Posted in audiObelisk on March 27th, 2019 by JJ Koczan
Brooklyn trio Slush make an offering of Lizard Skin on March 29, self-releasing the seven-song/50-minute long-player as their follow-up to the fuckall charm of 2016’s American Demons (review here). An current of experimentalism runs beneath the tube-blower fuzz of songs like “Golden Seam” and the slow-marching “Skeleton Queen,” prevailing through a sashimi-raw production that makes its anti-presence felt quickly on opening track “Graveyard,” however misleading — and there’s intent behind that, make no mistake — the leadoff’s punkishness might otherwise be, like if Ramones grew up listening to Nebula, or maybe the other way around.
Fuck it. Point is, Slush come out throwing curves at your head, and that doesn’t really stop just because once “Graveyard” and “Golden Seam” lead into the title-track and “Skeleton Queen” there’s a little bit of context for comparison. It’s freaked out. Not in the same way as the psych-blamo of the three-piece’s alter-ego unit Hot Knives — why not combine the two bands; Hot Slush; you’re welcome — but freaked out enough to make the title-track a down-home acoustic grunge number with a considered arrangement of backing vocals and some accomplished noodling. Because when you’re going to have expectation take a back seat, you might as well just tie it to the roof of the car instead.
Them Slushies cap side A with the slow-nodding tonal thickness of “Skeleton Queen” and drift into hypnosis past the halfway-point of the tracklist centerpiece only to cut to feedback and turn out a more active ending, driven there by the restless drums of Tom Barnes as bassist Joe Dahlstrom and guitarist/vocalist Alex Boehm careen around the newfound central groove. It’s plenty heavy but a locked in moment all the same and soothing for that, a quick bit of security ahead of the B side’s own headed-out movement, which begins with “Megalodon,” renewing the vocal approach of “Graveyard” atop a shuffling progression that leads to a noisy solo late in the track with enough swagger that it’s easy to roll with it.
And of course before they get down to business in the 12-minute let’s-just-do-it-all-at-once finale “On the Silver Globe,” there’s “Cortex the Killer,” a mostly-instrumental (but for the last minute or so) exploration of Western-style acoustics and string-ish drone that’s no less trance-inducing than anything “Skeleton Queen” brought forth, but of course in its own context. And maybe it’s the initial lumber of “On the Silver Globe” that takes my weary head to the Melvins, but the start is barely the start of what the capper has to say, digging into earliest-Electric Wizard-style unabashed Sabbathery with reckless glee and teasing the inevitable into-oblivion jam a couple times before the actual point of departure. I won’t spoil it, but once you’re inside, there’s no getting out. Not that you’re looking for one.
The thing about even that stretch of freaky freaked-out freakery though is that Slush know what they’re doing, and that’s where the biggest distinction comes in between Lizard Skin and AmericanDemons. For sure, both have exploration as a key component, and I expect and hope that would continue to be the case with whatever Slush might do next, but there’s a sense of purpose behind these songs that brings them to a different level in terms of execution. Side A makes that plain and side B reinforces it, with “On the Silver Globe” as something of a victory lap for the accomplishment of their intent.
Keep an open mind and check out the premiere of “On the Silver Globe” via the player below. Some comment from the band follows. Album is out Friday.
Please enjoy:
Slush on “On the Silver Globe”:
“On the Silver Globe” is a stolen title — I got it from a movie by Andrzej Zulawski, one of my favorite directors (most famous for his gorey, psychedelic rumination on infidelity, Possession, starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani). Silver Globe was supposed to be Zulawski’s magnum opus. It’s a visually stunning sci-fi masterpiece to rival the best by Tarkovsky, but to make a long story short it’s a miracle the film ever got made (look it up! the history of the movie itself is wild).
Sonically, I was really trying to stuff everything I love about rock and roll into one song. I wanted to weave blown-out, dense riffs with a heavy garage drone and still maintain a hypnotic, entrancing effect throughout… I remember bringing it to the band and Joe and Tom gave real movement to it right away, which was the missing necessary element for such an excessive, indulgent song. It always feels good when a song clicks right away. Although my memory is terrible, generally speaking, I do recall playing it for the first time and us all taking it in the same direction pretty much instinctively.
