It's all been leading up to this. In the early nineties, when most of us heard Earth for the first time, our minds were totally blown. What was that massive slab of fuzzy sludge doing on Sub Pop? Why didn't it sound like Soundgarden or Mudhoney or Tad? It didn't take long before we stopped asking questions like that and began wondering where the hell were all the other bands that sounded like Earth. Well, it took 10 years, but now that whole downtuned slow motion sludge thing is an actual genre. With more and more new bands popping up every day. All honoring the mighty sludge that was Earth. But those of you who were into Earth the first time around, might remember the band changing directions pretty dramatically, adding a drummer, and playing actual songs, even doing a Hendrix cover at one point, the Earth of old having mutated into a groovy sort of stoner post rock, propulsive swinging riffs, relentless chugging guitars, all wrapped in a druggy spacy swirl. Back then we were all a bit bummed out, as Earth became, well, more normal, at least to our ears. It was as close to selling out as Earth were liable to get.
Back to the present day. Recordings started popping up here and there, along with rumors of actual Earth shows, limited 7"s and tour only 12"s, all filling us with an impossible anticipation. Earth was back. But if they were back, why were all the recordings from live shows and all several years old? It made sense, the sound of the new Earth practically picked up right where they left off, stretched out, spaced out, druggy post rock with simple drumming and wavering distorted riffs, not heavy per se, but dark and dreamy and mesmerizing. But none of that could have prepared us for the desolate, sun baked, slow crawl, shuffle and twang beauty of long-awaited new studio album Hex. Definitely hewing closer to Earth's more recent post rockisms, Hex is warm and expansive, slow building and contemplative, with simple drums, heavily reverbed, not distorted, guitars, occasional lapsteel, the whole thing unfurling into a haunting twang, a ghost town desert lullaby, a Cormac McCarthy novel in song, tumbleweeds, miles of scrub and windblown landscapes, old dead trees, plenty of space for the cymbals to sizzle and each riff to drift into black clouded skies. Drone / doom / dirge / sludge purists (if there can be such a thing) may well be a bit disappointed, or at the very least confused. And Earth's history / reputation for black hole heaviness might be an albatross at this point as this new sound falls squarely within the territory of groups like Low, Codeine, Friends Of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Scenic, Torrez, Sixteen Horsepower, even Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emperor. But ultimately none of that has anything to do with the fact that Hex is just simply beautiful. A dark and mysterious and truly haunting record. Huge swells of instrumental tension dissipate into warm washes of drift and shimmer, melodies are slowly uncoiling snakes, waking drowsily and slithering off sun baked rocks, every note and every drum beat, every slippery lapsteel swoop, every stretch of near silence, are all draped lazily over broken fences, fallen power lines, rusted out tractors, fallow fields. Dark clouds drift above, across a steel grey sky, sending small shadowy shapes scurrying across the landscape like mysterious creatures, the breeze is warm and smells of death and desolation. Every one is lost and alone, out of money, out of time, just waiting around to die. The mood is bleak, but the sound of Hex is so so beautiful. Somehow hopeful and full of joy, but the sort of joy that comes from being powerless and close to despair, and simply choosing joy over misery, finding happiness the way animals in the desert seek out moisture. The heart of Hex is heavy, the sound appropriately heavy as well, but in a way few conventionally heavy records can manage. A brooding, storm about to break, dam about to burst, soul about to loose itself from its earthly moorings and escape to a better place kind of heavy. The sound of the desert, and the human spirit, of death, of sadness and horror, of loneliness, of abandonment, of hearts breaking, lovers lost and drifting apart, of life. The sound of laying in the dry dirt, the breeze stretched across you like a moth eaten old blanket, eyes closed, the sun sending all sorts of shapes spinning behind your closed eyelids, memories becoming fuzzy and drifting away, your whole body and soul wrapped in a warm darkness, the world fading into nowhere, you fading into nothing.
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
And, as they say, that's not all -- this comes with a dvd disc as well! A documentary film by graphic artist Seldon Hunt entitled "Within The Drone", shot on tour with Earth and SUNNO))) in Europe in 2006. Lots of live performance footage, intermixed with scenes from the road, and interviews with Dylan Carlson, who proves to be charmingly laid-back, plain spoken and (yes) down to earth. He talks about LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from watching the scenes of Earth in action though that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
It's been an Earth kinda year so far, eh? Once considered a going-beyond-the-Melvins joke, notable mainly for the early involvement of one Kurt Cobain, Earth's status has grown and grown over the years. They've got to be much more popular now than when their first few Sub Pop albums came out in the early '90s. Back then, only a few folks -- that'd probably be me, you, and those guys who later formed SUNNO))) -- were into Earth, and understood the immense genius of their slo-motion, drone-heavy ambient doom riffage. Now, we sell more copies of Earth 2 every week than Aquarius probably sold the year it came out (well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but we do sell a heck of a lot of Earth 2, considering). And SUNNO))), Boris and all the rest of 'em owe a lot to Earth's Dylan Carlson and his various cohorts.
So far, 2004-2005 has seen the release of two new (though, live) Earth albums and a 7". And now this. You know you've made it when the remix album comes out! Handpicked by Carlson himself, the remixers here are an interesting lot: Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and surprise surprise SUNNO)))! Now, on one hand that's an exciting line-up, sure, while on the other, it'd might be even more interesting to hear those blokes remix something like Brittany Spears, right? For subversion's sake anyway. But they're all Earth fans, and Earth is fans of them, and we're pretty sure Earth fans are gonna like what they've done here. And even if you think that the presence of SUNNO))) is a little...redundant, or that Jim O'Rourke, cool as he is, need never trouble himself with yet another remix, overall no complaints! We like how Mogwai has introduced what sound like avant-classical violin into "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine", we found Russell Haswell's Merzbow-ization of the almost Champs-y "Tibetan Quaaludes" enjoyable, and SUNNO)))'s sixteen-minute "Rule The Divine (Mysteria Caelestis Mugivi)" sounds the most Earth-like of all these remixes, which might be to be expected, dontcha think?
Interestingly, no one remixed anything from the first Earth album Extra-Capsular Extraction, while two mixes are from the same Earth 2 track, and three of the remixers (Haswell, O'Rourke, and Broadrick) picked songs from the out of print Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions. Autechre went even further afield and chose a song from Earth's fourth and last (also out of print) studio album, Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Hmmm. While I would have liked to hear something from Extra-Capsular, perhaps the presence of all those Phase 3 derived tracks will convince Sub Pop to reissue that album!
Some of the remixes, like Haswell's, feature obvious fuckery, whereas others, like Broadrick's more trebley, buzzier "Harvey" almost need to be played back-to-back with the original to tell which is the remix and which is the real Earth. Though, that "Harvey" sounds like it could also easily be a track by Broadrick's awesome new Jesu project as well! All in all, SUNNO))) excepted, this is generally a bit less riffy and "doomy" than the Earth originals, concentrating instead on Earth's drone-washed trance elements. Almost makes sense that the cd booklet art looks kinda looks like a Pop Ambient cd! Now, it doesn't usually take much of a recommendation from us to convince AQ customers to buy anything Earth-related, but we did like this, a lot!
