Portland, Maine, rockers Sun Gods in Exile make no bones about who they are or what they do. Their second album, Thanks for the Silver (Small Stone), is guitar rock all the way through – a dudely amalgam of Southern riffing and solos that puts a figurative edge to the literal “double-guitar” lineup distinction. It’s easy to imagine six-string connoisseurs swishing the work of Tony D’Agostino and Adam Hitchcock around a brandy snifter to air them out – or at very least popping the top of a can and enjoying the hiss and the fizz as a song like “Moonshine” plays out its Southern course. At times Thanks for the Silver is almost a caricature of heavy Southern rock masculinity, and coming from a band located in the northernmost state in the continental US, that has its own issues, but damned if the five-piece don’t do it well, and the sophomore outing shows marked growth from where their 2009 debut, Black Light, White Lines (review here) left off, most notably with the inclusion of Christopher Neal’s keyboards.

The effect Neal has on Sun Gods in Exile’s sound is to add melodic range and complement the riffs with long-sustained notes, as on a song like “Smoke and Fire” on the second half of the album, on which he fills out the verses behind Hitchcock’s lead vocals (everyone but D’Agostino provides backups), or “Since I’ve Been Home,” a classic road song in the same tradition with which labelmates Dixie Witch often align themselves. Despite its liberal soloing and guitar prominence, “Since I’ve Been Home” – as close as the 10-track Thanks for the Silver gets to a centerpiece – is a highlight more for Hitchcock’s vocals and those that back him for what’s probably the album’s most memorable chorus. Earlier cuts like the opening duo “Hammer Down” and “Moonshine” find D’Agostino and Hitchcock, as well as bassist JL (since replaced by his brother, Mark Lennon) and drummer John Kennedy, purposefully making room to account for Neal in the songwriting. The Hammond sounds add flourish to the riffs but are almost always in service to the guitar, as are the bulk of the rhythms, as are the structures, the vocals, and so on. If you’re someone who tunes out solos or thinks they’re needless wankery or if you’re even slightly unimpressed by scorching leads, Sun Gods in Exile simply is not the band for you. Their ballsy classicism – excellently balanced by Benny Grotto’s recording job and mix – won’t so much touch a nerve as get on one, and, frankly, you’ll miss the point of Thanks for the Silver, which if I haven’t yet made it clear, is all in the guitar.

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This July 4, I decided to honor one of the most vibrant and enduring American scenes, namely that of New England. As the fireworks begin to sound, the vision begins to blur and the “USA! USA!” chants commence, I can’t think of any better way to celebrate Independence Day than sitting around listening to bands from Boston and the surrounding region. So that’s pretty much what I did.

It’s an area whose hardcore/punk rock anger grew up well, and you can still hear the deep-seated aggression in the riffs of Roadsaw and the ’70s-loving rockers of their ilk. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in this playlist, I guess because that’s mostly what I think of when I think of the New England scene — straightforward, unpretentious heavy rock. But that’s by no means the beginning and the end of it.

What I discovered as I picked out acts to include was that there’s a vast array of styles and sounds that have come out of the Northeast over the last couple decades. Being south of it myself, the most I can say I’ve had is a tertiary experience — that is, I didn’t grow up in this scene — and though I by no means consider this audiObelisk Transmission a complete document of it, I think it’s made for a pretty good mix.

You get the ultra-hateful sludge of Grief, the organ-infused country rock of Antler, Phantom Glue‘s thrashing rhythms, the crushing despair of Warhorse and the avant weirdness of The Body. Save for Vermont, every state in New England is represented — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine — and as a Yankee fan, I’d like it to be known that the title “Such Sawks, Such Sounds” is meant with the utmost respect and reverence for the Boston Red Sox. My alternate name for it was “The Green Monstah,” but I liked this better.

Everything but The Body was culled from a direct physical source — i.e. my rips — and the total winds up at 33 tracks, 3:21:44 runtime. If you’ve been curious what Blackwolfgoat sounds like, I put the track “Fear of Stars” in there, which is one of my favorites from Dronolith, and there’s recent selections as well from the aforementioned Roadsaw, as well as Black Thai, Curse the Son and Olde Growth.

