Posted in Whathaveyou on January 28th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
There wasn’t really any doubt that Mars Red Sky, who toured the world more or less as an independent band, were going to end up on some label, just a question of which and when. Those questions have been answered by the announcement this morning that the Bordeaux trio have inked a deal with Listenable Records in time to have their second full-length out in April, preceded by a limited 7″ with exclusive material. Good news all around, and most importantly, it gets the album here sooner than later. Should make for a good spring soundtrack.
O! PR wire! Sing unto me of fuzz and laid back groovy rock and roll!
MARS RED SKY sign to Listenable Records; new album released this Spring.
France’s stoner rock emblematic trio MARS RED SKY just inked a deal with European record label Listenable Records, on which the band will release its brand new full-length as well as a 7’’ EP, both set for release this spring.
Considered as one of the greats of the European stoner rock scene, France based MARS RED SKY have gained international recognition thanks to a unique sound imprint based on thick infectious grooves and melodic aerial guitar riffs. This is truly a one of a kind experience, wrapped up by Julien Pras’ ethereal vocals, Matgaz’ powerful rhythms and Jimmy Kinast’s pachydermic bass lines. Somewhere between doom metal and 70’s psyche pop, the Mars Red Sound intrigues to begin with, after which it irremediably attracts the masses to celebrate this cosmic ritual of solar burning fuzz and reverberated atmospheres.
Driven by the huge success of their eponymous debut record, which was recorded in Spain’s mystic Bardenas desert and released in 2011, the Bordelais were quickly invited to play on the largest European stages with Kyuss Lives!, Dinosaur Jr, Sleep, and popular festivals such as Eurockéennes de Belfort (Fr), Roadburn (NL), London and Berlin Desertfest, Sziget Festival (Hun), SXSW (USA), leading them to play in more than 20 countries.
With their incredibly heavy and hypnotic performances, MARS RED SKY have been considered as one of the most thrilling live acts among the international stoner rock scene. In 2012, they paired up with French doom metal monsters Year Of No Light to release a 3-track split record, which sold out in a blink of an eye.
The release of their EP “Be My Guide” in the spring of 2013 prophetically opened the path for an extensive tour across Europe, then across the Atlantic Ocean for a few exciting gigs in Latin America, where they recorded their new album, due out in April 2014 on LISTENABLE RECORDS (Ghost, Gojira, Behemoth…).
A limited edition 7” EP containing exclusive material will be released in March, more details coming shortly.
MARS RED SKY upcoming tour dates:
Feb. 05 – La Roche Sur Yon, Le Fuzz Yon (Fr) Feb. 27 – Larissa, Stage Club (Greece) Feb. 28 – Thessaloniki, Eightball Club (Greece) Mar. 01 – Athens, Six D.O.G.S (Greece) Mar. 21 – La Teste de Buch, Le Zik Zak (Fr) Jun. 20 – Clisson, Hellfest Open Air (Fr)
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
Death might sound angry, but you can’t really say the same for Deaf Proof‘s forthcoming CD EP, which is due out March 1. Death Sounds Angry basks in heavy psych tones, catchy vocal lines and hypnotic repetition, all of which play out to fascinating effect on the 18-minute centerpiece of the three-track release, “Origin of Pain.” The German trio have had a couple demos out to this point, and Death Sounds Angry will be their first offering as a three-piece. They’ve made the whole thing available to stream via Bandcamp (player below), and as you can hear for yourself, the configuration seems to be working for them.
See and hear:
Deaf Proof “Death Sounds Angry” EP to be released in March
“Good things come to those who wait. We finally hold the (digital) end result in our hands: The Death Sounds Angry EP is finally done and will be available in march as download and hard copy (digipak).
We finished recording, mix and mastering a few weeks ago. It took Johannes (Kopfüber) some time to finish the the cover artwork, because he was very busy. But take a look at that piece of work! It’s great, isn’t it? We are completely stoked! We recorded three different songs with three different vibes.
