So I kinda wanted to hear some old shit alongside all the new shit, which I guess I feel okay about. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like every second of every show has to be super-recent as much as possible to get word out about new bands again as much as possible — and again again as much as possible to the extent of whatever the audience for this show is; I honestly have no idea — but that’s not even close to being true in reality. I could play Death, no one would give a shit.

I should play Death. Next show if I remember, which I’m saying up front is like 70/30 no.

Anyway, so old High on Fire into new Dozer and Altered States’ recent “The Crossing” crossing with The Hidden Hand’s “The Crossing” from their brilliant 2004 opus, and JAAW feeding into Celtic Frost feeding into Vape Warlök. Fucking a. This show’s pretty good. I hope I don’t ruin it by, you know, talking.

A few albums here I’m looking forward to knowing better. Swanmay for sure, JAAW absolutely, and I might even say that of Dozer, perhaps into perpetuity or at very least until long after I’ve reviewed it and hailed it as one of the best albums of the year — which I don’t even feel shy in saying because it’s a fucking given — and Bongzilla, because they’re Bongzilla and I’m glad they’re putting out records. They’re a needed reminder of how even the heaviest things can be made to float.

Thanks if you listen to this show. If not, it happens, but thanks for reading anyhow. If you stumbled here and have no idea what I’m talking about, you might still consider checking out a band or two from the playlist and find something to make your day better.

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The Obelisk Show – 03.31.23 (VT = voice track)

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I’m not sure anyone knew at the time that The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote was going to be the last The Hidden Hand album. Maybe the band itself, which had seen drummer Matt Moulis (now of Unmothered) come aboard as a replacement for Evan Tanner, himself a replacement for Dave Hennessy alongside bassist/vocalist/producer Bruce Falkinburg and guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, but certainly not me at the time. I remember having been so enamored of the trio’s prior outing, 2004’s Mother Teacher Destroyer — still for my money among the best albums Wino has played on — that when the follow-up hit in 2007, I appreciated the progression but was left somewhat cold by the affect of the songs as a whole.

Time has for the most part cured me of that. If I’m reaching for a record by The Hidden Hand, I’m probably likeliest to go for their second, but the third has proven worth appreciating on its own level, and just as their 2003 debut had to overcome the fact that it wasn’t Spirit Caravan, so too did The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote have to overcome the righteousness of three years earlier. The Wino/Falkinburg dynamic was at its peak, and more than either of their other albums, the last one finds The Hidden Hand with its own cohesive songwriting process, distinct from what any party might otherwise come up with on their own but still owing a piece of itself to their individual influences.

To wit, “The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote” itself. The title-track hammered home the album’s concept of a new American Revolution — sort of wishful thinking in the dark ages of the Bush era and the Iraq War (how’d that turn out again?) — and did so with a sound definitively The Hidden Hand‘s own. Falkinburg takes the lead on vocals, joined by Wino in the chorus, and the effect of the two of them together is enough to justify a revisit to the record as a whole. If you don’t have it, it was on Southern Lord, so there should still be some copies floating around somewhere.

Enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday.

The Hidden Hand, “The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote”

I can’t claim to have been there, but it looks like The Hidden Hand‘s first gig — March 23, 2003, at Velvet Lounge in Washington, D.C. — was a hell of a time. A packed room in front of that red curtain as the trio of guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich, bassist/vocalist Bruce Falkinburg and drummer Dave Hennessy unfurled an initial batch of winding riffs, heavy grooves and Illuminati-exposing lyricism. Maybe they hadn’t gotten that far yet, actually, since Falkinburg takes lead vocals on the second song of the set and makes his way through going “This is the first line of the verse,” etc., en route to a Melvins-y kind of filler chorus. Still, if the material was fresh it was obviously ready enough to break out on stage, and The Hidden Hand wound up a long way from the usual first-show roughness, even though they’d continue to grow together over the next four years of their all-too-brief tenure.

They’d release three albums in that time, which is one more than Spirit Caravan got out during their initial run and as many as the Wino-fronted incarnation of Saint Vitus issued before they got back together and the Lillie: F-65 long-player that resulted, so while their legacy hasn’t cast quite the same net, it was a productive period for sure. I don’t know if we’ll see a reunion like we have for Vitus, The Obsessed or Spirit Caravan, but if I saw The Hidden Hand on this or that festival bill in the years to come, I certainly wouldn’t complain. This set was the very beginning for them, with just the De-Sensitized 7″ out prior to the release of Divine Propaganda later in 2003, so I hope you take the chance to enjoy where the band was coming from as they started to branch out from those roots.

Have a great Wino Wednesday.

The Hidden Hand, Live at Velvet Lounge, Washington, D.C., March 23, 2003

This is pretty early on for The Hidden Hand. I’m not sure of the venue — The Velvet Lounge, maybe? — but this version of “Desensitized” would’ve just about coincided with the release of the 7″ that broke the song up into two parts and was their first release prior to making their their full-length debut with Divine Propaganda on MeteorCity that same year. There seems to be some discrepancy as to when the first The Hidden Hand show actually was. Respected taper TNTFreedooM, who show this week’s clip and is responsible for many more that have been featured here in the past has it listed that their live debut was March 23, 2003, and yet in the Megabox there are videos dated before that, one from Feb. 2003 and one from New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 2002. That’s the earliest show I can find, but whether or not it was actually the first, I can’t be sure.

Last week I posted a mystery wondering if it was Scott Reeder or Guy Pinhas playing with The Obsessed and pretty immediately got schooled in the variations on the two bass players, the upshot being that, indeed, it was Pinhas. I’ve no doubt somebody out there was at the first The Hidden Hand show, whether it was that New Year’s gig or one before it, and would be able to enlighten me and anyone else who might be wondering. Either way, this version of “Desensitized,” preceded by a bit of technical difficulties from bassist/vocalist Bruce Falkinburg that results in two false starts from Wino and drummer Dave Hennessy, is pretty early into their tenure, which would come to an end in 2007 following the release of their third album, The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote.

And of course, “Desensitized” would later be re-recorded for The Hidden Hand‘s second album, 2004’s Mother Teacher Destroyer, which is usually regarded as the high point of the band. It is as signature a riff as The Hidden Hand had, and I hope you enjoy this version and have a great Wino Wednesday:

The Hidden Hand, “Desensitized” Live in Washington, D.C., May 10, 2003

I count myself lucky to have seen The Hidden Hand the few times I did. I could tell you a story about blowing a chance to do a show with them owing to a snowstorm around when their last album, The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, was released in 2007, but more pleasantly, I recall a few especially killer gigs circa 2004’s Mother Teacher Destroyer that were an enlightenment in terms of showing me the power of what a classic heavy trio could accomplish on stage, Wino and bassist/vocalist Bruce Falkinburg playing off each other’s work so well. When it hit, their third and final outing didn’t do as much for me — its narrative of rebellion seemed put together after the fact and the songs came across as moving away from the warmth of the record prior, which I still hold as their best — but even without drummer Dave Hennessy or Evan Tanner, who played on 2005’s Devoid of Color EP as well as The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, they were an excellent and continually underappreciated band. At the time, you could say the same for Spirit Caravan, The Obsessed and Saint Vitus too.

Fair enough. The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote came out in Feb. 2007, and they were done by August of that year, but in between they took time to hit Europe for a full month. The complete set which you can see below was webcast May 9, 2007, on fabchannel.com — not linked because it doesn’t exist anymore — and features cuts from all three The Hidden Hand records, emphasizing some of what was best about that band in their prime. The show was at Paradiso in Amsterdam, and also on the tour were Philly heavy prog instrumentalists Stinking Lizaveta and weirdo doomers Beehoover. Sounds like a solid bill. Quality on the clip isn’t the greatest if you’re looking to make it fullscreen, but it’s still worth checking out for the pro audio alone.

Either way, hope you enjoy and have an excellent Wino Wednesday:

The Hidden Hand, Live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, 2007

According to the raw interwebular research I was able to put together — i.e., I Googled it — The Hidden Hand played the release show for their second album, Mother Teacher Destroyer, on Oct. 29, 2004, at the Black Cat in Washington, D.C. If I’m wrong about that, I hope you’ll at least give me credit for trying to track down when this clip of “The Crossing,” the opening track from that record, was played. Whenever it was, bassist Bruce Falkinburg absolutely nails the vocals, and even in the “uploaded five years ago” quality, the song sounds pretty righteous.

Their 2003 debut, Divine Propaganda, was rawer, and 2007’s swansong, The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, more ambitious, but to me, Mother Teacher Destroyer was the quintessential outing from The Hidden Hand during their all-too-short run from 2003-2007. Not only did it have the rawness and progressive sensibilities in near-perfect balance, but the tracks themselves were so memorable, both individually and how they fed into each other, that the album remains high on my list of favorite Wino-related releases. I’ve featured the album before, so I won’t belabor the point, but it was the right offering at the right moment.

All the better, then, to get a glimpse of that moment nearly a decade later, by checking out this video of “The Crossing” from the release show. Wino, Falkinburg and drummer Dave Hennessy are in top form — you can see them nail the tricky change shortly before the long guitar solo kicks in — and it seems fair to think this was if not as good as they got, then probably close to it. I still consider The Hidden Hand probably the least appreciated of the bands Wino has been in, the stalled-out and largely forgotten Premonition 13 notwithstanding, and something like this is a real treat at least for me, and I hope for you as well.

Please enjoy and have a great Wino Wednesday:

The Hidden Hand, “The Crossing” Live at the Mother Teacher Destroyer CD Release Show

I know I’ve gone on at length about the underrated nature of The Hidden Hand among the pantheon of so-called “Wino bands,” and it’s true, the project that I think introduced a lot of people to the style and frontmanship of Scott “Wino” Weinrich — their being active when Dave Grohl‘s Probot record was released likely had something to do with that — often gets downplayed. They weren’t as influential as The Obsessed or Spirit Caravan, and Saint Vitus is a different animal entirely. But The Hidden Hand was more than just some band Wino was in for a few years before getting back with Vitus. True, they had a half-decade run from about 2002 until 2007, but in that time they produced three vibrant, distinct albums that showed a commitment to stylistic progression and offered top notch riffing and a vocal collaboration between Wino and bassist Bruce Falkinburg that I think stands out as the best of Wino‘s career.

Maybe that’s not saying much since Wino hasn’t often shared vocal duties, but in my head, that only makes The Hidden Hand a more special band. Falkinburg, also a producer who’s worked with J. Robbins, Wooly Mammoth and many others, brought something to The Hidden Hand completely distinct from any other group in which Wino had taken part up to that point. Their songwriting showcased a rich partnership beginning with the De-Sensitized 7″ and subsequent full-length debut, Divine Propaganda, released by MeteorCity in 2003. While my impression of that album has always been rooted in its rawness compared to its 2004 follow-up, Mother Teacher Destroyer, a revisit to the band’s eponymous song — or their theme, as the parenthetical has it — finds it a celebration of various elements. The heavy riffing and anti-authoritarian drive are both there that would become staples of The Hidden Hand‘s sound, the album’s title mirrored in the mysticism counteracted by worldly manipulations transforming into dogma amid the political turmoil of the early part of the last decade.

And with “The Hidden Hand (Theme),” it’s Falkinburg up front. Wino joins in on the chorus, but it’s worth noting that on the song The Hidden Hand chose to represent who they were and what they were about, it was the bassist in the frontman role.

Enjoy and have an excellent Wino Wednesday:

The Hidden Hand, “The Hidden Hand (Theme)”

The Hidden Hand happened at a pretty interesting juncture for American heavy, just when underground riff-worship was really starting to get a foothold in a wider public consciousness beyond what it had been in the days before the widespread instant-gratification of the internet became a way to access just about anyone’s music anytime. Their second album, the stellar Mother Teacher Destroyer, certainly got some attention when it was issued by Southern Lord in 2004 — helped perhaps by the publicity of Dave Grohl‘s Probot project, released that same year, and Wino‘s visible involvement in that on guitar and vocals — but the preceding full-length debut, 2003’s Divine Propaganda, had no such high-profile lead-in. Not to shoehorn it into too convenient a narrative, but it was simply Wino‘s new band after Spirit Caravan broke up.

Listening back now, over a decade later and in light of the two albums The Hidden Hand released after it, Divine Propaganda is a standout if somewhat uneven release. Issued by MeteorCity, it was the first studio output from Wino, bassist/vocalist Bruce Falkinburg and drummer Dave Hennessy, and it introduced a lot of the Illuminati/conspiracy/socio-political framework in which a good portion of the band’s lyrics would work for the duration of their tenure, but thanks in no small part to the Weinrich/Falkinburg collaboration in the songwriting, it also pushed into territory that was neither The Obsessed-style doom nor the freewheeling heavy rock of Spirit Caravan. There was something else going on, and that’s evident on Divine Propaganda, even if the trio were still figuring out what they wanted their sound to be and what shape that collaboration would take.

In all honesty, “The Last Tree” — track seven of the record’s total 10 — probably could’ve been a Spirit Caravan song with its rolling groove of a chorus riff, but as the verse shows, The Hidden Hand were already becoming something distinct, and the fuzz that Falkinburg puts on his bass in the track is not to be missed. It’s something of a forgotten gem from the largely underappreciated band, whose timing and whose songwriting continue to intrigue.

Happy Wino Wednesday:

The Hidden Hand, “The Last Tree” from Divine Propaganda (2003)