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Pet the Preacher Offer a Track-by-Track Look at The Cave and the Sunlight

Posted in Features on May 2nd, 2014 by JJ Koczan

Released just last week, The Cave and the Sunlight is the Napalm Records debut from Copenhagen trio Pet the Preacher, and with it, the heavy rocking trio deliver a forceful take on the tenets of heavy rock and roll. Led by the riffs and vocals and Christian Hede Madsen, thickened by Torben Wæver Pedersen and given a foundation by Christian Von Larsen‘s drumming. It’s not a new combination of elements by any means, but the Danish outfit use it well over the course of the 50-minute runtime for The Cave and the Sunlight (review here), flowing smoothly through material alternately brooding and brash while giving listeners an impression of complexity to come and already at work within the material. Following up on their 2012 full-length debut, The Banjo, and 2013 EP, Papa Zen and Meet the Creature, it’s an engaging work driven by the overarching quality of its songwriting.

The band played Desertfest Berlin last weekend and their hometown release show for The Cave and the Sunlight was last night, May 1, at Beta2300 in Copenhagen. Busy times though these are for the three-piece as they continue to proliferate their brawny, nod-ready grooves to European audiences, Madsen found time over the last couple days to put together a track-by-track runthrough of the record and you can find it below.

Please enjoy:

The Cave and the Sunlight Track-by-Track by Christian Hede Madsen

1. The Cave

This song was actually a part of “Let Your Dragon Fly,” but what we wanted to do with this album was to cut the fat and only leave what was really essential, in the service of the good track. We liked the melody too much to cut it, so we made an intro out of it, and it works great. You are being eased into a feeling that sets the mood for the rest of the record: dark, bluesy, melancholic.

2. Let Your Dragon Fly

The first real banger on the album. One of the first songs we wrote. It has a rebellious feeling to it, and we like to start with this song. It is a good way to punch your audience in the face. Our producer and friend, Jacob Bredahl, screams in the end of this song too.

3. Kamikaze Knight

We wanted to put another “party-rock” song together with “Let Your Dragon Fly.” It is a live-favourite and even though the whole album is written from a pretty serious emotional standpoint, this song is mostly about a battle field and bloodrage.

4. Remains

This is a desperate, dark ballad. It is bluesy and slow-starting. It is about what is going on in the world today, and how it is about time that we talk about what to do with our situation regarding the environment, political corruption, over-population, self-indulgence and a sick focus on youth and superficial values. It is a song that comes from all the things I fear in this world and all the things that make me think. Because I am a part of it. Because I do NOT take a stand. It is a wake-up call for myself as well. “Remains” is about trying to become a better human being in the broadest sense of the term.

5. Fire Baby

This is a song about a forbidden love. About burning inside for something that is impossible and wrong. It is about doing bad things and keep on doing them, because you just can´t help it. I think we are repeating ourselves in life. We repeat mistakes, repeat relationships and love-stories and we can´t change these patterns until we realize this. That is the standpoint I wrote all the lyrics from.

6. Marching Earth, Pt. 1

This is the first part of a heavy two-piece. An instrumental that, like the intro, sets a mood for what’s to come.

7. Marching Earth, Pt. 2

A song about all that we do wrong with our earth today. It is almost like a classic tragedy: we destroy what we love, only to discover what we are doing when it is too late. We don’t deserve this earth anymore. It is sad.

8. The Pig & The Haunted

Like “Fire Baby,” it is a disturbed love-song. About how you perceive yourself when doing something you know is wrong, and can’t help it. It brings the pace up again, and is more of a classic rock song.

9. What Now

This is a heavy riff onslaught. The idea was just to keep on throwing riffs at the listener and then suddenly let it all dissolve into a dark hymn. The spoken word at the end is a poem I wrote from a sick person’s point of view. It is a mental patient trying to see things clearly. It all ends with a heavy, repetitive doom riff to underline the chaos.

10. I´m Not Gonna

An easy listening, heavy rock song. Written from the same emotional standpoint as the others, but with a more positive outlook. Lots of slide in this one. Love that little glass thing.

11. The Web

The grand finale. “The Web” is a very personal song, summing up the emotions I mentioned earlier: being caught in patterns (the web), knowing it and still not being able to change it. It is an epic, and my favourite on the album. We thought a lot about how to build up this album, and “The Web” is a natural ending. It leaves you wanting more in my opinion.

Hopefully it makes the listener go back to side A of the vinyl… oh, did I mention: LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM ON VINYL… It is made for it!