More sludge trickles down from heaven, giving all you Earth fanatics another reason to live. This is a one sided, live lp, recorded at the Hyperstrings Festival in Vienna in July of 1996. Anyone who bought one of those limited clear vinyl 12"s from a few months back, obviously needs one of these. Crushing tarpit sludge from the masters of all that is slow and heavy. Former Earth-lings include Joe Preston of the Melvins and the Thrones and Kurt Kobain! This is their first 'official' release since their last (Pentastar) on Sub Pop. This is VERY LIMITED. Not sure how long we'll have these.
Finally in stock on vinyl! But like most of these things, probably not for long... We listed the cd version a while back, alongside another (also live) Earth cd, 070796LIVE. Here's a precis of what we had to say about Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword then:
There are only two tracks here, both live, and you might have one of them already since it also appears on that 070796LIVE disc. Thankfully though, the track that's exclusive to this record is a doozy -- an hour long! Album-length in itself, a sprawling doom dirge, recorded live in 2002. So while this is a NEW record, it's not an especially recent recording. But what the hell. We'll take our Earth where we can get it. The first track, the one that is duplicated on the Live cd, is a fourteen minute, solo guitar buzz / dirge / scrape that sounds really damaged, stumbling and clumsy, and definitely messed up. The hour-long second track features drummer Adrienne Davies, who seems to be a permanent member of Earth now, and whose spare, hard hitting style perfectly compliments Carlson's new riffier songwriting. Gone are the glacial fuzzy dirges that inspired Sunn 0))) to become Earth 2 (too) and in their place, is a massive fuzzed out riffy doom metal / post rock groove, super repetitive and totally hypnotic. Much more reminiscent of Earth's under-rated, more song-oriented final Sub Pop album Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons. Definitely still doomy and drone-y and drug-addled and head nodding, but dare we say, more rocking!
Now, since this is a single LP and not a double, we're pretty sure that the hour-long track from the cd version must have been edited down to fit on here! But we haven't cracked one open yet to find out. And since most collector-types buying this won't be opening theirs either, we're not gonna bother. Collectors might also be curious to know that the first pressing of black vinyl was limited to 750 copies, but the ones we have might be a second pressing, dunno if they're limited. Well of course they are, but does it matter?
Y'know, we've never ever listed this Earth album before. It's the last one they recorded for Sub Pop, back in 1996, and until pretty recently seemed likely to be this seminal sludge-drone band's swansong. One that wasn't even all that well-regarded at the time when it came out, either. (Not that any of Earth's albums were all that popular back in the day -- they're definitely much more appreciated now!) And so perhaps it's time to re-evaluate Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons.
Especially since we just sold a ton of the recent Earth remixes album on both cd and vinyl, and chances are a few of you'll also want/need this, seeing as how one of those remixes (Autechre's) was of a song from this here record. Silly to have the remix but not the original, eh? Plus we figure a lot of you Earth fans might have overlooked this one, or simply thought it was out of print or something.
Back in '96, Pentastar was kinda regarded as Earth's "sell-out" album, the one where Earth mainman Dylan Carlson got himself a real band and attempted to make some honest to goodness rock n' roll music, with, y'know, vocals and melodies and songs and everything. They even do a Hendrix cover! But of course being Earth this was still (kinda) super heavy and (mostly) droned-out. Let's take a closer look, track-by-track...
"Introduction" certainly sounds like Earth of olde, a doomful commencement to the proceedings that could just as easily be the work of Boris. But then track two, "High Command", is more like some sort of slowed-down psych-grunge with the haunted by the ghosts of the Velvet Underground. A real nod scene, sure, but not exactly the Earth we knew and loved. Listening to it now, though, it's not bad at all. Sounds a bit like Steel Pole Bathtub. Then there's "Crooked Axis For String Quartet" that takes us into spaced-out krautrock territory... not heavy, but nice! The blown-out rumble of "Tallahassee" returns us to the realm of heaviness but again rocks more than Earth is or was "supposed" to. That's then followed by the rather lovely interlude of "Charioteer (Temple Song)", before the heavy Hendrix worship of Earth's take on Jimi's "Peace In Mississippi" stomps into view. Seems pretty cool now. The experimental side of Earth then surfaces with a seven-minute minimalist piece for *piano* entitled "Sonar And Depth Charge". The many moods of Dylan Carlson, eh? Lastly, the album closes with the epic instrumental "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor" that finds what we might term Earth-y riffage (same as the "Introduction") graced with an honest-to-God heavy metal style melodic guitar solo!!
We can understand how some folks (some of us!) were disappointed when this album first came out. The extremity of old Earth was tamed. A lot of this was at least twice as fast and/or half as heavy as we'd expected (or wanted) from them. But giving it another chance and taking it on its own terms, this is a fine album of stoner rock indeed, sounding not unliked AQ faves Los Natas at times. Or the "heavy rocks" side of Boris. Or the Melvins, who of course have made fucking with their fans expectations a big part of their career. And if we'd heard this *before* hearing Earth's previous albums, we'd probably have loved it right away! Indeed, if you got into this album first (as assuredly some folks did) and then went back to Earth 2 or Extra-Capsular Extraction, whew! that would be a interesting/confounding experience.
We're now convinced that the underrated Pentastar does indeed proudly belong in any Earth fan's collection! ...Now someone needs to start a letter writing campaign to get Sub Pop to bring Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions back into print (from which three of that remix album's tracks were taken)!
We'd been hearing a lot of gripes about this new Earth record, and seen more than a few bad reviews, most of them based on the fact that this is the first Earth record to feature singing, and not just any singing, but from guest vocalists, as in Mark Lanegan, and Rabi Shabeen Qazi of Seattle psych rock outfit Rose Windows, and heck, speaking of guests, even the guy from Built To Spill plays guitar! But don't get to freaked out, the sound is most definitely very Earth-like, and if anything it's a lot heavier than the last few records, it's still all twang flecked and glacial, a woozy, loping sprawl equal parts SUNNO))) and Morricone, and this time around, it actually sounds like the went all the way back to their 1996 Pentastar record for some inspiration, the opener, is dense, and heavy as fuck, with a killer main riff, not to mention lots of extra guitars keening and winding their way around the proceedings, the drums more of a minimal pulse, but the sky full of swirling guitars, sheets of feedback, down tuned chugs, it's fierce and fucking fantastic, and we'd have been happy if that was the only song and it just stretched out forEVER.
So let's get to the vocals by starting with the fact, that we'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't think Lanegan has a killer voice. Sure some of his record have been a bit blah, but his voice is fantastic, weathered and worn, raspy and emotional, expressive and passionate, his low rumbling croon easily swooping into a wail, and really, it's not hard to imagine why Earth chose him, his voice is perfect for Earth's slow burn dirge metal blooze, and like the first track, the sound is massive, lots of feedback, and tangled melodies, a plodding behemoth of a rhythm, and Lanegan's voice, which transforms it into the heaviest Screaming Trees song that never was, which is absolutely a good thing. The there's Rabi Shabeen Qazi, who sings on "From The Zodiacal Light", the track that had been making the rounds before the record's release, and it's gorgeous, languorous, smoldering and sultry, twangy, bloozey, a little dirge, dusky, dusty, and Qazi' vocals work perfectly, he voice smokey and sultry, and powerful, sounding a times a little like Perry Farrell too which is strange, but makes sense, that timbre of voice paired with heaving heaviness, at times we expected thing to explode into "The Mountain Sound", but instead, the track unwinds gradually, a heady, heavy, psychedelic slow burn that really, it's tough to find anything not to like about it.