The undulating feel Joe and Tom both give the song also inspired the lyrics, which loosely allude to a Lovecraftian tale of human sacrifice by drowning and subsequent transcendence into outer space. Each song on Lizard Skin has a similar underlying narrative and together they compose a complete, semi-secret story that lies beneath the album’s surface. As the last song on the album, “Silver Globe” also serves as the ending to that story.
Out March 29, Lizard Skin was self-produced and mastered by Bob Weston of Chicago Mastering, and will be pressed as a double LP on natural white vinyl.
SLUSH is: Joe Dahlstrom (bass) Tom Barnes (drums) Alex Boehm (guitar and vocals)
Ode to Doom is coming up on three years of presenting shows on the regular at Arlene’s Grocery in Manhattan, and I’m proud to have had this site associated with it more or less since the outset. Claudia Crespo, who runs Freebird Productions, has been putting together killer lineups all the while and on March 20 — next week, y’all — she’ll present Geezer, Grass, The Ancient Stone and Slush for a four-bands-on-a-weeknight bill the likes of which will make you want to take the next day off.
The kings of Kingston, Geezer headline as they support their recently issued Spiral FiresEP (review here), and they’re joined at the top of the bill by Grass, whose demo has been making the rounds of interwebular hyperbole. The Ancient Stone open and Slush follow shortly thereafter as the night gets a reasonably early start at 7:30, all very civilized, all very heavy. It’ll be a good time.
When Ode to Doom started, I thought part of the appeal was that it was a reminder of 10-15 years ago before Brooklyn took over as New York’s creative hub — I guess Queens is next? wait till the craft-brew crowd takes Weehawken — but at this point, Ode to Doom has built its own community and made its own impact, true to the history of the basement barroom shows of yore, but consistently admirable most of all for its forward-thinking nature.
Bottom line, I guess is it’s worth getting off your ass and going. I don’t say that about everything, but the truth is Manhattan needs less couture and more culture and this is how that happens. Support creative work.
Info follows:
March 20 – Ode To Doom W/ Geezer, Slush, Grass, & The Ancient Stone
DOORS AT 7!!! The Ancient Stone at 7:30 Slush at 8:30 Geezer at 9:30 Grass at 10:30
Thus ends another successful Quarterly Review. And by successful I mean I survived. There were a few minutes there when I actually thought about spreading this out to six days, doing another batch of 10 on Monday, but then what happens? Then it’s seven days, then eight, then nine, and before I know it I’m just doing 10 reviews every day and it’s more of a daily review than a quarterly one. Next week we’ll get back to whatever passes for normality around this place, and at the end of June, I’ll have another batch to roll with. Maybe the beginning of July, depending on time. In any case, thank you for reading this week. I hope you’ve found something in all this that you’ve dug, and that this final round offers something else that resonates.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Chron Goblin, Backwater
Calgary party rockers Chron Goblin pay homage to Seattle with a song named after the city on their third album, Backwater (on Ripple Music), but they continue to have way more in common with Portland, Oregon. The follow-up to 2013’s Life for the Living (review here) pushes into psychedelic groove early in its title-track and gets bluesy for most of the subsequent “The Wailing Sound,” but it seems even that song can’t resist the urge to throw down and have a good time by the end, and cuts like “Give Way,” the galloping opener “Fuller” and the requisite “Hard Living” reaffirm the band’s commitment to heavy riffs and positive vibes. The stylistic elephant in the room continues to be Red Fang, but as they’ve done all along, Chron Goblin work in shades of other influences in heavy rock – if they were from the Eastern Seaboard, I’d call it Roadsaw – and put a stamp of their own on the style.