Pet the Preacher, The Cave and the Sunlight (2014)

Pet the Preacher on Thee Facebooks

Pet the Preacher at Napalm Records

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Pet the Preacher, The Cave and the Sunlight: A Web in the Spinning

Posted in Reviews on April 17th, 2014 by JJ Koczan

From an American standpoint, a lot of what riff-rocking Danish trio Pet the Preacher get up to on their second album and Napalm Records debut, The Cave and the Sunlight, will probably seem familiar. On the 11-track/51-minute offering, the Copenhagen-based three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Christian Hede Madsen, bassist/backing vocalist Torben Wæver Pedersen and drummer Christian Von Larsen proffer a brash, bruiser sort of heavy rock, indebted at times directly to Pepper Keenan-era C.O.C., as on “Remains,” but elsewhere deriving an emotional push that to US ears, could sound just as easily culled from commercial hard rock, as on “Marching Earth Pt. 2” and the penultimate “I’m Not Gonna.” A modern clarity and fullness of production backs that read, though I think ultimately it’s a skewed interpretation. In context of geography, Pet the Preacher offer a split from Europe’s current heavy psych and classic rock proliferation — if there’s one thing The Cave and the Sunlight doesn’t sound like, it’s Graveyard — and whereas in the UK, that alternative seems to come either in vicious sludge or Orange Goblin-inspired booziness, the Danes have taken a different direction, based more on songwriting than tonal impact but still landing plenty heavy when they choose to do so, the initial rush of “Let Your Dragon Fly” following the blown-out bluesy intro “The Cave” and not quite setting up everything the album has to offer, but at least give it a riotous beginning and letting listeners know that in addition to dragons, there be stoner riffs ahead.

We never quite make it from “The Cave” to “the sunlight,” but I suppose the ending of the eight-and-a-half-minute closer and longest track “The Web” offers some brightness of mood compared to Pet the Preacher‘s more downtrodden moments. Between the two, songs play out with varied personalities but consistency of tone and overall feel, and while with an album that tops 50 minutes that can make a song like “The Pig and the Haunted” or even the longer “What Now” (7:45) — the standout lines from which are “What now?/Fuck it” — seem to have to work harder to justify their inclusion, The Cave and the Sunlight gets there sooner or later in each case. Earlier pieces like the drum-led “Kamikaze Night,” which plays tense tom-work against payoff riffing and Madsen‘s throaty, low-in-the-mouth vocal style, and subsequent “Remains,” which follows furthering the hints of slide guitar of the prior track with a verse that seems to singularly call back to C.O.C.‘s 1996 landmark, Wiseblood (not a complaint), have it somewhat easier in distinguishing themselves, resulting in an overarching linear feel for The Cave and the Sunlight — a CD structure that, like the band’s sound itself, runs somewhat counter to trend. Neither their 2012 debut, The Banjo, nor subsequent 2013 compilation, Papa Zen and Meet the Creature (Papa Zen being new or at least unreleased material and Meet the Creature being their 2011 debut EP), stretched beyond the bounds of vinyl-readiness in terms of timing, and here, the two chapters of “Marching Earth Pt. 1” and “Marching Earth Pt. 2” are arranged right in the middle, as if to underscore the trio’s intent toward a classic CD flow.

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Pet the Preacher Sign to Napalm Records; Added to Desertfest Berlin Lineup

Posted in Whathaveyou on February 13th, 2014 by JJ Koczan

Congratulations to Copenhagen-based trio Pet the Preacher on inking a deal with Napalm Records. The Danish heavy rockers will have their sophomore full-length, The Cave and the Sunlight, out on Napalm/Spinning Goblin Productions a little later in the year, and for a release party, they’ve just been added to the lineup of Desertfest Berlin, replacing Master Musicians of Bukkake, who’ve canceled their European tour entirely. Not too bad.

You might recall Pet the Preacher debuted their “Let Your Dragon Fly” video here in December as the first audio to come from The Cave and the Sunlight, and if you don’t feel like clicking on that link, the short version of the story is that it bodes well. One might be hard-pressed to keep it in mind during these unpleasant depths of winter, but April will be here before you know it.