Lanegan returns again closer "Rocks Across The Gate", and more than the other track, this almost sounds like a jam from one of Lanegan's solo records, albeit a bit heavier, and again, it works, perfectly. Wouldn't be surprised if he joined Earth on a semi-permanent basis, we sure wouldn't complain, that's for sure.
Either way, musically, it's more of the Earth we love, a bit heavier, but essentially, more blown out twang flecked metal blooze, the vocals add a whole 'nother dimension, that we are digging a LOT.
The lp version includes a bonus track not on the cd, which is a sort of sonic bookend to the opener, another slow-blooze heavy psych crawl, this time with some extra fuzz and FX, but a pretty perfect finish for sure...
You can read more of our gushing about Earth elsewhere in the list, but needless to say, we LOVE Earth. And if you have no Earth records, we recommend you start with the godlike Earth 2, an epic three track monster of tarpit riffs and slow moving rumbles. But
Another Japanese version to drive collectors and completists crazy! This is the import version of the most recent release from eternal aQ faves Earth, and in addition to the record itself, an absolutely gorgeous and timeless slab of dark lugubrious cinematic twang, this double disc tacks on a live disc, recorded in 2006 in Europe, and originally released on Southern Lord as Live Europe 2006, a disc so limited (maybe just tour only) that we never even heard about it, let along carried it. But it's just what you might expect, live versions of all the new Earth favorites, slightly heavier in places, maybe subtly more raw and immediate, but really hewing pretty close to the recorded versions, so most likely for completists only, or folks not put off by the idea of shelling out $35 for a record they already own, for the extra 6 tracks...
And be warned, we only got a handful, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slow motion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
Cool cover art by Arik Roper, housed in a gorgeous black slipcover, letterpressed and printed in gold metallic ink.
FINALLY! The most recent Earth album on vinyl, but this ain't just any old vinyl, even by Southern Lord standards, this is so deluxe it's off the charts. Metallic gold ink on faux leather hardcover, like an old fashioned, and very big Bible, inside the lps are attached like pages in a scrapbook, loads of full color artwork, but the most important thing about this limited vinyl version, and perhaps the most frustrating, is the extra bonus track, available only here. More gorgeous sunbaked gospel flecked blues, languorous guitars, minimal drums, with horns and slide guitar, so beautiful and fits perfectly with the record proper. And again, only available here. Limited to less than 5000 copies, which seems like a lot, but for Southern Lord, and Earth in particular, it's probably not nearly enough. Here's what we had to say about The Bees when it first came out:
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
Originally released as a super limited colored vinyl 12", for sale only on a 2003 European tour (and limited to, depending on who you ask, either 330, or 660 copies) this amazing and amazingly limited record finally gets a proper release on cd. Which is also great considering the label that released the 12" apparently never paid the bands ANY money and actually ditched said European tour taking lots of the bands' money with them. Hopefully this will help set things right on that front, and at the same time it's a chance for those of you who missed out on the vinyl to finally check this out. KK Null, guitarist for Japanese sludge metal outfit Zeni Geva offers up a lengthy free noise exploration, guitars and electronics, abstract space-y weirdness, that gradually builds and builds into full on squalls of guitarnoise and ultra distorted electronic freakout. The cd also includes a twenty minute bonus track from Null, a sort of part two addendum to his original 12" track, and it's appropriately enough another extensive blooping swooshing analog space-out psych-free-noise epic, equal parts Merzbow and Space Machine (Masonna's space-y analog analog synth project). The Earth tracks is a single twenty minute long track recorded live at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle in 2003 and was one of the first (if not THE first) recordings to introduce the new sound of Earth, owed in no small part to the addition of Adrienne Davies on drums. A lot less sludgey and droney than old Earth, and a lot more hypnotic and melodic that later Earth, a very minimal post rock almost, with slow motion distorted arpeggiated melodies and woozy droned out riffs, all sort of pulsing and throbbing supported by simple shuffling, drumming and lots and lots of space. As hypnotic as ever, but definitely more rocking, and certainly the first hint of Earth's slow directional sonic shift.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Definitely don't need to say too much about this one. SUPER LIMITED obviously, this split single, Earth on one side, Neurosis offshoot Tribes Of Neurot on the other, was originally released as a give away to all who attended the San Francisco New Years Eve Earth / Neurosis show only. However, we (thankfully, surprisingly) managed to get a bunch, but considering the above, these will be gone in a flash.
The Neurot side is a killer, gorgeous long form drones, thick and serpentine, we hear some Niblock, some Chalk, some Taj Mahal Travellers, gorgeous and thick, dense and dark, one of the best things we've heard from those guys for sure.
Earth counter on their side, with some super stripped down Fahey-doom, sprawling slow motion Appalachia, tuned way down and allowed to spread out like a slow moving black fog. Just guitar mostly as far as we can tell, but pretty dang lovely.
Well worth your $9, especially if you were kicking yourself for missing the show. Pressed on clear yellow vinyl, in a striking, super thick full color sleeve, and as if we needed to tell you again, SUPER LIMITED, so one per customer!!
Just a few weeks back we had the pleasure of hosting an in-store performance by godly guitarist and all around nice guy Isaiah Mitchell, playing solo, just guitar and singing, doing songs from his Black Elk Medicine Band project, some Golden Void stuff too, and he was GREAT. But even better is hearing him in full flight with the rhythm section from his mega power trio Earthless backing him up, as presented here on this brand new full-length from that band, their third studio slab. As expected, it's another excessive exercise in badass bluesy stoner jamming, Isaiah and Co. just wailing away endlessly, the bass laying it down solid, the drums rolling and tumbling, the guitar soaring and searing, these three latter day heavy hippie rockers achieving total psych-fuzz nirvana for the duration. 4 songs, 65+ minutes, utter transportational heaviness, epic and all-instrumental, rendered with taste and chops off the charts. Mitchell sure shreds, but in a psych not metal sense of shred, very sixties sounding, the jamming getting moody and mellow on the likes of "Equus October", but mainly very fluidly ripping and riffing, the album's rockin' tour-de-force being the super energetic title track, first previewed on the band's Live At Roadburn recording, here taking up a whole side-and-a-half, truly a jam "For The Ages". File alongside our recent Record Of The Week by Fuzz, for nonstop guitar-heavy psych-rock awesomeness.
Note: we're running too low on the vinyl right now to list that format too, but hopefully next time...
Ever been to an Earthless show? If yes, then you probably are already in line to purchase this. You know that San Diego's Earthless are a live band first and foremost, their heavy, psychedelic stoner rock instrumentals best experienced at appropriate (loud) volume as they unfurl and unfold, lead guitarist Isaiah Mitchell's epic beyond-blues soloing seemingly never-ending, lifting the proceedings far, far out into space. He's not a guitar hero, but a guitar demi-god!
This double disc document captures the trio blowing minds at last year's Roadburn Festival over in Holland (good place for 'em). Disc one features a massive piece (or two?) entitled "Blue/From The Ages", which is as far as we can tell a massive improv jam exclusive to this recording, while disc two consists of versions of "Godspeed" and "Sonic Prayer" from their last album Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky... again, though, the disc is one long track, the two songs flowing together...
