/Vocals Casey Garcia – Drums Dave Teget – Bass