So once again, kudos to Pet the Preacher — comprised of guitarist/vocalist Christian Hede Madsen, bassist/backing vocalist Torben Wæver Pedersen and drummer Christian Von Larsen — and here’s looking forward to The Cave and the Sunlight when it hits. The PR wire takes it from here:

Napalm Records/Spinning Goblin Signs PET THE PREACHER

Napalm Records / Spinning Goblin is extremely proud to announce the world wide signing of the Denmark’s Heavy Stoner Blues Band Pet The Preacher!

The band’s sophomore album will hit stores in the end of April and will be celebrated with an album release show at DesertFest Berlin!

“We are beyond excited to officially announce our signing to Napalm Records/Spinning Goblin. Pet The Preacher is a band that strives to be something special, and by our collaboration with Napalm Records, we are given the opportunity to prove that we are a force to be reckoned with and that we are not giving up… Ever”

Christian Hede Madsen / Vocals/Guitar

For More Info Visit:
https://www.facebook.com/petthepreacher
https://twitter.com/PetThePreacher
http://www.napalmrecords.com

Pet the Preacher, “Let Your Dragon Fly” official video

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Pet the Preacher Premiere “Let Your Dragon Fly” Video

Posted in Bootleg Theater on December 20th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

Following their 2013 double-EP, Papa Zen and Meet the Creature, and 2012’s The Banjo full-length debut, Danish heavy rock trio Pet the Preacher will release their second album, The Cave and the Sunlight in 2014, getting dirty in a mound of distortion-fueled riffs and grooves bordering on morbidly obese. Their past releases, save for Meet the Creature when it was initially released in 2011, came out on Bilocation Records, and in the new video for the song “Let Your Dragon Fly,” Pet the Preacher continue to root into well-tempered stoner rock burl, not giving up a catchy hook in favor of a burly sound, but striking a balance that seems to make the most of both.

Where they end up sonically is in a similar next-gen stoner heavy mindset not unlike that of UK troublemakers Steak, though obviously the dynamic is different in Pet the Preacher with Christian Hede Madsen handling both vocals and guitar. Joined in the band by bassist/backing vocalist Torben Wæver Pedersen and drummer Christian Von Larsen, Madsen shows a push toward even weightier fare near the end of “Let Your Dragon Fly” — it’s a dragon as opposed to a freak flag, one assumes — and the production of former Hatesphere vocalist Jacob Bredahl only brings that more forward. The video, which is their first and which Madsen also helmed, follows suit with a strikingly dark thematic and gritty look.

It’s a DIY job, as the guitarist explains below, but comes out with a professional look all the same. em>The Cave and the Sunlight was recorded live and will be out next year. Enjoy “Let Your Dragon Fly” below:

Pet the Preacher, “Let Your Dragon Fly” official video

Christian Hede Madsen on “Let Your Dragon Fly”

The film is a tribute to old, avant garde films. The black/white shots, the blurred images and classic symbolism are inspired by the likes of Man Ray and Bunuel. I shot the film on an iPhone, and then asked a good friend and my uncle to shoot something for the project as well. Everything is shot on either phones or small, cheap cameras. Editing was done on an iPad.

My main goal with the music-video, was making something that felt real. Something that had layers, and didn’t just please the viewers, but challenged them a little bit. That is how we make our music in Pet The Preacher, and how our new album, The Cave & The Sunlight, is; an ideal of making something that matters. We are a rock ‘n’ roll trio, no doubt, but I am not ashamed to say that we aim for art.

Pet the Preacher on Thee Facebooks

Pet the Preacher on Twitter

Bilocation Records

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Live Review: Elder, Pet the Preacher and Serpent Venom in Camden Town, UK, 04.22.13

Posted in Reviews on April 24th, 2013 by JJ Koczan

The Black Heart is nestled into an alleyway that runs off a street behind The Underworld in Camden Town, London. I knew the place when I got there Monday night because it was one of the venues where Desertfest was held in 2012 and will be again this year, which made this kind of an unofficial pre-pre-show. Obviously I’ve only been a few times, but it seems to me like a hub of the London scene. I was early to the show and watching the people around me, it wasn’t long before so-and-so said hi to someone else, hey to this or that person, etc. There is a larger bar downstairs and the venue room upstairs (with another, smaller bar), so there’s plenty of room to mingle and shoot the shit if you’re so inclined.

I was introduced almost immediately to the cats from Serpent Venom, whose last album, Carnal Altar, I actually bought but didn’t open because I didn’t want to rough up the packaging; a CD housed in what looked like an old occult paperback. Still failed in that preservation, but I’d heard some stuff online in the interim and knew they were heavy trad doom of the sort in which England specializes, and that their singer, Gaz, was a madman on stage. That turned out to be true, but it was up in the air whether or not the show would even happen for a while, since Elder and Copenhagen heavy rock trio Pet the Preacher had been delayed at their ferry and forced to wait for the next one.