The sound is excellent, the band is on fire, it's prime Earthless action all right, wailin' away awesomely and endlessly. The energy level somehow builds and builds, this band intense and heavy and locked in tight, all night it would seem. Must have been a great show, well we KNOW it was a great show, these discs are the proof. Any Earthless fan should get this, likewise if you're into, say, Acid Mothers Temple, get this and you just may have new favorite band.
(And how come they weren't one of the bands on those 7" Hawkwind tributes we're also listing this week? That would have been good!)
Their indubitably stonery name Earthless makes sense right away, when you consider how much the intro to the first track, "Godspeed", sounds like a spaceship taking off. Then the riffs kick in, aggressively establishing a higher orbit from whence their guitarist can launch further into space, continuing onward and upward into the "cosmic sky" to free minds, asses, whathaveyou.
Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (sounds like an Uli Jon Roth album title!) is the second album from San Diego's heaviest and most mindblowing instrumental psych guitar-centric power trio, featuring Hot Snakes drummer Mario Rubalcaba, bassist Mike Eginton, and most crucially, guitarist Isaiah Mitchell. They're known for the eternal jamming of their live shows, Isaiah soloing endlessly (like, for a whole hour!) and seemingly effortlessly, channelling the spirits of guitar heroes past like Jimi Hendrix and Randy Holden. Trower, Roth, West, Marino, Iommi too. Dude's such a great guitarist!!! And the rhythm section here backs him up oh-so-solidly.
As with their previous record, you get two "side-long" pieces, starting with the five-part "Godspeed", nearly 21 minutes that turn up the Breadfan and get really intensely Metallica'd after some prog-jazz organ flourishes, with galloping chug awesomeness in sorta Champsy vein (and it's Tim Green from the Fucking Champs guesting on organ on this track, he recorded this album at his Louder Studios). Yeah it gets remarkably metal, then swings back to the Hendrix/Holden style wailing.
If all this too muchness ain't enough, then there's another, even slightly longer track following, "Sonic Prayer", in which Earthless continue to outdo all yer Hendrix, Hawkwind, Flower Travellin' Band, psych guitar freakout fantasies. And heavy as it all is, it's also super smooth sailing. Perhaps imagine a jammier Mammatus, or a more disciplined Acid Mothers Temple, or a more expansive Stinking Lizaveta...
Also, we've mentioned before that fans of the Groundhogs should like this band, and what do we find here? As a special cd-only bonus, there's an extra 4 minutes 36 seconds of Earthless covering "Cherry Red" from the Groundhogs' masterpiece of prog-blues heaviness, 1971's Split. Of course they do it perfectly, with spot-on vocals, even!
Their new label Tee Pee has done this up right, putting the cd in mini-lp sleeve gatefold packaging, with suitable hippy-skull artwork inside, very convincingly like it's an Akarma label reissue of some lost treasure from long ago, kinda like it sounds.
Onetime Blue Cheer guitarist Randy Holden once dedicated an entire song ("Guitar Song") from his legendary solo album Population II to a paean about how much he loves to hear the sound of an electric guitar wailing. Well we'd bet he'd LOVE San Diego's Earthless (a trio consisting of the drummer from Hot Snakes and Clikatat Ikatowi, a guitarist who tours with Nebula, and another dude on bass). They're all about loud wailing psych guitar over stoned and stoner grooves. So, for Randy and any others that share his enthusiasm, Earthless offer up their debut cd here, featuring two looong tracks (42 minutes total) recorded live in the studio ('cause that's how they do it). Track one, "Flower Travelin' Man" opens with a throbbing bass line that kinda sounds like a stoned Steve Harris galloping into Geezer Butler territory. Then the Hawkwind starts blowing, spacey FX in full effect, and that aforementioned wailing electric guitar takes center stage for a mamma-lamma-jamma that you'd have to be squarely square not to love. Then, the second track, "Lost In The Cold Sun", actually heavies things up even more, getting dirgier and doomier and downier (I mean, more downer). No complaints from us. The Gravity label suggests that any fans of Hawkwind, Sabbath, Amon Duul II and The Groundhogs would dig this -- we'd agree, and not just 'cause if you're a fan of those bands chances are you're already suitably toked up. We'd also add the likes of Pharaoh Overlord, Comets On Fire and Dead Meadow to that list. Definitely gonna go see 'em next time they play up here!
NB. by the way, you may have noticed that in many of AQ's reviews of "psychedelic" "stoner" music, we often extol the glorious drugginess of said music, which is funny as most of our reviewers don't themselves indulge in the (ab)use of drugs (our own Andee has never even had single sip of beer or toke of pot, ever!), nor do they necessarily believe that the potential listener for whom they are writing need to do so to enjoy the music, in fact some of us feel like a huge slab of smoke-y, trippy, druggy psych rock is all you need to get musically wasted!
Thee eternal jamming guitar godliness of Earthless is in full effect here, on this now expanded early daze document of this psychedelic power trio's semi-improvised live prowess, where they're at their best, after all, as hopefully you yourself have witnessed. We certainly have, upon many a deafening occasion.
Sonic Prayer Jam was recorded live at The Casbah in Earthless's hometown of San Diego in 2004, originally self-released by the band on cd-r, then as a limited 10" record on Gravity the next year, which we listed back when it came out, noting that guitarist Isaiah Mitchell sure can ably and endlessly peel off the electric acid blues leads, never failing to impress! (Department of understatement, there.)
But, y'know, they couldn't fit the whole show on that 10", which is long out of print anyway, so Earthless initiates will be stoked that they've now put it out again on 12" vinyl, and cd, so you can hear that magical Casbah performance uncut in its entirety. Any fan of the band will want this, and raw and live as it is, it also wouldn't be a bad place to start with them either. Totally captures their heavy cosmic vibes, man!!
The "Sonic Prayer Jam" itself, a lumbering astral rock n' roll voyage that makes the Acid Mothers Temple's usual output seem tame, takes up all of side 1 and most of side 2 on the vinyl with its pounding FX laden onslaught; on the cd, it's also in two parts, 32 minutes and 17 minutes long respectively. And then, after that devastating Hawkwinded headbang, for an encore Earthless unleash a killer cover of "Cherry Red" by one of their inspirations, '70s UK blues-prog heavies The Groundhogs, complete with high pitched vocal holler as per the original, which they do really well, funny since they're otherwise all-instrumental (a studio version of "Cherry Red" also appeared as cd-only bonus track on their Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky release, this is of course a liver and rawer rendition).
So, definitely an improved version of this urgently rockin' Earthless essential, never before on cd either. Regarding the vinyl version, the ones we have are the limited edition colored kind (green, in various shades), while they last.
We're looking forward to the upcoming full-length studio album on Tee Pee from these San Diegan psychedelic blown-out blooze mongers, but we also know that they're essentially at their best as a live act, as documented here with the two side-long, semi-improvised heavy jams on this 10" vinyl-only release. Guitarist Isaiah Mitchell can ably and endlessly peel off the electric acid blues leads, never failing to impress!
Got a couple copies of this under-the-radar (our radar anyway) 2012 release, a three way split that's pretty self-explanatory in regards to about why you might want it, bearing the following 3 slogans on the cover: "Electric Rock N' Roll", "It's Outta This World!" and "Jams To Groove Your Soul!".
Cosmic jammers Earthless offer up a 23+ minute live improvisation that takes up all of side A, while side B has Wino's band Premonition 13 doing their stoner thing for over 14 minutes, and then blues rockers Radio Moscow follow that with two relatively brief (in comparison) numbers, around six minutes each. Fans of any/all might wanna consider grabbing this. Includes download, we're told.