Look out for the EP and our new merch in march! Prelisten at Bandcamp in its entirety!”
Deaf Proof is J. Fredo (v/g), JP (b) and Pedro (d). Deaf Proof plays psychedelic fuzz.
The Band was formed in late 2006 by Pedro (d), Holger (b) and Fredo (v/g), later reinforced by Til (g).
From that point of time they started jamming and working out their ideas. In autumn 2007 the band split up with guitar-player Til who was replaced by Phil. In early 2008 the band decided to substitute Holger and to search for a new bassplayer. But nevertheless Deaf Proof recorded their first demo that was released in April 2008. The bass on the demo was played by Phil. Deaf Proof found the new four stringer Angus in june 2008. In december the band unfortunately had to search for a new bassplayer again and in march 2009 JP joined the gang. Together they recorded a 2-track live-demo in july. The combo recorded the “Beyond the Orange Door Demo” from autumn 2009 till winter 2012 and released it in april 2013. In april Phil also left band, but Deaf Proof continue as three-piece.
Since 2010 the band did some local shows with amongst others Stonewall Noise Orchestra (Swe), Snarf, Basel (Ch) and the Small Stone Artists Abrahma (Fr) and Mother of God (Swe). In 2013 Deaf Proof will expand their live radius over whole germany and further.
Posted in Questionnaire on January 27th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
The first time I saw Black Cobra was in a Manhattan basement club called Lit Lounge at a show I put together in 2005, and it was a genuine “Oh shit” moment. The duo of guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian (ex-Cavity) and drummer Rafa Martinez (who was also still part-time bassist for Acid King at that point) were among the rawest and meanest heavy bands I’d ever come across. Later that year, I’d catch them in a shoe museum in Los Angeles with Torche and to this day it remains one of the heaviest shows I can (barely) remember. Their debut album, Bestial, was released on At a Loss in 2006, and the band relocated from the East Coast to San Francisco, though really, for several years they were nomadic, never seeming to stay too long off the road between tours, hand-delivering punishment to an increasingly devout audience. Southern Lord picked them up for 2007’s Feather and Stone full-length, and their run continued at a gallop as fierce as their own thrashing riffs. 2009’s Chronomega followed and 2011’s Invernal (review here) brought a conceptual edge to their approach, taking the Polar explorations of British researcher Ernest Shackleton to dark and monstrous places, thematically and sonically.
They remain a force on the road, having just completed a week-long West Coast run with Weedeater after having made a stop in Miami to share the stage with Holly Hunt and Shroud Eater in December and another right after the New Year to play Brooklyn’s St. Vitus bar with Throaat and Blackout.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Rafa Martinez
How did you come to do what you do?
I’m assuming you mean playing music. Growing up I copied everything my older brother did so when he picked up a guitar I followed right behind. He introduced me to metal and punk music. We had a couple bands together but he slowly stopped and it became my life.
Describe your first musical memory.
When I was three I remember learning how to use a turntable with Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Sharing the stage with Sleep and Neurosis at Hellfest this last summer was very memorable.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Once we were about to go onstage and the stage manager told us our set was being cut by 15 minutes. I told him that we would do no such thing and that his un-American censorship would be protested by our fans and that they would more than likely do things to him. We did our full set and as the crowd cheered for more, the stage manager obliged to their supplicant cries.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
Evolution.
How do you define success?