Listening back to it, I dig the overall flow and I hope you do too. To listen, click play above, and to get the file, click the header image, click here, or follow the link in the sidebar. Complete playlist is after the jump.

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Hard to know where a split ends and a compilation begins, but in the case of Heavy Ripples Vol. 1 (Ripple Music), I’m inclined towards the former, if only because the release’s format makes you pay specific attention to each of the bands involved, rather than bludgeoning you with track after track from disparate acts. Everyone here is pretty like-minded, and there’s only four of them, so it’s not too much to handle, and the double-7” release ensures that you’re going to be really working to listen – the longest side is just about seven minutes – so Heavy Ripples isn’t something you can put on and forget about. Not that you’d want to with the likes of Stone Axe, Sun Gods in Exile, Grifter and Mighty High around anyway, but at just under 20 minutes total runtime, Heavy Ripples is an efficiently drawn beeline to the rock. Each of the bands contributes something unique to the whole, and for something you could feasibly listen to three times in an hour, Ripple’s latest split packs more memorable songs than most full-length albums. Like I say, efficient.

Stone Axe open with “Nightwolf.” The track finds the Port Orchard, Washington, revivalists in their core duo form of vocalist Dru Brinkerhoff and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer T. Dallas Reed, but as usual with them, nothing in personality is lost for the lack of personnel. Brinkerhoff has enough swagger in his delivery for three bands, and I can’t think of any more appropriate way to kickoff Heavy Ripples than a non-ironic song with “night” in the title. If you know Stone Axe, you know what they’re about, and “Nightwolf” is right in line both in terms of style and quality with the bulk of their work. And excellently complemented on side B by Maine upstarts Sun Gods in Exile, whose “Over My Broken Bones” is set to appear (re-recorded) on their second Small Stone full-length later this year. Sun Gods in Exile’s Black Light White Lines was a solo-enthusiast’s wet dream, and “Over My Broken Bones” follows suit, but as was the case with that record, the guitar histrionics is backed by solid songwriting and isn’t showy just for showiness’ sake. Two strong modern classic rockers with a little over nine minutes between them, kicking out righteous jams that, even had Ripple chosen to release this as a one-disc affair, would still be worth investigating.

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The second in my Recommended Buried Treasure series, this one is an older recommendation and came courtesy of Rock ‘n’ Roll Gina Brooks, who is so rock ‘n’ roll it’s in her name. A long time ago, she burned me a copy of All That’s Heavy by Maine‘s Rotors to Rust, and only recently did I finally find a full-artwork retail version in a price I was actually willing to pay. Amazon had two copies. One was $9.99, the other $199.98. You can guess which one I bought.

All That’s Heavy (the name will be familiar to any denizens of the webstore related to StonerRock.com) was released in 1999 on Weird Space Records, and Rotors to Rust were also featured on MeteorCity‘s original Welcome to MeteorCity compilation and the Inhale 420 comp with the likes of Natas, Crowbar and Mystick Krewe of Clearlight. Info on the band, their touring or what became of the trio is rare, but All That’s Heavy rocks, and that’s what’s most important.

There are parts that are so late-’90s post-grunge heavy they remind me of Kilgore Smudge, and I think the vocals of guitarist Ed Gaines help in that, but Rotors to Rust were more riff-based than their New England countrymen, and never did the likes of Fear Factory‘s Burton C. Bell guest on one of their records on a song named for an obscure Star Wars reference (amazing, the shit we remember). If you consider that putting Rotors to Rust at a disadvantage, then to make up for it, consider the hefty distortion in Gaines‘ guitar tone or the thrust in the rhythm section of drummer Doug Wood and bassist Jason Grosso. They’re not doing anything too tricky or overly stylistic, but what they do, they do well, and it makes a track like side B opener “The Axis of Existence” go from “meh” to “definitely worth hearing,” which as we all know is a big difference.

If you can find a copy, All That’s Heavy is a decent bit of obscurity that’s worth breaking out at those times where you want to balance aggression with something not too intellectual, but not outright dumb either. It might not be the ultimate hidden gem of a listen, but it’s definitely of its era, and if you happen into a copy that costs less than $200, you’ll probably want to take note.