The hard rockin' biker doom metal outfit led by Spirit Caravan bassist Dave Sherman drops their debut full-length on the ever-reliable Southern Lord label. Sherman sings in Earthride, leaving the bass to one of his bandmates, and his gravelly voice gives this more of a crusty Motorhead vibe than the Wino-fronted Spirit Caravan, and the music is also a tad more raw and pummelling. We liked their previous 4-song ep, and this album is no let down. Heavy duty 70's style sludge stomp for all you long-haired, tattooed rockers out there. (Or, if that description doesn't fit you, this will still appeal to your *inner* long-haired tattooed rocker self.) Nothing at all "new" here, but if brutal stoner rock is what you crave, Earthride delivers. (And the booklet graphics do too, with closeup photos of the band's favorite amps, and a "Master Of Reality" cover parody on the back emphasizing their allegiance to Sabbath.)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Four-song ep from the bass player of Spirit Caravan's other stoner rock/doom metal project. With his rough, cigs-and-whisky damaged voice (like a rawer version of Spirit Caravan singer Wino's doom-croon) and heavy riffing, this should be an almost mandatory buy for those into that band and others of this genre...
A while back we reviewed a four song ep from this North Dakota stoner rock band who during their very brief lifespan, only ever managed to record those four tracks, which we dug BIG time, some seriously groovy stoner doom, heavy on the Kyuss, Sleep and the like, we even mentioned Deep Purple in our review of that other ep, and they just so happen to cover a Deep Purple jam this time around, but more on that in a second.
So after close to a decade, Egypt got back together to play a show, and ended up reforming officially and managed to finally record their first proper full-length, with many of the songs dating all the way back to the group's first incarnation, and the sound not that far removed, still Sabbathy, and sludgey, stonery and seriously groovy, all it should take is a few second of opener "Matterhorn" for you to figure out if this is your cup of THC laced tea, it most definitely is ours. Much like the recently reviewed record from stoner rock outfit Greenleaf, this is the sort of sound we never seem to get tired of - heavy and hooky, huge riffs, slithery and snarly, swaggery and sludgey, super long tripped out heavy psych jams, that slip easily from riffy churn, to blissed out sun baked space jam and back again. This is much more stoner ROCK, than stoner metal, in fact, it's almost more stoner BLOOZ, very reminiscent of some of our proto metal heavy blues faves, but with enough heft, and a crushing guitar tone that definitely makes this heavy enough for all you metalheads. The tempos are still swinging and Sabbathy, but tend toward the downright doomy, with at least one track sounding like classic true doom, and most of the songs, doomy or otherwise, do seem to always end up in stretched out space jam territory, the sort of heart-of-the-sun jams we wish would sorta go on forever, and in some cases kind of do.
And yeah, they cover Deep Purple's "Black Night", and while it's not do far removed from the original, it definitely fits pretty snugly amidst the rest of their originals. The one thing that might be a stumbling block for some folks are the vocals, which at least one aQ staffer found to be too growly and shouty, but that's definitely what the singer has going on, a rough, raw, growly bellow, that reminds us of Scissorfight, or Crowbar, and even more recently like Fucked Up, it's the sort of voice that seems like it can only come from a big burly bearded metalhead.
Fans of stoner rock, stoner metal, stoner doom, and yeah, stoner blooooz, WAY recommended!
How many bands can you name from Fargo, North Dakota? None. That's the number we came up with. Ever hear of the stoner doom outfit Egypt? We hadn't either.
But this here 4 song mini lp will change all that.
This short lived band hailed from North Dakota, and only managed to commit to tape these 4 tracks, but doomlords and stoner rock freeks will definitely wish there was more where these came from. Lurching doomic slow and low, heavy on the bass, heavy on everything really, but the songs were pretty reliant on thick bass grooves and the pounding drums, lazy sunbaked Kyuss-y riffs were then draped over the top, plenty of wah guitar, and wailed, SUNG not screamed vocals, that were also reminiscent of the late great Kyuss.
This is not funeral doom, or ultra doom, this is groovy stoner doom, classic metal filtered through the sound of old school doom. Sabbath, Pentagram, that sort of thing, heaped with some Kyuss, left out in the desert to bake, doused in LSD, just enough to give it a slightly psychedelic vibe, and let loose. Most of the songs slink along for ages, growling and simmering, slithering darkly, all low end groove, before exploding into furious space rock freakouts, wicked wah guitar solos, thick crunchy rhythms and those impassioned FX soaked vocals. The label suggests that Egypt will appeal to fans of Sleep, Sir Lord Baltimore and Deep Purple, which is definitely true, but expand that to include anyone into classic metal, fuzzy psych rock, and heavy doom metal. And again, fans of Kyuss, and THAT sound, will eat this up.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Mastered By James Plotkin. Amazing eye popping packaging, super thick gatefold sleeve, black and white on the outside, full color and psychedelic on the inside, printed with a spot varnish, super super striking.
Second of two releases this week from the mighty Aesthetic Death label, who we owe big time, for not only releasing records by Wijlen Wj, Stumm, Wreck Of The Hesperus, but for being the long standing and likely long suffering home of ultradoomlords Esoteric. Check out the Murkrat elsewhere on this list for a whole different take on doom, but this here, the first full length from French sludge four piece Eibon, is classic doom drenched sludge, or sludgey doom, or whatever you want to call it. Massive downtuned guitars chugging and grinding away, pounding pummeling caveman drumming, gurgled beast-from-below bellows, plenty of feedback, but this isn't really ultra slow, we're not talking Monarch or anything like that, this is sludge-y more like Eyehategod or Grief or Bongzilla, midtempo, the guitars almost groovy, lurching and lumbering, the sound incredibly heavy and blown out, thick and dense, the distortion so thick that when a note is held for more than a second or two it seems to crumble before your ears. The band locked into a killer groove that barring a short stretch of feedback drenched ambience, never wavers, and occasionally explodes into dense bursts of furious tribal drumming and some seriously druggy downerpsychdoom guitar freakouts.
The second track begins oddly enough with acoustic guitar, but the riff is soon swallowed up by the same riff, albeit soaked in fuzz and buzz and distortion, even slower and doomier that the opener, the main riff is a killer, the guitars tuned sooooooo loooow, they seem to warp and warble, occasionally fading out, leaving a sort of space rock minimal jam rife with weird effects and even some super simple melodic leads draped over the top. Could be vintage Monster Magnet actually during those parts, but the band soon launches back into the lurching dirge that opened the track, eventually finishing off in a noise drenched feedback smothered squall of blown out psychedelic high end ur-drone.
Here's El Cuy, the other cool Peruvian "stoner rock" band we promised to review a few weeks back when we listed the Cosmos Kaos Destruccion disc by their countymen and labelmates La Ira De Dios. Like them, power trio El Cuy kick out some seriously FUZZED rock action! They've a bit less Hawkwindy though, more garage rawk, straight up punkish without all the extra psychedelic FX but lots of gritty guitar. Imagine a less poppy, much heavier version of the Hives. Or the Lyres. It's high energy garagey rock, too frenzied really to be your usual stoner rock. Heavy, freaky, catchy - heck downright melodic when they want, as on the surfy "El Vertigo". But usually it's all about badass riff wrangling as these ten songs speed by in a little over 35 minutes total. Muy excellente!
The booklet with this cd includes the lyrics in Spanish plus English translations.
Despite being called Elder, the guys in this stoner/doom trio look pretty young! Nevertheless, this is their 2nd full length for the quite reliable Meteorcity label. We actually never listed Elder's first, self-titled album, from back in 2008, that one somehow slipped by, for whatever reason, but hope to make up for that by highlighting this new one, which we do dig big time, particularly 'cause of how it possesses a blissful lightness within its considerable heaviness.
And it's worth pointing out that, like a lot of things we list, it's by choice, we didn't have to list it y'know, there's lots of other things we could have listed instead, but it's something we liked enough to go to the trouble of ordering in and writing up to share with you 'cause we think you'd really like it too - well in this case, especially if you're into the stoner/doom sounds like we are.
They traffic in extended bouts of churning, blown-out heaviness, sludgey and psychedelic, with lumbering riffs, wailing guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and some nice, almost folky melodies (the 12 minute title track has some bits in it that remind us of early Wishbone Ash!). Theirs is not exactly a groundbreaking style, but boy do they bring it all together and do it right. And even though they're from Massachusetts, they've got the desert-y vibe down (these kids obviously having consumed much Kyuss), heavied up further to swing with the likes of Electric Wizard, Yob, Sleep, UFOmammut, and Boris (note the similar Roger Dean inspired logo). The vocals here are mostly an echoed afterthought, with the urgent instrumental unfurling of that desert-y doom being their main mode of mesmerization.
While the whole disc delivers those goods, they perhaps save the best for last, "Knot", another epic at 11:56 (well, all their songs are pretty darn long), which somehow seems to channel the essence of some of Elders' elders - ye olde '70s proto-metallers that is - into its bulldozing rifferama.
Are those purple icicles on the cover? We're not sure exactly, but it looks cool and psychedelic and eldritch� perfect for this latest, vinyl-only release from these stoner sludge heavies. We loved their MeteorCity cd from two years ago, Dead Roots Stirring, a disc of desert-y doom that was both crushingly heavy and mesmerically melodic. Now on it's second pressing, this newer two-tracker (one song to a side, 22 minutes total) follows on from that album with yet more lumbering riffage and fuzzed out psych glory. The track on the second side, "Release", in particular is a thing of epic, grungy beauty. Like we said, second pressing, no doubt just as limited as the first was.
LA stoner/fuzz specialists EasyRider (or RidingEasy, seems they changed the name of the label, what did they get sued by Peter Fonda or something?) have been KILLING it lately, not just doing cassette versions of some awesome shit (Saint Vitus, Fuzz, Witchcraft, Windhand, etc.) but signing up some rad new bands too for vinyl & cd release - we recently reviewed great albums Salem's Pot and Sons Of Huns, this list we've got two more, by Monolord and Electric Citizen.
This band, Electric Citizen, from Ohio, are yet another entry in the current upsurge (we won't say glut) of female-fronted, '70s styled retro-rockers - Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, Purson, Mount Salem, The Oath, Jess and The Ancient Ones, etc., etc. - and they already rank up amongst our faves. Heavy, rollicking riffage, check. Psychedelic vibes, check. High, wailing vocals (she's got pipes), check. And, in Electric Citizen's case, lots of heavy Hammond organ too, a la Deep Purple, but also conjuring the shades such lesser known '70s precursors as Bloodrock and The Power Of Zeus. Indeed, many of the songs here almost sound like they could have belonged on that Darkscorch Canticles comp of obscure '70s proto-metal we made Record Of The Week not long ago!
Among their contemporaries, with the organ, Electric Citizen could be compared especially to Blood Ceremony, but EC tend to put the pedal to the metal a bit more, rippin' and rockin, not wandering in the witchy woods of prog and folk quite so much.
So, we're digging this big time, the only thing we can really gripe about is that the band name is kinda whatever - really, there's already a lot of Electric Something bands, right, so if you're gonna do it too, you need to pick a decent Something. Electric Prunes, Electric Eels, Electric Wizard, Electric Frankenstein, those are some good ones. Electric Citizen, though, what's that about?
What is it about this new Electric Wizard record? Don't get us wrong, we are longtime worshippers at the altar of the 'Wiz, but for some reason, this new one, has everyone around here freaking out, even the more non-metal folks, ESPECIALLY the non-metal folks. People who normally don't spend much time listening to witchy druggy demon conjuring sonic rituals, like those practiced by EW, suddenly can't get enough and play it EVERY day. We've tried to get to the bottom of it, cuz Black Masses doesn't seem that far removed from any of the other EW's, but it must be. Cuz it's cast some serious bongsmoke spell (smell?) over pretty much everyone here, which if anything is a good argument for the power of this slab of post Sabbathy psychedelic spaced out drugdoom heaviness.
Everything we love about Electric Wizard is in full effect here: the epic slabs of downtuned doomy crunch, the swirled clouds of lysergic effects, the crushing riffage, the thick pulsing bass, and of course EW high priest Just Oborn's wailing vox, all wound into druggy doomy trancelike jams, the vocals repeated mantralike, the guitars churning and roiling, totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, spaced out and impossibly catchy.
One difference this time around is the production. It's way less obviously heavy, less downtuned and sludgey, the low end is dialed way back, the sound much more raw and trebly and high end, which maybe makes it sound less metal and more psychedelic and garagey, although it definitely sounds like plenty of both to us. But perhaps that's the mysterious component that suddenly has everyone in its thrall.
The record is rife with the (un)usual sonic filigree, swirling winds, loads of effects, long drawn out dirgey drones, bizarre samples, voices, laughter, loops, film clips, all laced within long drawn out psychedelic space jams, the sort of freakouts that would sound just as at home on a Monster Magnet or Hawkwind record, but they always eventually find their way back to whatever satanic drug doom groove they had been exploring before they drifted off.
Heavy and doomy and druggy and psychedelic and seriously tripped out and apparently not just for metalheads anymore. A unanimous aQ fave for sure...
Housed in a fancy embossed slipcover! (Vinyl version sadly has not yet materialized here, we're hoping someday but dunno what's up...)
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1995's self titled debut, Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics, originally released in 1997, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "Demon Lung" and "Return To The Son Of Nothingness"!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. More proof that the crappy 10" Electric Wizard made for Man's Ruin was just a sad anomaly, this double cd compiling their first two records is a neccesity for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those recent AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's more recent Supercoven ep will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
Now available for a limited time on WHITE VINYL (limited to 1000 copies worldwide!), in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with the bonus track "Mind Transferral" which was not on the cd. Here's what we had to say about Dopethrone way back in 2000:
These British lads have the distinction of being, as far as we know, the first (and perhaps last!) *metal* band ever reviewed in the hallowed pages of that popular cutting-edge new music magazine The Wire. But if that makes you expect that the album in question, "Dopethrone" is some sort of pretentious electronica-leaning, intellectual-metallic curiosity worthy of much beard-stroking, you'd better think again! Take a look at the album title, dude! Electric Wizard play super-heavy sludge metal, taking the appellation "stoner rock" very seriously indeed. Satan's even seen smoking a bong on the album cover. Doomy sub-Sabbath riffs, toked-up vocals, spacey fx -- this is primal stuff. This band seems to just keep getting better and better (meaning, they don't change much!). The lyrics celebrate their interests in pulp fantasy fiction (HP Lovecraft and RE Howard both get referenced) and of course the Sweet Leaf: "Dopethrone in this land of sorcery/Dopethrone vision through T.H.C./Dopethrone feedback will free/Dopethrone three wizards crowned with weed." No, not brilliant literature, (and the music's not avant-garde composition for that matter, not intentionally anyway) but "Dopethrone" is still thoroughly enjoyable even by those of us (Andee and Allan for example) who aren't potsmokers (in fact, Andee and Allan are definitely the biggest fans of this record and other "stoner rock" at Aquarius anyways -- I wonder what that means?!). No, you just have to like the sheer heaviness and killer-hippie aura ("Legalize Drugs and Murder" is their slogan, and they're at least half serious)... But if we *were* ever to decide to take up pot-smoking as a casual hobby, we have promised several friends (& Electric Wizard fans) that this album will definitely be the soundtrack to our first "experience". We're tempted...