Feeling good about what you do never compromising your ideals. Getting free pizza once in a while is nice too.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
Seeing that sorry-ass excuse of existence, waste of space, fetid effluvia emitting piece of gonorrhea the world knows as Creed winning a Grammy for Best Rock Performance in 2001. I know it was a slow year and all but there’s no logical reason for something like that to happen. But then again George W. Bush got elected twice so we’re all slowly getting used to events like these that make absolutely no sense.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
Free energy.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
I heard a rumor that both Police Academy and Footloose are being remade at the moment. Looking forward the their premieres.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
With drummer Bob Pantella and guitarist Garrett Sweeny having spent much of last year working in Monster Magnet on the album Last Patrol(review here) and subsequent touring, there hasn’t been much word of late out of the Riotgod (or, alternately, RiotGod) camp since the release of their sophomore album, Invisible Empire (review here), in 2012. They did tour in support of that record that year, even going so far as to play the legendary Wacken Open Air festival, but 2013 was comparatively inactive, with their only show being a Halloween appearance at The Stone Pony in their native New Jersey. Things look to be picking up in 2014 for the four-piece, however, as they’re set to issue their third long-player through Metalville Records.
Dubbed Driven Rise (or, alternately, Driven•Rise), the album is set to release on March 18 and will mark the band’s first studio outing without bassist Jim Baglino, who also parted ways with Monster Magnet last year, replacing him with Erik Boe, who came aboard in time for the band’s winter 2012 tour. The foursome’s classic heavy rocking approach is rounded out by the considerable pipes of vocalist Mark Sunshine, and if cuts like “Davos” and “Melisandre” are anything to go by, somebody in the band has been watching Game of Thrones.
The PR wire takes it from here with album art and track details:
RIOTGOD to Release Driven Rise March 18th on Metalville Records
Red Bank, New Jersey’s RIOTGOD (featuring Monster Magnet drummer Bob Pantella) are set to release their third album Driven Rise on March 18th in North America via Metalville Records. Today the artwork and track listing have been revealed.
Driven Rise Track Listing: 1. Driven Rise 2. They Don’t Know 3. Grenade and Pin 4. Sidewinder 5. Prime Moment 6. Positronic 7. Davos 8. Melisandre 9. You’re My Waste of Time 10. Beg For Power
RIOTGOD Lineup: Bob Pantella – Drums Garrett Sweeny – Guitar Erik Boe – Bass Sunshine – Vocals
Posted in Reviews on January 27th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
Heavy stuff from all over the world. These have all been available for a little bit, and I’ve included audio and links as much as possible. Hope you dig:
The Devil Rides Out, Ugly Creatures EP
Checking in at just the other side of a half-hour, Perth four-piece The Devil Rides Out‘s self-released Ugly Creatures launches with its title-track, which, like the closer “Blood River,” tops seven minutes. There are five-songs total, and they get shorter as you approach the middle from either side, second cut “Empty Sky” and the penultimate “The Righteous Walk” being 5:59 and 5:44, respectively, and centerpiece “Burn Again” running just 4:05. It’s a kind of parabolic listening effect and an interesting structural note on the band’s part, but whatever progressive ideals they may proffer in terms of how the EP is put together, Ugly Creaturesis a rock record and doesn’t attempt to be anything else sonically. The guitars of Andrew Ewing lead the way with Joey K.‘s bluesy, gravelly vocals with some airy flourish in the solos, but the vibe is consistently earthy, and the heft and inventiveness of play in Scott Paterson‘s bass and the consuming wash of Royce Uyen‘s drums keep the proceedings grounded stylistically. It’s a loose, swinging heavy rock that emerges by the time they get to “Burn Again,” if deceptively atmospheric, but The Devil Rides Out in their midpoint introduce a thicker lurch and though Ewing‘s vocals seem to be high in the mix, they offer a commanding presence up front. “Blood River” strikes a better balance in having a somewhat bigger guitar sound and allowing the throaty delivery to cut through, decidedly un-reverbed as it is, and the ending tone of the EP winds up stronger for it. There are more than a few interesting explorations here, and if The Devil Rides Out were looking to delve into new stylistic ground, they’ve set themselves up well in doing so for their next full-length.
