Images of landmarks as dust and rubble amid a pockmarked earth and devastated, re-shaped continents should be familiar enough to anyone who’s spent time amid the History Channel’s sundry apocalypse-porn CGI specials about major impacts, and yeah, there’s definitely a certain catharsis watching a giant asteroid looming above this pale blue dot waiting to unleash firestorms and nuclear winter to speed up the mass extinction that mankind seems so bent on perpetuating. Ka-boom, and all that.
In Cowboys & Aliens‘ new video for “Morbid Orbit,” the story seems to be of the aftermath of same — no breathable air, humanity hunkered down, survival in question. We see a lone figure staggering, people emerging from some kind of bunker to witness the wrecked landscape under a dirty sky. I feel like we’re due a really good end-of-the-world movie. It’s been a while, right? There were a ton for a while there. Everything’s comic books now. Maybe the thing to make is an end-of-the-world comic book.
Either way, amid Cowboys & Aliens — whose most recent full-length was 2019’s Horses of Rebellion (review here) — celebrating 25 years as a band, they’ve released “Morbid Orbit” as part of the Polderrecords compilation, PolderRiffs Vol. II, and they can be seen in the video witnessing the end of definitely-most things with various skyscrapers in the background, among them London’s Strata SE1 with its telltale windmills integrated into the top of its construction.
The message there? Maybe that humanity pretending to give a crap about the environment was too little too late, or moot anyway? Or maybe it’s just a cool looking futuristic building, which, frankly, is legit. Presumably when the tsunamis come, that’ll be the final say on that as well.
The good news, aside from the fact that all that havoc looks awesome in 4K, is the song is also catchy as hell and broadly spacious enough to encompass most of the video’s nine minutes. Cowboys & Aliens lead off PolderRiffs Vol. II and share time there with Wheel of Smoke, Cavaran and others, and they’re well positioned to represent Belgium’s heavy rock underground in both its history and how they’ve grown into their style over the years since they made their full-length debut with 1998’s League of Fools.
Though I suppose the perspective there might be somewhat aligned. It’s still ‘always this and that,’ but sometimes “that” is a big rock taking out the whole planet in one go. These things happen.
So enjoy!
Cowboys & Aliens, “Morbid Orbit” official video premiere
Legendary stoner outfit Cowboys & Aliens from Belgium are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year!
They are currently writing and recording new songs for a new album due early 2022, but for the occasion they have finished one song completely, it’s featured on a vinyl exclusive compilation: POLDERRIFFS that was released on Record Store Day June 12th.
[Click play above to stream Cowboys & Aliens’ Horses of Rebellion in its entirety. Album is out March 15 on Polderrecords.]
It’s been more than 20 years since Cowboys & Aliens got their start in 1997 with the long-out-of-print League of Fools, and as with anything, some stuff has changed and some hasn’t. The Bruges-based four-piece still put groove front and center of their approach, and one can still hear traces of Kyuss and earlier Astrosoniq in their approach, but as they release Horses of Rebellion through Polderrecords, the band’s melodic foundation remains strong, but they deliver their material with something of a sharper edge. To listen to songs like “Take a Good Look Around” or even the initial push of “Soaking,” the sound is still right in line with that initial wave of European late ’90s heavy rock, and Henk Vanhee‘s post-John Garcia vocal style speak to that timeframe as well, but the tones of guitarist John Pollentier are as hard as they are heavy, and with the fervent push of Peter Gaelens on drums and Tom Neirynck‘s bass, the album retains a metallic feel to coincide with its foundations in the riffy ways.
It runs a clean 11 songs/43 minutes all told, and makes a centerpiece of its catchiest hook in the title-track, but whether it’s a bruiser like “Morning Again” or the slower early going in “Sheep Bloody Sheep,” Cowboys & Aliens bring an efficiency to their delivery that speaks to their maturity as a band. It’s been a minute, though. While their landmark and widest-known release has always been 2000’s A Trip to Stonehenge Colony (on Buzzville), their last full-length was 2005’s Language of Superstars. In the intervening 14 years, the band broke up and (obviously) got back together, releasing two EPs earlier this decade in 2011’s Sandpaper Blues Knockout and 2013’s Surrounded by Enemies. Both of those releases continued to tap into fuzzier tonality and more of a rocking feel, not quite laid back, but not quite as on top of the beat as a cut like “Refuse” finds them here.
