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Album Review: Black Helium, The Wholly Other

Posted in Reviews on August 28th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

black helium the wholly other

The very first thing that The Wholly Other has to offer is tension. A chugging guitar begins the second album from London four-piece Black Helium — and the introduction of drummer Diogo Gomez to the fold — and it’s soon joined by a militaristic snare as the aggressively-titled “Hippie on a Slab” begins to unfurl. Offered up through Riot Season Records, The Wholly Other, both the name of the album and its execution, would seem to be deriving from Black Helium‘s drive toward individuality in heavy psychedelia and beyond.

The band — here guitarist/vocalists Stuart Gray and Davey Mulka and bassist/vocalist/graphic artist Beck Harvey alongside Gomez — made their debut in 2018 with the likewise ambitious and confrontational Primitive Fuck (review here, and it wouldn’t necessarily be correct to call The Wholly Other classier in its delivery, but it is obvious in listening to its six-track/41-minute run that Black Helium learned a few crucial lessons from their time in the studio and were able to translate those into this batch of material.

They didn’t lack confidence before — one does not call a record Primitive Fuck in a timid spirit — but there’s an element of direction to The Wholly Other that comes through likewise in its individual pieces and in the front-to-back listening experience. Tonally and melodically rich, they are brazen enough stylistically to require their audience’s attention and grab it without asking, and the effect of “Hippie on a Slab” is to do precisely that, with the already noted tension of its rhythm as well as its deceptively memorable chorus. It is a clever opener, with a short intro of birdsong before the guitar and hi-hat kick in — there’s a floor tom thud that starts off as well — and the ensuing energy buildup that seems headed toward release over the song’s first 90 seconds before… it stops. Dead.

It’s just for a few seconds, but it’s a really important few seconds. In the first minute and a half of The Wholly Other, Black Helium are telling their audience to broaden their expectations, and maybe even to raise them somewhat. This isn’t going to be simple genre fare, a runthrough of well trod clichés and familiar elements. In subsequent side A tracks “Two Masters” and the 10-minute “Death Station of the Goddess,” respectively, they directly reference Nirvana‘s “Drain You” in another build and make the likewise pivotal choice of keeping the established vocal chant mellow even as the track hits into one of the album’s most consuming washes of tone. In making choices like these, Black Helium simply put themselves on another level of songcraft, and whether this is done in calculated fashion — a kind of progressive decisiveness behind each nuance throughout — or in the raw spirit of what comes out of the jam room by collaborative instinct, the same holds true.

black helium (photo by Steve Gullick)

There are, of course, holdover aspects from Primitive Fuck that carry into The Wholly Other. “Hippie on a Slab”‘s later reaches play cacophony over atmospheric spaciousness, and even the Britgrunge of “Two Masters” rampages through a dense fuzz as it makes its way back toward its central riff to close. “Death Station of the Goddess” is an inevitable focal point in its graceful procession and ensuing mania, which is something that its 10:34 side B counterpart “Pink Bolt” — positioned as the centerpiece of that side’s three tracks rather than as the album’s finale; another clever move to contradict genre convention — doesn’t try to match, instead playing out in less linear fashion as it moves from heavy post-rock airiness into a wandering jam and resolving in a lumbering plod that tops the Electric Wizard-style horrormaking of the sample-topped roller “One Way Trip” just before and rumbles beneath its own noisy crescendo.

Shit is massive. Tell your friends or someone else will.

Can it be that after all this, Black Helium find some kind of collective resolution? “Teetering on the Edge,” which rounds out The Wholly Other feels like a peace offering in following “Pink Bolt.” As though the four-piece were scooping up the melted remnants of their audience’s psyche and saying, “Sorry about that, here’s this now, everybody take a breath.” Assuming the purposeful nature of how the two sides of The Wholly Other play out, with the first two tracks leading into “Death Station of the Goddess” and “Pink Bolt” surrounded on either side — these two more extended pieces playing off the shorter cuts around them — the flow with which Black Helium cap off, as though harnessing the ethereal presence of an ultra-mellow Dead Meadow, isn’t to be understated. They’ve already blown out the airlock. It’s time to explore the vacuum.