It’s somewhat jarring when Italian mostly-instrumental heavy psychedelic four-piece Manthra Dei launch from the languid beginnings of “Stone Face” at the open of their self-titled full-length Acid Cosmonaut Records (vinyl through Nasoni) debut and into more driving space rock, propelled by the keyboard work of Paolo Tognazzi, but it comes to make sense in the progressive sprawl and mounted swirl of the 51-minute album overall. Paolo Vacchelli handles the sole guitar in the foursome, with Branislav Ruzicic on bass and Michele Crepaldi on drums, but throughout, each player gets an opportunity to shine, whether it’s the bass in “Stone Face,” the guitars pushing heavier riffage at the apex of “Xolotl,” the keys adding jazzy melody to a King Crimson-style run in the 17-minute “Blue Phantom” or taking an organ solo on “Urjammer” or the hard-tapping snare punctuating the fervent groove of “Legendary Lamb.” Vocals show up in that last cut, handled by Crepaldi, and with as natural as he sounds amid the instrumental complexity surrounding, I’m not sure what would keep Manthra Dei from employing them more often, but this is a first release, and the band are making pretty clear efforts to hammer out their style, so with as much as is going on and as many parts as a given track has, there’s not a lot of room as they flow from one to the next for verses and choruses. Still, Manthra Dei‘s Manthra Deiis engaging, holding attention even through the aforementioned 17-minute monster and on through the acoustic epilogue that reprises “Stone Face” in a much humbler form. They’re feeling their way, but the push they’ve concocted on their first outing is both exciting and impressively held together, melding progressive flow, space rock rhythms and a psychedelic tendency toward open structures.
Gruff four-piece Ol’ Time Moonshine hail from the humid backwoods Southern bogs of… Toronto? Okay, so maybe the “Southern” we’re talking about is Southern Ontario, the Down-style chug-and-stomp these dudes get up to on their self-released The Demon Haunted World EP is whiskey by any other name. The seven-tracker finds the two, sometimes-three guitar outfit with a distinctly riffy push, not afraid to get big and angry in the second half of “March of the Trees” or turn things on their head with a little High on Fire gallop on the subsequent “Jazz Cigarettes.” They make little bones about their predilections or tastes in “There be Dragons,” “Jazz Cigarettes” or “This Black Hole is a Demon Rift,” but the ride is enjoyably varied nonetheless, with vocalist Bill Kole showing a range beyond that of the typical post-Anselmo “whoa yeah momma” drawl, getting into sludgier fare when called upon by his own and Chris Coleiro‘s riffing. On instrumental opener “There be Dragons,” “Seven Deadly Suns” and the swayingly grooved “She Dances in Graveyards,” Ol’ Time Moonshine brings in Chris Kendrick of Galaxies in the River for distinct solos, but even elsewhere, Ol’ Time Moonshine show no trouble in offering sonic variety across these tracks. Kole, who also did the jewel-case layout and recorded the guitars and vocals while Ronald Roy of Threshold Sound did Kyle Marnoch‘s bass and Brett Savory‘s drums, seems to be in the lead role, but the band offer a full, active presence throughout, and show themselves to be more than capable songwriters in making something of their own out of familiar genre elements. At just under half an hour, The Demon Haunted Worldpacks enough dirt and grit to be called a full-length, and particularly for being the band’s debut, hits hard enough to leave a mark.
With their artwork in homage to KISS‘ Love Gun, Ohio-based Robot Lords of Tokyo proffer pro-rocking burl of the sort that Brand New Sin pounded out over a decade ago on their self-released third full-length, Virtue and Vice, and while that doesn’t necessarily say much about the originality of the influences under which they’re working on the follow-up to 2008’s Whiskey, Blood and Napalm(review here), the songwriting at the heart of cuts like “Great Escape,” the swaggering “Hate’s Eternal Spring” and the dudely stomp of “Chicken Little” distinguish the metal-infused core of Rick Ritzler (drums, backing vocals) and Paul Jones (vocals), collaborating bassist Joe Viers (who also recorded and mixed, played some guitar and did backing vocals) and Beau Vanbibber (rhythm and acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals) as they bring in a host of guest guitarists, from Tracy G. to Chris Poland to Terry Adams and Wayne Findlay. One might think that an album with no fewer than 12 players appearing throughout would sound uneven, but Robot Lords of Tokyo actually hold it together pretty well — doing themselves a service by keeping the songs straightforward and mostly upbeat — even finding room to cover Cinderella‘s “Night Songs” in the second half. Rounding out with the nine-minute build of “Through Perdition’s Flames,” their testosterone-powered motor rock seems to delight in how over the top it gets, but still represents a kind of lost commercial viability for heavy rock in general, as though beamed in from an alternate time and space in which Robot Lords of Tokyo are the rockstars they sound like, instead of self-releasing quality albums so dickhead reviewers like me can me months behind on reviewing them. There are times where Virtue and Vicecomes on strong, but at its core it’s professional work.