“Mercenary Blues” is near-immediate in telegraphing the level of heft Slabdragger will emit across their second album, Rise of the Dawncrusher, which tops an hour in five tracks (one of them four minutes long) and shifts between clean vocals, screams and growls from bassist/vocalist Yusuf Tary and guitarist/vocalist Sam Thredder as drummer Jack Newham holds together tempo shifts no less drastic. The shorter cut, “Evacuate!,” is an extreme take on heavy rock, but as Slabdragger move through the extended “Shrine of Debauchery” (12:23), “Dawncrusher Rising” (15:16) and “Implosion Rites” (17:20), their methods prove varied enough so that their material is more than just an onslaught of thickened distortion. I wouldn’t call it progressive exactly, but neither is it lunkheaded in its intention or execution, as the chanted melodies buried deep in “Shrine of Debauchery”’s lumber, derived perhaps in part from Conan and Sleep but beholden to neither so much as its own righteous purposes.
Finnish heavy psychedelic rockers Jupiter take a decidedly naturalist position when it comes to their style. Yeah, there are some effects on the guitars throughout Interstellar Chronidive, the trio’s second album behind 2014’s Your Eccentric State of Mind, but it’s more about what the three players can accomplish with dynamic tempo and mood changes than it is creating a wash, and that gives songs like “Stonetrooper” and “Dispersed Matter/Astral Portal” a classic feel despite a decidedly modern production. “Premonitions” provides raucous fuzz worthy of any next-gen stoners you want to name, and the 14-minute “In Flux” answers its own initial thrust with and expansive, liquefied jam that’s all the more emblematic of the organic core to their approach, Hendrix-derived but not Hendrix-emulating. Bright guitar tone, rich bass and swinging drums aren’t necessarily unfamiliar elements, but the touches of space rock narration on “Dispersed Matter/Astral Portal” and the consuming nod of closer “Vantage Point” assure there’s no shortage of personality to go around.
Also stylized as IZ? with a long accent over the ‘o,’ Izo is the self-titled debut from Italian double-guitar instrumental four-piece Izo, who bookend four flowing and densely weighted progressions with an intro and outro to add to the atmospheric breadth. Rather than choose between heaviness or ambience, Izo – guitarists Paolo Barone and Maurizio Calò, bassist Francesco de Pascali and drummer Luca Greco – play both into each other so that a song like “Hikkomori” is as engaging in its heft as it is hypnotic. That might be easier to do without vocals, but it’s essential to Izo’s approach, and something that, for their debut, sets up future expansion of post-metal and psychedelic elements. I’m not sure if there’s a theme or narrative for the album, but consistent use of Japanese language and imagery ties the material together all the same, and Izo emerge from their first album having shown a clearheadedness of purpose that can only continue to serve them well.
Cultist made their introductory statement in the early hours of 2016 with Three Candles, a five-song EP from the social media-averse Cleveland, Ohio, trio featuring members of Skeletonwitch, Mockingbird and Howl. In the wall of fuzz they construct, the swing injected into their rhythms and the use of multiple vocalists, there’s a strong undercurrent of Uncle Acid to “Path of the Old One,” but “Consuming Damnation” distinguishes itself with a more aggressive take, rawer in its melodies, and the creeping closer “Eternal Dark” is up to something entirely more doomed. How this balance will play out with the more familiar riff-patterning in “Follow Me” is the central question, but for their first tracks to be made public, Cultist’s Three Candles offers fullness of sound and the realization of an aesthetic purpose. Yes, there’s room to grow, but they already have a better handle on what they want to do than a lot of bands, so it should be interesting to keep up.
Ultra-thick, ultra-dank, Haoma is the work of Swedish duo R (bass/vocals) and S (drums), and the three-tracker Eternal Stash is their second self-released EP. The offering takes its title from the opener and longest track (immediate points), and wastes no time with subtlety in getting down on molten Cisneros-style stoner-doom grooves. Sleep meets Om isn’t a huge divide to cross, but there’s a blown-out sensibility to the vocals as well that speaks to some element of Electric Wizard at play, and the overarching roughness suits Haoma’s tonal crunch well. Even when they break to wah bass in the second half of “Eternal Stash” to set up the ensuing jam, this underlying harshness remains, and “Unearthly Creatures” and “Orbital Flight” build on that, the latter with a march that feels more decidedly individual even if constructed on familiar ground. Heavy, raw, unpretentious celebration of groove is almost always welcome by me, and so Haoma’s Eternal Stash is likewise.