So they do, with no less aplomb than they brought to The Wholly Other at its noisiest and most sonically forceful. They never quite return to the tension of “Hippie on a Slab,” even in “Two Masters,” which has its own chug, but the album remains informed by it nonetheless, and the sense of not knowing what to expect at any given turn throughout is something they use masterfully to their advantage when it comes to carving out their sonic persona in the manner they seem to have set as their goal. That too is an outgrowth of the work they did on the debut, marking out a range of avenues they might traverse and, here, forging a modus that fluidly or strikingly draws from among them as best serves the songs. This is harder than it sounds, rarer than it sounds, and certainly ‘other’ enough to be noteworthy.

And when considering the attention to detail Black Helium bring to their second album, one shouldn’t ignore Harvey‘s cover art either, the freaked-out freneticism of it and the geometric shape beneath. The font and positioning of the band’s name would seem to be important as well, and at least to my eyes it recalls the staging of the Now That’s What I Call Music series of top 40 pop compilations. If that is the standard to which Black Helium have set themselves against and what they’re reacting to, their second LP could not be better named. Perhaps most exciting of all, though, is that even after this collection of songs is over, it’s hard to guess how the band might continue their forward creative growth, but whatever manifestations may lay ahead, The Wholly Other is a beast unto itself.

Black Helium, The Wholly Other (2020)

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Riot Season Records website

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Black Helium Set July 24 Release for The Wholly Other

Posted in Whathaveyou on June 24th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

black helium

They open the record with a song called ‘Hippie on a Slab,’ so if there was any doubt London psych freaks Black Helium meant business, that should set the matter at least somewhat to rest. Of course, if such concerns existed at all, it probably wasn’t from those exposed to the band’s 2018 debut, Primitive Fuck (review here), which was every bit the outsider rowdiness one might expect from its name while still taking the time to play with atmospheres like somebody melting a Sabbath record onto a turntable and somehow playing it. It was a weirdo rager, through and through.

One’s expectations are accordingly high for the follow-up, The Wholly Other, which is out next month on Riot Season Records. I haven’t yet, but I’m going to do everything in my power to hear it, as I think out might be just the kick in the ass I need. And by what’s in my power, I mean I’ll probably try to send an email. Hear me roar, and such.

Take it away, PR wire:

black helium the wholly other

BLACK HELIUM RELEASE 2ND LP ‘THE WHOLLY OTHER’ WITH RIOT SEASON RECORDS

Black Helium aim to deliver a lysergic heterogeneous sprawl on this, their second LP ‘The Wholly Other.’ From the blunt thunderous groove of ‘Hippie On A Slab’ to the narcotic tranquillity of ‘Teetering On The Edge’, via the hypnotic ascension of ‘Pink Bolt’.
‘The Wholly Other’ was recorded live over two loud, sweat drenched days in August 2019 by Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse Studio (Green Lung, 11PARANOIAS, Casual Nun), just before the band embarked on a UK tour with Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs.

Black Helium are a four-piece psychedelic rock group, based in London. Never afraid to stray from the beaten path, they traverse aural hallucinatory soundscapes; from detuned Neanderthal rock to deep oceans of introspective blissed out psychedelia. Influences include, amongst many: Amon Duul II, Loop, Hawkwind, The Stooges, The Groundhogs, Spacemen 3 and Electric Wizard.

ARTIST Black Helium
TITLE The Wholly Other
CATALOGUE REPOSELP093
LABEL Riot Season Records
RELEASE DATE 24th July 2020

SIDE A
1 HIPPIE ON A SLAB (7:12)
2 TWO MASTERS (5:05)
3 DEATH STATION OF THE GODDESS (10:03)

SIDE B
1 ONE WAY TRIP (5:02)
2 PINK BOLT (10:27)
3 TEETERING ON THE EDGE (4:03)

BLACK HELIUM are
Stuart Gray (vocals, guitar)
Beck Harvey (bass, vocals)
Diogo Gomes (drums)
Davey Mulka (guitar)

https://www.facebook.com/blackhelium
https://blackheliumband.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/blackheliumband
http://www.riotseason.com
https://riotseasonrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/riotseasonrecords

Black Helium, Primitive Fuck (2018)

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