Taking their moniker from the lead character in the cult-classic action movie The Final Sacrifice (also one of the best Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes of the Mike Nelson era), St. Louis heavy blues rockers Rowsdower emerge in making their Dead Grooves Records debut on a split full-length with fellow Missourians Send the Mistress. The latter act appear second and have a much more metalcore-derived sound — i.e. there are breakdowns and mixed screaming and clean vocals — but the five-piece Rowsdower bring together blues-swinging heavy riffs and Facelift-style vocals, hitting on a sonic niche that Salt Lake City’s Dwellers made their own on their first album. “Monday Morning Space Invaders” is bar-ready, even if the hook isn’t as strong as the opening “Acid Healer,” but the tone is set quickly, and with considerable bounce in their step, Rowsdower show promise throughout their four included tracks, notable for their comfort at a middle pace and for the easy mesh of classic heavy rock and distinct ’90s stylization, which shows up not only in the vocals, but in the snare drum sound as well. It’s an enticing affair ultimately, and as much as it’s Rowsdower‘s name that got my attention, the boozy debauchery of “Redemption Denied” and the Mastodon-style riffing that hits in the second half of “Victor’s Waltz” make it plain that there’s more to Rowsdower than there might at first seem. Not sure how they got paired with Send the Mistress, but I imagine there was alcohol involved one way or another. The second act’s three cuts, “Tired Limbs Energetic,” “A Magnificent Feast” and “Medusa’s New Do” are crunchier-toned all around, but there are heavy rock roots in there, even if they take them someplace else, genre-wise. Sometimes geography makes for strange bedfellows.
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 27th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
A couple years back, I don’t think there’s any way a fest like Moving the Earth 2 wouldn’t happen at Krug’s Place in Frederick, Maryland, but that formidable Mid-Atlantic scene seems to have pushed into various other places in the wake of that venue apparently giving doom the boot. I’ve never been to The Windup Space in Baltimore, but the bill for Moving the Earth 2 kind of makes me want to check it out, with two solid days of heavy delivered by respectable purveyors Sixty Watt Shaman and Iron Man. This will actually mark the first appearance back for Sixty Watt Shaman‘s reunion, so they’re right to bill it as “The Return Of…” and from Kingsnake and Foghound and Wasted Theory to Supervoid and Black Lung, there’s a lot to dig about the lineup.
If you’re the type to make travel arrangements, the fest is set for March 22 and 23 in Baltimore, and the roster of acts below seems to be pretty final, at least going by the revolutionary-themed poster below, contributed by Brendan Burns of Wasted Theory. With the deep reds, uniformed guards and raised fists of resistance, I can’t help but wonder what Moving the Earth‘s five-year plan might be. Dig:
We are super excited to announce the lineups for Moving The Earth Fest 2! Taking place again at the Windup Space here in Baltimore Maryland on Saturday and Sunday March 22nd and 23rd 2014.
The lineups are…
Saturday March 22nd 7pm The Return of Sixty Watt Shaman Kingsnake Wasted Theory Supervoid Compression Passage Between
Sunday March 23rd 6pm Iron Man Foghound Asthma Castle Bastards of Reality Fortress Black Lung Northwoods
Admission will be $10 per day, 21+. We look forward to bringing all these great bands together for what is sure to be an amazing 2 day celebration of Heavy, Stoner, Doom and Psych music!
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 25th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
Brant Bjork, Local Angel (2004)
I bought this album from the Duna Records website when it came out in 2004. I remember it because I had dug Brant Bjork and the Operatorsand Keep Your Cooland waited for Local Angelto come out, and when it did, and it showed up in its glossy digipak, I don’t think I completely got the vibe at first, but I knew I liked it, a lot, and it’s been a record I’ve gone back to periodically ever since. The digipak is still in pretty good shape too.
Brant Bjork would shortly go on to form Brant Bjork and the Bros. and release the double-album Saved by Magic, and his next solo outing was the acoustic Tres Diasin 2007, but until that came out with its sometimes-I-sit-in-a-field-with-a-guitar vibe, Local Angelwas the most peaceful, intimate vibe Brant Bjork had put on a full-length, and it was a record that showed that you could take a desert groove to places that most people probably wouldn’t think of as heavy and make it work. Or that Brant Bjork could do it, anyway. I haven’t heard too many others try and put the same kind of soul influence into what they were doing and make it work as well as the folk of “Beautiful Powers,” the classic rock of “The Feelin'” or the laid back psychedelic funk of “Hippie.” From “Chico” to “Spanish Tiles” and the covers of “Hey Joe” and The Ramones‘ “I Want You Around,” Local Angel was a spirit thateven Brant Bjork never really went back to. It stands alone in his catalog and outside of it.
Part of that is the simple method of double-tracking the vocals over acoustic guitar, the in-and-out of the drums, and particularly compared to later work like 2007’s Somera Sól and 2010’s Gods and Goddesses — his most recent solo outing — much more of an individual feel as opposed to a band presence. So cool. So smooth.
Hope you dig it.
—
Tonight The Patient Mrs. and I went down to New Bedford, about an hour away, to see William Shatner‘s one-man show. Ever since I finished watching the original Star Trek series, we’ve been on a pretty big kick, making our way through the first seven movies and starting in on The Next Generation and the animated series as well as some of Shatner‘s Trek-centric documentaries like The Captains. All that stuff is on Netflix so it’s pretty accessible, and there’s a lot of it. Shatner’s World, though, which is the name of the one-man show, was awesome. I laughed, I held back tears as he played a clip of an introduction he recorded for the last flight of the space shuttle Discovery, I laughed more when he talked about recording an album with Ben Folds. It was very, very cool, and though it’s a balmy 9 degrees out, well worth leaving the house. I may or may not review it on Monday. I paid for the tickets and got shot down for a photo pass, so I hardly feel obligated, but it might be fun anyway.
This week I reviewed five albums. Last Friday, I laid out the next five reviews I wanted to do — Weedpecker, Colour Haze, Conan, Mammatus and Papir, in that order — and this week I fucking did it. I can’t remember the last time I reviewed five albums in the same week. It’s been at least a year. It felt good, even if it didn’t leave me much time for anything else. Next week I want to try something different. I’ve got a little stack of stuff that’s been around for a while and I’d like to try putting together a roundup that’s somewhere between the Reviewsplosion-style 100-word stuff I’ve done a couple times and the 1,000-ish words (I’ve actually been trying to cut that down too) that a lot of records seem to get around here. Seems like an interesting challenge to try to say everything I want to say about an album in 300 words, still try to convey some of what I perceive of the spirit of the thing in that limited space. Trying to hone a more efficient approach, in other words. I’m still going to do larger-form reviews as well, but maybe once I week or once every couple weeks I squeeze in a roundup of stuff I might not otherwise have room for and at the same time force myself a little bit out of my run-on-sentence comfort zone. I’ll give it a shot this week and see how it goes, and look out for a Green Dragon tape review, a review of the live Leaf Hound record that Ripple put out, the new The Wounded Kings and other stuff as well.