So why the change? Hell if I know. These are troubled times, and perhaps it’s some reflection of that, though songs like “Two Time a Man,” “Hollow,” and the closing duo of “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” and “Splendid Isolation” seem to speak to a more personal perspective than some broader social comment. Even “Refuse,” in the track itself, is preceded by an “I.” Fair enough. One way or the other, it seems safe to assume that the shift in approach — and it’s a shift more than a leap; something notable, but not drastic; they’re not suddenly djenting by any means — is purposeful given the band’s established tenure and the fact that Horses of Rebellion is their fifth long-player. It is very much a collection of songs rather than something composed as a full-length concept or thematic piece, but it flows well throughout its aggressive take, and is malleable in terms of tempo and general mood even though it stays on point as “Soaking” and “Still in the Shade” careen outward in a brisk seven-and-a-half-minute opening salvo that sets the vibe for the rest of what follows.
“Two Time a Man” gives Neirynck‘s bass a well-earned showcase, and presents a more open verse, pulling back the throttle somewhat from the initial launch, but they hold firm to a hook and still have room at the end for a quick crescendo guitar solo ahead of “Sheep Bloody Sheep,” which is a foreshadow of the melodic highlight to come in the title-track and the longest inclusion at just over five minutes, still hitting hard, but doing it slower. Gaelens starts “Take a Good Look Around” and the first two minutes of the song build through a resonant chorus kept on point by a steady kick drum while Pollentierseems to bend the riff around the central groove, never losing it but walking the edge as he goes. When it comes at the start of side B, the subsequent title-track has more of a classic take and a hook made for sticking to the brain complemented by a start-stop verse riff and a swagger that much of Horses of Rebellion avoids. They rightly lean into that chorus even toward the end of the song, but it’s telling that when it’s over, the turn to “Morning Again” is immediate.
That is, there’s a beat of a pause, but that’s it. Only a beat. And even on a record full of relatively smooth transitions, that one stands out as capturing a live feel on the part of the band. Being as crisply produced as they are here, I don’t know how much Horses of Rebellion represents their onstage character — I’ve also never seen them, so that doesn’t help either — but that changeover certainly comes across as show-ready, and it works to keep the energy of the title-track going into “Morning Again,” which has a bounder of a riff at its core and works to keep the momentum going into “Hollow” and “Refuse,” which respectively pull back and push forward in terms of thrust, the latter being the most intense moment on the record since the opening and maybe overall as well. They follow with the solid groove and layered harmonies of “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” mellowing out a bit in its second half but still keeping the proceedings to a tight four-minutes.
And they close out with “Splendid Isolation,” which — and I mean this in the best, laughingest way possible — is kind of a jerk move. At 2:20, the finale is naught but tense guitar strum and vocal lines. It’s building, you see. At any second, the listener is waiting for the song to absolutely explode, but it never does. Cowboys & Aliens are simply toying with their audience, putting what might otherwise have been first or at the beginning of a live set at the end of the record instead. The message, of course, comes through clearly enough: They’re just getting started. And for a band 22 years on from their debut, that’s no minor message to deliver as effectively as they do, but perhaps the intensity in some parts of Horses of Rebellion is mirroring an urgency behind the album’s creation in the first place, and if that’s so, one seriously doubts it will be another decade and a half before they’re heard from again. As much as their roots remain in the heavy rock of their initial era, their will to move forward is writ large in these songs.
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 28th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
If you’re looking at the band moniker and thinking of the 2011 flop/would’ve-been-high-budget-blockbuster, the Belgian rockers predate it by more than a decade. In fact, taking their name presumably from the comic on which that movie was based, Belgian rockers Cowboys & Aliens predate the film by more than a decade. They formed in 1996 — ancient history by any measure; ha — and put out four records in the pre-social media era before fading out circa the middle of the last decade, only to return in this one. Still, a more than 20-year history backs them and Horses of Rebellion, which is due out March 15 on Polderrecords, will be their first long-player since 2005’s Language of Superstars, though they also had EPs out in 2011 and 2014.
Long-underrated European underground heavy rock looking to make a comeback after more than a decade from their last album? Yeah, you know that’s my jam.
Info follows here, courtesy of the PR wire:
Polderrecords announces new album by Cowboys & Aliens
POLDERRECORDS is happy to announce the signing of Belgian’s finest stoner rock legends for their 5th full-length album ‘HORSES OF REBELLION’ out March, 2019.
Cowboys & Aliens is a four-piece stoner rock band from Bruges, Belgium. Formed in 1996, they released 4 full studio albums before falling into hiatus in 2006. The band reunited with the original lineup from ‘’ in 2011 with a brand new EP: “Sandpaper Blues Knockout” and gave a hell of a show at DesertFest Antwerp and opened up for Deep Purple (for the second time) at Vorst Nationaal. After playing countless festivals around Europe they released another EP in 2014: “Surrounded by Enemies” that took them once more to numerous stages in Belgium, Holland and Germany.
Now the time has come for their 5th full album: HORSES OF REBELLION to be released March 15th on POLDERRECORDS. The album was recorded and mixed by Pieter Nyckees at Shellshock Studio and mastered by Uwe Teichert at Elektropolis Brussels.
‘HORSES OF REBELLION’ is a classic guide on how to mix different styles into a breathtaking heavy cocktail. It’s all about melodic guitars and classic vocal harmonies, maintaining the riff-loaden grooves and ponderous rhythms Cowboys & Aliens are so well known for.
‘HORSES OF REBELLION’ is a diverse album with some punk attitude injections, classic stoner rock and the heavy edge of nineties grunge … and even an acoustic masterpiece!
Prepare yourself for a trip loaded with heavy fuzz, riffs and catchy melodies.
Brace yourself for impact soon as the album will release digitally on Cowboys & Aliens Bandcamp and all streaming platforms March 1st, 2019 and get ready to groove along to an absolute monster of an album! CD and Vinyl release: March 15th, 2019.
PR018 – COWBOYS AND ALIENS – ‘HORSES OF REBELLION’, out on cd and vinyl March 15th, 2019.
COWBOYS AND ALIENS are: John Pollentier – Guitar Henk Vanhee – Vocals Peter Gaelens – Drums Tom Neirynck – Bass
All songs written,arranged and produced by COWBOYS & ALIENS All lyrics by Henk V. Recorded and mixed at Shellshock Studio by Pieter Nyckees. Mastered at Electropolis Brussels by Uwe Teichert. Artwork by Sandy Verfaille (Inksane Tattoo) Photos by Trees Rommelaere Layout & design by Tom Maene and Henk V.
Track listing: Side A Soaking – 04:05 Still in the Shade – 03:37 Two Times a Man – 04:45 Sheep Bloody Sheep – 05:01 Take a Good Look Around – 04:22
Side B Horses of Rebellion – 03:59 Morning Again – 04:14 Hollow – 03:42 Refuse – 03:11 Walk a Mile in my Shoes – 04:21 Splendid Isolation – 02:20
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 18th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
You know, the thing about DesertFest Belgium 2014 is that, if you look at the poster, it’s like every logo on the damn thing should be huge. Colour Haze, Blues Pills, YOB, Toner Low, Brant Bjork, Conan, Pallbearer? Seriously, what, is everyone headlining? I know there are some bands on there who aren’t necessarily as huge as the likes of Electric Wizard, but thus far, the inaugural Belgian edition of the DesertFest has over 40 bands, and there isn’t a dud in the bunch. If you were putting on a show with half as many killer acts, I’d want to know about it.
Barring a fiscal miracle, I’ve got no hope of getting over to see this festival, but still it’s worth the daydream while I kick around in my jammies and dwell on the thought of seeing Colour Haze again, or Death Alley — who were awesome at Roadburnthis year — or 1000mods, and on and on. Good times.
Here’s the latest from the fest and the stream of Death Alley‘s debut single (review here), in case you missed it:
MORE BANDS!
Less than a month to go and we’re not done just yet! Proud to welcome Colour Haze (GER), Death Alley (NL), Cowboys & Aliens (B), 1000mods (GR), Bloodnstuff (US) and BRUTUS (B)! To find out what day each band is playing, take a look at our line up page!
There’s been a tiny change to our starting time on Friday;
Friday: Doors – 6PM 1st band – 6:30PM
Saturday and Sunday: Doors – 3PM 1st band – 3:30PM
Ticket sales are going faster and faster, don’t hesitate! Hotel tickets are completely sold out! If you’re coming from abroad, we suggest you have a look at Booking.com to find the best accommodations in Antwerp.
Don’t forget Belgians can head to FatKat (Antwerp) and GigaSwing (Hasselt) to pick up their hard ticket!
