Leeches of Lore, Motel of Infinity: Burning Souls and Sleeping Gods (Plus Album Stream!)
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on September 15th, 2015 by JJ Koczan
[Please note: Press play above to hear a full-album stream of Leeches of Lore’s Motel of Infinity. Thanks the band for letting me host the premiere. Album is out Sept. 22.]
It’s been a long three years since Albuquerque’s favorite weirdo sons Leeches of Lore last graced an unsuspecting cosmos with a full-length, and their new one, Motel of Infinity, stands as a testament to the genre-blender mastery the band has undertaken. Released by their own Lorchestral Recording Company, it slices, it dices, it riffs out, thrashes on, drops in, tunes out, digs mightily and thrusts in a manner not suitable for public transit. It rages and carouses and careens and tumbles. It rocks heavy and it rocks often, an 11-track/36-minute that sculpts chaos out of punk, riffs, rockabilly and various metals from thrash to black metal to doom and comes out of it at the end having not yet broken a sweat.
Sounds like hyperbole, and maybe it is, but Leeches of Lore pack enough stylistic breadth into a two-minute slice like “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” that most bands who claim to be open-minded should be embarrassed to stand and behold it. Singles, EPs and stopgaps like last year’s Live at KUNM 89.9 (review here) — a handy preview for some of these songs — have helped ease the burden while the band, which is based around the core trio of Steve Hammond (guitar/vocals), Noah Wolters (keys/vocals) and Andy Lutz (drums/vocals), though one never knows who might show up on any given night, put together this record, writing the material and eventually recording with Toshi Kasai (Melvins, etc.), but taken as a follow-up to 2012’s Frenzy, Ecstasy and 2011’s Attack the Future (review here), the newer release is in a different league entirely in terms of its professionalism of sound and how centered and assured the band sounds as they conjure the storms in these tracks.
And I do mean storms. From the first hits and tom runs of “Radium Jaws,” Motel of Infinity executes broad-ranging tension in guitar, keys, drums, handclaps — alternate universe surf rock, or else some style that someone cleverer than me will have to name. Still punker raw in tone, but much bolstered by Kasai‘s production, Leeches of Lore are in command immediately and they cede no ground as “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” takes hold, vocals answering each other in switching channels before Hammond unveils his strange falsetto, only to be met by gang shouts en route to a finish of key-led bounce that feeds into “The Sixth Finger,” its own rush underway in about 10 seconds. To issue “expect the unexpected” as a warning feels cheap, but the blackthrash screaming that tops “The Sixth Finger” as it plunders along slams headfirst into Thin Lizzy dual-guitar shenanigans and catchy ’70s swing, and, well, few other warnings seem appropriate.
It’s also not just that Leeches of Lore are working with these various forms, tossing them together haphazardly, or just that the album is a good time — though, make no mistake, it is — but the fact that they create something cohesive from them that stands alone within the US heavy rock underground. And on Motel of Infinity, they sound damn good while doing it. “White Hole” is the shortest cut at 1:55, and it keeps its movement largely forward, but “The Man Who was Never Born” pulls back on tempo, tosses in classic prog acoustics, and a near-Western ramble that leads to a keyboard highlight performance from Wolters and the layered acoustic/electrics of “The Sleeping God,” which serves as the centerpiece of the tracklist. In under three and a half minutes, it trades back and forth between full-on rush and “Space Oddity”-esque float — twice — and winds up more exhausting than exhausted, as “White Debbie” rings out its darkabilly cabaret, complete with all-too appropriate theremin, cowboy stick clicks and, in the last of its two and a half minutes, church organ and a Melvinsy spoken part that sits back to sound like it’s about to eat the mix.
Then things get really offbeat. Well, at very least they continue to push farther out from where Attack the Future or their 2009 self-titled debut (review here) dared to tread. “The Olm” at over six minutes starts out innocently enough but becomes a bleak swirl first rumbling and then minimal and constructed of far-away noise that surges forward suddenly before finishing out in feedback from which the opening thud of “Woth-o-Voll” picks up immediately, its own brief, two-minutes shifting into almost Patton-style crooning atop lounge keys and easy-rolling drums that finish in silence. Not sure how Leeches of Lore might have been able to better set the table for “Noah’s Soul (is Burning),” one of Motel of Infinity‘s most standout cuts, marked by its start-stop progression, at-least-three-part vocals with lines about sexting and Chex Mix and the ultimate affirmation that the band know exactly what they’re going as they’ve run this gamut coming in a psych’ed up solo and key interplay, the bassline seeming to be the piece holding it all together also serving as the leadout.
It’s a somewhat blindsiding cut, even in the context of the madness surrounding, and it gives way quietly to “Jeep Marmalade,” the instrumental at the end of the world, which seems to take the only road available to it in that, just when you think it’s about to explode in thrashing madcap, it holds onto its steady build and rounds out Motel of Infinity not with a lack of movement, but with a relatively straightforward progression that’s all the more disorienting for the sundry freakouts and fast turns preceding. Underrated since always, Leeches of Lore have only grown more and more adventurous in their sound and steadfast in their convictions, and Motel of Infinity shatters expectations and finds the band standing tall, proving they were right all along. A rare band truly operating on their own terms and in their own style has just unveiled their finest hour to-date. Anyone who doesn’t feel like that’s a joyous occasion is missing out.