Wherever you are tonight, I hope it’s more than 9 degrees and that you’re grooving out easy on the Brant Bjork and there’s no drama where you don’t want it and that all is cool. We’re coming to the end of January, so I’m thinking about the anniversary of this site, and it’s a big one. I don’t have anything really on tap to celebrate — as I see it, the way you celebrate working on something is by working on it — but we’ll mark the occasion this week anyway, though I think posts might be light on Friday otherwise. We’ll see how it goes.
Have a great and safe weekend, and please check out the forum and radio stream.
Posted in On Wax on January 24th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
I’ve had Wo Fat on the brain lately, ever since I found out they’d have a new record out this year and they got announced for Small Stone‘s showcases in Boston and Brooklyn this March, as well as playing Freak Valley in Germany this coming May, so with a ton going on, it didn’t seem outlandish to pay their 2012 fourth full-length, The Black Code(review here), another visit. Small Stone put the thing out on vinyl last year in a first run of 500 split up among three color variations. Gone. Second pressing comes limited to 250 copies in 180g vinyl, either solid yellow or transparent orange. The one I got is solid yellow, which I think sits pretty well next to the Alexander Von Wieding album art, playing off the greens of the cover itself and in the gatefold and accenting the band’s logo and the sand of the otherworldly desert landscape.Call me superficial if you want, but in addition to being a fuzz-drenched glory-jam of a full-length, it’s also a nice-looking find.
As to the record itself, well, if you didn’t hear it when you came out, not to be a prick about it, but you’ve been missing out on some of the finest heavy fuzz the US has to offer. As the folks — myself included — who caught Wo Fat at Roadburn last year, they’ll tell you. Wo Fat tap into classically hairy tones and fit them to whatever proportional gag about “Texas-sized” you might want to make. Guitarist/vocalist Kent Stump drives the formidable groove of “Lost Highway” and “The Black Code” on side A, opening things up a bit to let drummer Michael Walter tie up purposefully-left-loose ends on “Hurt at Gone” while bassist Tim Wilson adds bottom end heft to the languid-but-swinging push. The Black Code was self-recorded, but wants nothing for production in either its clarity of natural vibe, and Wo Fat lock in their riffy grooves like the unpretentious heirs to Fu Manchu, saving plenty of room to jam in these long, spacious-sounding tracks.
That’s true all the more on side B of the vinyl, which feels all the more like a wall of fuzz with the CD-closing duo of “The Shard of Leng” and “Sleep of the Black Lotus” flowing one right into the next. One factor that particularly stands out in revisiting The Black Code is that although it’s the jammiest outing Wo Fat have released to date, the songs also hold tightly to memorable choruses, whether it’s “The Shard of Leng” building from its slow-groove intro into more straight-driving riffy crunch or “Lost Highway” kicking the record off with one of its most resonant hooks back on side A. As a power trio, Stump, Wilson and Walter are dead-on and their transitions run accordingly smooth. “The Shard of Leng” stomps its way through swaggering riffery, comfortably paced but irresistibly grooving, with Walter backing Stump‘s vocals in the chorus before breaking out the cowbell and signaling the move into The Black Code‘s longest jam, Echoplex and all.
“Sleep of the Black Lotus” keeps a similar vibe in its okay-this-is-the-song-and-then-we-jam-the-crap-out-of-these-riffs mentality, and though both sides are about even time-wise, the second feels longer with the two more extended tracks. Still, they make an excellent pairing even more on vinyl for being isolated from the rest of The Black Code, righteous and exploratory as they are. Whatever Wo Fat might have in store for their fifth album, and whenever it might arrive this year amid their touring first to the Northeast from Dallas and then overseas, it comes on the heels of their most accomplished full-length to-date — anyone further fiending for their fuzz should explore their 2013 split with Egypt (review here) — and for as great as The Black Codelooks and sounds on wax, I can’t wait to hear how they follow it up.