AQ-faves Electric Wizard return with the eagerly anticipated "Let Us Prey". After their totally wrecked, wretched performance here in San Francisco last year (which we still enjoyed, but as comedy), this excellent, totally competent new album can only beg the
Doom metal doesn't have to be stoner rock, and stoner rock isn't always (or even often) doom metal, but the combination is natural -- and for that nobody beats the Wiz. Electric Wizard's spacey, metallic drug-punk (a mixture of Sabbath, Hawkwind, and the Melvins) features lost, buried, hopeless vocals singing dirgey hymns to the God-Bong amidst bowel-rumbling, super-heavy, super-sludgey guitar and bass psychedelia. What's not to like?
This is the kind of album that lends itself to a track-by-track rundown (why? 'cause there's only six songs):
The disc starts with a classically slow n' massive Wizard song entitled "A Chosen Few", designed to bludgeon the listener into stuporific submission from riff one.
"We, The Undead" changes tactics, being fast and kinda punky (in an Eyehategod/Black Flag way), with a riff that's *very* Saint Vitus.
"Master Of Alchemy" is another slow crusher a la the first track, with a truly EVIL sounding main riff. This song is a relentless juggernaut that eventually morphs (it's a two-part suite nearly ten minutes long) into a mellower, but still quite EVIL, psychedelic drone jam.
"The Outsider" is, if possible, even lower, slower, and more drugged-out sounding, building into a wah wah propelled epic before its nine minutes are out.
Then, out of nowhere, the beautiful, melancholy "Night Of The Shape" (great title) kicks in -- noir-sh piano figures over busy, shuffling drumbeats that sound almost drum n' bass inspired. This could be on a Radiohead record, yet somehow it's totally doomy.
After that lovey interlude, the Wizard get back to their usual business on the epic album closer "Priestess Of Mars". More sludge, more wah, more pot smoke.
And then, three quarters of an hour after you put it on, "Let Us Prey" is over and you'll need another fix!
When we first heard Electric Wizard way back when, we were completely and totally blown away, but we were so filled with glorious doom and gloom, and druggy spaced out stoner rock, that it never occurred to us that anything might have come before. When in fact in one form or another, Electric Wizard had been developing their sound since 1989! This disc collects the two pre-Electric Wizard lps released a while back (and now out of print) as well as super rare recordings from the band that was the original seed for what would eventually become Electric Wizard.
Starting way back in 1989, there was a group of young metalheads fronted by future EW mainman Jus Oborn, who were totally obsessed with Carcass, Bolt Thrower and the like, and thus were appropriately named Lord Of Putrefaction. And their sound suited the name perfectly, a murky grind thrash doom, grunted death metal style vocals, psychedelic freakout guitar over pounding drums and sludgy riffing. Slow and heavy with bursts of not quite blasts and wild squalls of chaotic noise, but all rooted in dense, druggy, doomy sludge. They only ever released a split lp with Mortal Remains, and this here is it. Remastered and heavy as ever. Fans of Winter, diSEMBOWELMENT, Mordor and all that early Earache stuff will be so into this!
Not soon after the end of Lord Of Putrefaction, three of the four lords reconvened as Thy Grief Eternal, who recorded 2 lengthy tracks for a 12" in 1991 which was never actually released. By '91, Jus Oborn and his merry band of metalheads continued to get slower and heavier, hinting at what would come, but still sounding like they'd be right at home on Earache, alongside Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh and the like. Pounding industrial sludge doom, with grunted gutteral cookie monster vocals, pounding relentless drumming and BIG RIFFS, very sludgy and crusty, much more akin to the ultra slow, monochromatic dirge of funeral doom, as they had yet to discover the groove that would play such a crucial part in their later sound.
The same 3 members who started out together in Lords Of Putrefaction decided on another name change to represent their continued musical growth and thus was born the simpler Eternal. While Thy Grief Eternal were a crusty bunch of metalheads spitting out blurry blasts of Earache style industrial sludge, a couple years later, with a new name, a new love of mind altering chemicals, and the discovery of the all important GROOVE, Eternal was born, and the sound on their never released EP was only a hop skip and a drunken stumble from the sound of Electric Wizard. The doom and sludge is tempered on the Eternal tracks with a huge heaping pile of Hawkwindish swirling psychedelia and that oft purloined Sabbathy groove that pretty much defined Electric Wizard and the stoner rock movement that followed. Four tracks (one's a Sabbath cover!) including a 16 minute epic that would later become an Electric Wizard track.
Fucking awesome! Comes in a spiffy digipak, with a booklet packed with liner notes, photos, as well as old flyers and demo cover artwork.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Reissued, remastered version of this psychedelic stoner doom metal classic, originally released in '98 on vinyl and cd in their native England by the Bad Acid label. Two bonus tracks have been added to the two from the original ep (one live, one demo). If you have any interest in the sludgy, the doomed, and, um, the super slow and heavy, check this out...
The Wiz returns!!! With another crushing sprawl of slo-mo psychedelic heaviness, that at first blush, sounds well removed from the impossibly catchy last record, Black Masses, which had even non metalheads around here freaking out. At the time, we couldn't really figure it out, what it was about that record that had such wide ranging appeal, but now digging into Time To Die, it's easy to spot the difference in a side by side comparison. Cuz this new record, at least at first, is WAY less poppy, more wasted and slow, the songs not just doomy, but death march drags, rife with tarpit riffage, and a vocal drawl that sounds like Ozzy nodding off on horse tranquilizers. Hell, we're not complaining, we love this sort of wasted, downer doom, and few do it better than Electric Wizard, And Time To Die is overflowing with drugged out ultra-doominess, with tracks like "I Am Nothing", seeming to forego melody entirely, a churning dirgey drag through musty old crypts, but even then somehow, the band will whip out some cool classic metal, harmonized leads, or long streaks of droned out feedback draped over roiling tribal-tom freakouts, and the song is somehow transformed into something transcendent. Still sort of zoned out and wasted, but the vibe is grimly majestic, and absolutely psychedelic.