According to StonerRock.com, Portland, Maine rockers Sun Gods in Exile are doing the weekend-warrior thing next month, heading to Massachusetts and Brooklyn. Yes, all reports indicate it’s going to be a guitar-slinging beery good time. As if you had to ask. Here’s the story:

Portland, Maine’s Sun Gods in Exile are heading out on a weekend of rock. The dates are as follows:

January 15: Northampton, MA – Elevens, with Black Pyramid, Might Could (Erik Larson’s new project), and Hotblack
January 16: Brooklyn, NY – Trash Bar, with The Brought Low, Mighty High, Cult 45 (ex-Lamont)

This will be in support of Black Light, White Lines, released on Small Stone Records in 2009. The band will also be releasing a split 7” with Stone Axe, due soon on Hydrophonic Records.

Sun Gods in Exile will also be appearing at the Small Stone Records SxSW Day Party in Austin, Texas, and will be taking a small tour of the mighty UK in April.

On their probable swan-song, the now-defunct Maine traditional doom trio Ogre mounted what was likely their greatest achievement yet. After being together for a decade, the band released Plague of the Planet in 2008 on the suddenly-MIA Leaf Hound Records out of Japan. As ever, the band demonstrated the sound reasoning behind their becoming a New England institution, why so many thought them to be the best the region had to offer as regards trad doom. With all the ?70s vibes and nods toward Pentagram, Dio-era Sabbath and Mot?rhead, it?s a hard argument to counter. I won?t even try. Instead, I?ll just be happy that Pittsburgh imprint Shadow Kingdom Records saw fit to reissue the album and get it out to the masses (myself included) earlier this year.

Plague of the Planet tells the story of humanity?s demise and ultimate redemption at the hands of the machines we?ve made. It?s a familiar sci-fi theme, but Ogre handle it with grace and a flair for epic storytelling that puts oil wars in an entirely new context. Like Road Warrior meets Metropolis meets The Terminator with some role-playing nerdiness thrown in for good measure. The album?s art, like a comic book cover, goes a long way toward giving an idea of the band?s intent.

Like a lot of concept albums, the narrative lyrical approach means the individual songs are often without a chorus or traditional structures. Ogre skirt that by making the 11 individual parts of Plague of the Planet — seven of which feature vocals from bassist Ed Cunningham — one 37-minute track, so while parts like that dubbed ?Drive,? the third of the 11, has a catchy chorus, it?s basically absorbed by the largess of the material surrounding. This of course has its ups and downs, but what it forces the listener to do is take on the album as a whole, expose him or herself to the entire story and decide how they feel about Plague of the Planet on that level. There are no singles here.

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Hell, I never even got to hear Shadow Kingdom‘s reissue of Ogre‘s second album, Plague of the Planet, and here today I read the news that their Sept. 12 10th anniversary show in their hometown of Portland, Maine, is also their farewell. Quite a bummer. Ogre were one of New England‘s finest traditional doom outfits. Shame to see them go, but at least they’re doing it in style. Here’s the story from StonerRock.com:

After much band deliberation and discussion, Ogre has decided that our 10th anniversary show (September 12 at Geno?s in Portland) is going to be our final US gig and, essentially, the end of the band. This decision to dissolve the band was not an easy one to come by, but we feel it is the right call. At this point, there is too much going on in each of our lives to sustain Ogre at the level of quality that our fans expect and deserve.

And, before people decide to jump to conclusions (as is often the case when these things happen), we want to make clear that this decision was entirely mutual, all three of us agreeing that this was the right time to bring things to an appropriate conclusion. We have accomplished a lot of great things during our 10-year run, playing with too many amazing bands to mention, recording three well-received albums, and of course, touring Japan last year. We are proud of what the three of us have been able to do (especially considering how little we started with!), and we thought it would be better to end things on a high note, rather than fizzling out, as so many bands do.

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Maine guitar rockers Sun Gods in Exile have a new video for the song “Hellwell” off their Black Light, White Lines debut on Small Stone Records. I’d give you the YouTube version, because I hate the way MySpace does their videos, but I don’t think there is one yet, so too bad. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who gives a rat’s ass about the difference anyway. Here’s the video: