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On the Radar: Black Blizzard

Okay, stay with me on this one. Way back at SHoD XI in 2011, I caught a band called Nagato from West Virginia who kicked my ass a more than fair amount and whose demo I grooved on thereafter. Dark, ambient, bluesy, really heavy and moody but without making a show of it. Good stuff that warranted a follow-up and hasn’t gotten one yet. Nagato were playing shows as late as June 2012, so what their status is, I’m not really sure.

In the meantime, though, guitarist/vocalist Paul Cogle — whose tone and delivery was a major source of my appreciation for what Nagato were doing — has put together a new project called Black Blizzard. Joining him (he’s the one right on the camera in the pic above) is Brooklyn-based drummer Ben Proudman. The two were formerly bandmates in the punk outfit Vox Populi and got going as Black Blizzard in the middle of last year, playing a show the same night they decided they were a band. Nothing like a quick start.

The duo have just put out their first release, a three-song EP called Broken Hands, Broken Hearts that sets a surprisingly diverse course in a short span of time. All told, “Light up the Night,” “Loss” and “Black Blizzard” top out around 16 minutes, but in that time, Cogle and Proudman move fluidly from rocking riffage and a catchy chorus offset by distorted crunch to sullen instrumental guitar minimalism with some obscured layers of noise low in the mix, rounding out with Conan-style low end on their eponymous closer, a tide of guitar leading the course for a build that might have been what Helmet turned into had they decided early on that they liked kicking ass and wanted to keep doing it. Vocals on the closer are wetter with reverb than on the opener and stand up to the thump and crash in the guitars and drums, leaving an impression though the track is still mostly-instrumental.

Broken Hands, Broken Hearts culminates with a vicious dug-in groove that gets louder before cutting out and though I don’t know how often they’re going to be able to get together for writing purposes — West Virginia to Brooklyn or vice versa is a long way to go for band practice — the material on the EP, like Nagato‘s demo, deserves subsequent explorations. Let’s hope it gets them. Until then, here are the three tracks in full courtesy of the Black Blizzard Bandcamp page, also available for a free download:

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