Another boon to Poland’s emerging heavy rock scene, Wroclaw’s Spaceslug slime their way out of the ground with their debut long-player, Lemanis, a seven-cut paean to weighted tone and laid back roll. Vocally, the trio seem to take a cue from the Netherlands’ Sungrazer, but their riffs are far more dense and while the penultimate interlude “Quintessence” and the earlier “Galectelion” demonstrate a sense of spaciousness, the context in which that arrives is much more weighted and, particularly in the second half of “Supermassive,” feels culled from the Sleep school of Iommic idolatry. No complaints. The record clocks in at 43 minutes all told and in no way overstays its welcome, rounding out with the nine-minute title-track, an instrumental that’s probably not improvised but comes across as exploratory all the same. The CD version is out through BSFD Records, but don’t be surprised when someone picks it up for a vinyl issue, as both the front-to-back flow and the artwork seem to be made for it.
An element of twang that seems present even in the most uproarious moments of Slush’ American Demons tape comes to the fore with the brief “Leshy,” a quick, fleetly-strummed bit of slide guitar the follows highlight cut “Bathysphere” and precedes “Death Valley,” both of which bask full-on in the garage shake, proto-punk vibe and anything goes swagger the Brooklynite trio have on offer throughout their third EP. That countrified twist plays well alongside the drawling skate rock of “In the Flesh,” which seems to take on some of The Shrine’s West Coast skate vibes with a twist of New York fuckall, and the quick crotchal thrust off “Silk Road,” which serves as Slush’ most purely punkish moment. “Death Valley” closes out with a tale of drugs and the desert, the vocals somewhere between Misfits and early Nick Cave, drenched in attitude and accompanied by fuzz that seems to be likewise. Bonus points for the silver tape and copious included art and info.
Strange spirits are afoot throughout Menimals’ Menimals, the maybe-debut from the Italian troupe who engage wantonly in the proliferation of post-Mike Patton creepy darkjazz across five cuts of sparse, spacious weirdness. Issued through Phonosphera/Riot Season, it’s a work of high atmospheric density but ultimately more about mood than sonic impact, evoking complex shapes – dodecahedrons, tetrahedrons, octahedrons – as a mirror for its own quizzical mission. The kind of record that those who don’t spend time trying to figure it out are going to have more fun with, it makes its most effective impression on “Transitioning from a Cube to the Octahedron” on side B, evoking minimalist drone rock atmospheres as whispered vocals tie it to the rest of Menimals’ bizarre vibe. That’s not to take away from the noisy finish of closer “Bird on the Wind as a Hinge,” which follows, just to note that Menimals manage to somehow find balance in all the subdued seething and resonant experimentalism.
By way of a confession, I wanted to end this batch of 50 reviews with something I knew I dug, and that distinction goes to Houston rockers Linus Pauling Quartet, whose latest full-length, Ampalanche, is released via the label wing of Italian ‘zine Vincebus Eruptum. An album that offers some of the most pretense-free rock flute I’ve ever heard on “Slave to the Die,” it’s a down-home weirdo rocker that might, at a moment’s notice, plunge full-on into psychedelia in “Sometimes” or, say, include a 49-minute echoing space-drone “Vi, de Druknede (We, the Drowned)” as a download-only bonus track, and the fact that Linus Pauling Quartet can always be relied on for something different but consistent in charm and the quality of songwriting is not to be taken for granted, whether it’s the Midwestern noise rock of “Brisket” or the fuzzy roll of dreamy album-closer “Alive.” Yeah, I was doing myself a favor by finishing with Ampalanche. I have absolutely zero regrets. Linus Pauling Quartet continue to be woefully underappreciated.
of “Skeleton Queen” and drift into hypnosis past the halfway-point of the tracklist centerpiece only to cut to feedback and turn out a more active ending, driven there by the restless drums of Tom Barnes as bassist Joe Dahlstrom and guitarist/vocalist Alex Boehm careen around the newfound central groove. It’s plenty heavy but a locked in moment all the same and soothing for that, a quick bit of security ahead of the B side’s own headed-out movement, which begins with “Megalodon,” renewing the vocal approach of “Graveyard” atop a shuffling progression that leads to a noisy solo late in the track with enough swagger that it’s easy to roll with it.