Ultimately, they arrived and the show started late, but it started. Having come from the Netherlands myself during the day, I knew it was a hell of a trip to make, and they were doing it by van and ferry while I rode on comfortable trains. In any case, a backline was secured and Serpent Venom played a five-song set comprised almost entirely of new material from an album that they’ll begin to record sometime over the next few months. Gaz was, as expected, feeling the riffs deep, headbanging, raising his arms, foot up on the monitor block at the front of the stage, but what I hadn’t realized was how much the rest of the band would follow suit. Guitarist Roland cut a few classic moves of his own, bassist Nick seemed to be in charge of thanking the crowd — which was considerable even for the first act — and even drummer Paul got in on the action with some great faces from behind the kit and a readiness at a moment’s notice to stand up and engage the audience.

They were a lot of fun to watch, and not that I anticipated they’d be boring, but I liked them more than I thought I would like them. They closed out with a cut from Carnal Altar (I want to say it was “Four Walls of Solitude,” but because of the feedback and rumble it was hard to hear Gaz between songs and I’m not 100 percent), and that was met with a duly riotous response — headbanging, fist-pumping, that thing doom dudes do where they put their hands over their heads to clap and sort of sway side to side in a stepping half-circle. Well earned on Serpent Venom‘s part. They were easily the doomliest band on the bill, but in their element nonetheless, and with the complex rhythms of some of their new riffs, starts and stops and off-time interplay between the drums and guitar, their next album will for sure capture some attention.

Camden was the 12th stop on Elder and Pet the Preacher‘s 15-date European tour, so getting to the venue aside, things were locked in for both bands. Pet the Preacher had played a set down the street from the 013 at Roadburn, but as I was committed elsewhere, I didn’t get to see it. All the more reason to get to The Black Heart and see the Danish threesome bust out their Euro bottom-end heavy stoner riffs. It was an immediate turn sonically from Serpent Venom, but the consistent factor was an underlying appreciation for the heavy, and Pet the Preacher had me asking at the end of the set if I could buy a CD. They too played some new stuff — three out of the four on their setlist (which was scribbled on a torn off piece of a Red Stripe box) don’t appear either on 2012’s The Banjo debut full-length or the preceding Meet the Creature EP — and only “Into a Darken Night” appears on the first release.

Unquestionably, the highlight of the rest was set finale “What Now,” which featured the simple-but-speaking-volumes Q&A chorus, “What now/Fuck it,” atop a lumbering stoner riff that seemed out of the Euro heavy playbook but was still well placed and put to more than solid use. I could feel myself starting to pre-second-wind drag before they were done, but a shot of adrenaline from Elder was just the thing to revitalize.

Now, it had only been two days since I saw them tear a hole through a packed-out Het Patronaat at Roadburn, so yeah, I knew what was coming, but how awesome to watch Elder deliver the same kind of energy to 200 people in Camden as to 1,000 in Tilburg. The setlist was mostly the same — “Gemini,” “Release,” “Spires Burn,” “Dead Roots Stirring,” “Riddle of Steel,” and “The End” — but the real highlight was seeing how tight the band had become after 11 days on the road. They were in good spirits throughout, and their insistent, circular grooves were met with vigorous enthusiasm, bassist Jack Donovan‘s volume shaking the wooden floor of the place while guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo‘s lead notes cut through the tonal assault and drummer Matt Couto provided both sonic punctuation and the addition of his cymbals to the already consuming wash of glorious heavy psychedelic volume.

“The End,” which is a later track from 2011’s Dead Roots Stirring (review here), made for an especially righteous ending. I don’t think I’d pick it over “Dead Roots Stirring” or “Spires Burn” as the best thing they played, but DiSalvo’s leads and the Colour Haze-inspired apex of it was striking all the same, and when they kicked into the final progression, the rush of that riff, it clearly earned its place as the sendoff. Because they were late, their set had to be cut short to meet an 11PM curfew, and that was a bummer, but The Black Heart has neighbors and it was a Monday night, so it’s certainly understandable. When it came to seeing Elder, I think the audience was happy to get what they got. I know I certainly was.

Extra pics after the jump. Thanks to you for reading and to Reece Tee for making me feel at home a long way from it.

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