If 2011 was lacking anything, it was new music from British gloom rockers Crippled Black Phoenix. Their last album, 2010’s I, Vigilante (half-reviewed here), was as stunning as its cover art, and as the band has posted the track “A Letter Concerning Dogheads” from the forthcoming (Mankind) The Crafty Ape, it sounds like there are good things yet to come. If you’re in Europe, they’ll also be touring in March. More info on that is here.

Until then, here’s the announcement of the album, which was sneakily put up last week, and the Soundcloud stream of “A Letter Concerning Dogheads.”

(Mankind) The Crafty Ape, the fifth Crippled Black Phoenix album is upon us and it marks a new chapter in the history of the band. The thematic focus for this album is firmly planted in the corruption of mankind and injustice, but also ultimately in the hope that all is not lost, and that there’s a common thread connecting people of like-minds wherever you may travel.

The music and themes have been created as to represent the world inside and outside of the mind, with no compromise. On (Mankind) The Crafty Ape, the band showcases a new level of focus, and that’s not to say there was a lack of focus on previous efforts, it simply says that the methods and attitude in making the new album are another move toward finding the total uncompromised potential within the music.

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When Masters of Reality frontman and mastermind Chris Goss says “wonderful,” it is as though he has reeled back his whole body to put a breathy and fully human energy into the word. And it is not a word he uses lightly. In the 67 minutes we spent on the phone discussing the US release of Masters of Reality‘s latest album, Pine/Cross Dover, on Cool Green Recordings (it came out in Europe in 2009 on Brownhouse/Mascot Records), he only said it three or four times, but each time he did, I could hear the genuine passion behind it.

Masters of Reality made their debut in 1988 with a self-titled full-length renamed The Blue Garden for its cover art. Throughout the multi-decade tenure of the band, and across albums like Sunrise on the Sufferbus (1992), Welcome to the Western Lodge (1999), Deep in the Hole (2001), Give us Barabbas (2004), Goss has been the lone consistent factor, making his name also as one of the key figures in the rise of rock from the Californian desert as producer and contributor to acts like Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Fatso Jetson and the Mark Lanegan Band, of course helming Masters of Reality from a production standpoint as well.

I’ve been a Masters of Reality fan since hearing Deep in the Hole in 2002/2003 (there are those who swear by the band’s earliest material, but I am not one of them), and whether it’s the driving rock of “High Noon Amsterdam” as presented on the brilliant live album from 2003, Flak ‘n’ Flight, or the rich harmonic texture of “Always” or “Testify to Love” from Pine/Cross Dover, I find that, whatever scene you want to lump them into, they make for a listening experience like none other. After wanting to for years, it was great to finally have occasion to conduct an interview with Goss.

In the conversation below, the guitarist/vocalist/songwriter/producer talks about pushing back the release date of Pine/Cross Dover to allow for more time in the studio, working with longtime drummer John Leamy on the album and bringing in guests like Dave Catching (earthlings?) and Brian O’Connor (Eagles of Death Metal), the state of commercial attitudes toward rock and roll, the enduring legacy of the desert scene he helped to found, being arrested in Germany on Masters of Reality‘s last European tour, and much, much more. The interview wound up being over 6,100 words, so there’s plenty to dig into. It’s pretty epic.

You’ll find the complete, unabridged Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

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