There are moments throughout Time To Die here the band display a deft (yet subtle) mastery of melody (and hooks), which reveal themselves more and more with each listen, like on the title track, where things get decidedly WAY more melodic, harkening back to the catchiness of the last record, channeling classic Black Sabbath, but filtered through EW mainman Jus Oborn's warped obsession with exploitation flicks and B movie video nasties, bikers and bongs, some surprising catchiness lurking amidst clouds of sonic bongsmoke and swirls of downtuned psychedelic churn. And there's plenty more catchiness lurking elsewhere, it just means sonically sifting through piles of bones, and weed, but even so, after discovering the hidden melodies, our favorite moments on Time To Die might actually be the more abstract, culminating in the totally tripped out psychedelic sprawl of "Destroy Those Who Love God", which sort of sounds like Hawkwind and Monster Magnet slowed down and spaced out, all creepy haunted house organ, endlessly swirling swaths of droned out guitar buzz, wild and loose, almost free jazz drumming, wrapped around creepy samples, and news reports of Satanism and sacrifice, and while that track is JUST that, most of the other tracks, eventually devolve into something similar, jettisoning songcraft in favor of billowing black atmosphere, soundtracks to crumbling castles and rain swept moors, haunted graveyards and dark forests, totally tripped out ambience that seems to eventually, always find its way back to EW's more loping, dirgey, downer doom. All hail the Wizard!
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1997's Come My Fanatics, Electric Wizard's debut, originally released in 1995, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "IIIimitable Nebulie" and Mourning Prayer Part 1" from the unreleased Doom Chapter Demo!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
Odds are most folks who would be into this record, won't even make it this far in the review, they'll just grab one. For doomlords and ladies, this really needs no description other than the names of the two bands, Finland's dead and deceased Reverend Bizarre, whose post mortum release schedule rivals Tupac's, and UK masters of downtuned sub-Sabbathian stoner sludge, Electric Wizard. Each band offers up a sidelong track of crushing doom drenched heaviness, each coming from their own distinct direction.
The sound of Electric Wizard is something special, in some ways so derivative, so sonically similar to about a million other bands, but the second it comes on, it could be no one else. A testament to their doom mastery for sure, and this is primo doom, a slowly unravelling main riff, lurching and lumbering, melodic vocals settled way down in the mix, languorous stoned leads over the top, thick swirls of psychedelic organ, and endless spaced out drug drenched jams, Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet meets Sabbath, but slowed way down and dirtied up, culminating in a nearly drumless melting riff outro, the guitars slowing down, the riff crumbling, squalls of psychrock leads, thick whirring organs, the song eventually grinding to a halt after droning on and on and on. Awesome.
Reverend Bizarre counter with their own extended slab of plodding doom genius, spaced out riff, pounding drums, vocals slipping from guttural howl to ominous whisper, but this is RB, so it's bound to get bizarre, and it does, with a chanted midsong ritual, soaring clean almost operatic vocals invoking demons over a woozy melodic lope, before slipping into an almost krautrock like groove, before lo and behold, the song flips and the second half of the track is BACKWARDS!!! Hypnotic and creepy, the sounds whooping and shimmering, the vocals a demonic gurgle over the top, very tripped out and dizzying, a weirdly blackly psychedelic outro from these twisted doomic Finns. Who we would say we miss like crazy since they broke up, but they haven't really stopped releasing records quite yet...
Pressed on what appears to be black vinyl with bits of glitter in it, with a garish seventies horror exploitation cover, a saucy lady cutting up another saucy lady on some black altar, candelabras and skulls, long velvet gloves and capes, knee high leather boots and way too much makeup, but fear not sensitive ones, the exposed crotch (right beneath the grinning skull) is covered by a little pentagram, and the sliced nipple by a little black circle. Phew!!
If you've seen Electric Wizard perform live ever, you probably had the same experience we did: they were WASTED. Living up to their "we came harder" motto, the Wiz had some substance abuse problems on tour for sure. The last time they played here in San Francisco, their drummer both ruined the show (by not being able to play the songs) and also stole the show (by not being able to stop playing, in between songs or even when the rest of the band left the stage at the end of their shambolic set -- he just continued on drumming -- with members of the opening bands backing *him* up! he even dragged the mic stand behind his kit and started "singing"! How rock and roll is that!?). Apparently guitarist/vocalist/band leader Jus Oborn got fed up and fired his drummer and bassist (or maybe they quit?). At any rate, those two have a new band, Ramesses, whose split with Negative Reaction suggests that Oborn was indeed the one in Electric Wizard with the talent... Now Oborn is back with a new Electric Wizard line-up (and maybe a subtle new name, as the cd cover says The Electric Wizard, and I'm not sure if they used the definitive article before...and elsewhere in the cd booklet they are credited as Electric Wizard II). Now backed by drummer Justin Greaves (ex-Iron Monkey), second guitarist Liz Buckingham (of Sourvein, ex-13), Oborn's new Electric Wizard is sort of a doom/sludge supergroup! So you know that they're just as heavy as they ever were, if not even heavier. There's grimmer grind on here than ever before, and also some amazingly melodic material as well such as the almost-pop by Wizard standards "Another Perfect Day". For the most part, We Live harks back to past Wizard classics like Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone and stands proud beside them. It's utter psychedelic doom, that brand of droning feedback dirge metal that begs to be played LOUD. For long stretches, this is kinda like a hybrid of Hawkwind and the Melvins (Jus sings a bit like the Melvins' Buzz Osbourne on the title track, which we must note also opens with a sample from AQ-fave British zombie biker flick Psychomania!), so fans of the likes of UFOmammut and Boris will be mighty pleased, ultimately so with the mantric devastation of the 15 minute album-closer "Saturn's Children", driving you the listener right into the earth... Slightly more sober they themselves may now be, but this new Wizard remains a very potent sonic drug.
Yeah! Here's another rad reissue of early '70s proto-metal. Of special interest to us, Elonkorjuu are Finnish, in fact hailing from the same town, Pori, that later gave us AQ faves Circle!
Their ultra-collectable 1972 album Harvest Time is a heavy progressive gem, full of ripping guitar and wild organ... wailing English-language vocals, melodic moody parts, many mathy changes, and galloping riffage are also all elements of the sometimes complex Elonkorjuu equation. Although fairly heavy for the time, they also have a generally "happy" sound, one that's often hectic too, these guys obviously reveling in their music making prowess. Their fervor is infectious, this is great stuff for anyone who loves other early '70s prog-psych acts of this ilk like Trettioariga Kriget, Wishbone Ash, Cargo, Culpeper's Orchard, Murphy Blend, Steamhammer, Wind, Irish Coffee, Osage Tribe, Odmenn, Blues Addicts, Stonewall, Toad, Road, etc.
While they only recorded one more album in the late '70s, the talent and exuberance displayed on Harvest Time earned 'em (and Finland) a spot in early, obscure hard rock history, for sure. Forever underground, they even title a song here "Praise To Our Basement", wherein these young long haired hippies first had first begun jamming back in '69...
We get A LOT of records coming through here, as you might imagine, many of them great -- but very few that I (Allan) have listened to as many times upon acquisition as this one. I just can't stop spinning it. It's one of those special cases, the new purchase that actually achieves "heavy rotation" in my home. The Elope trio hail from Sweden and are on the same label, Gravitation, that's been bringing us those lovely Bjorn Olsson albums. They're a current, contemporary band but you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise 'cause this record sure sounds like it was recorded no later than 1973, if it was yesterday. They've captured a long-ago, classic rock, heavily Beatles-influenced vibe, and written songs with pop brilliance to match. They're retro but not self-consciously, calculatedly so. I mean, the album cover suggests indie rock along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie or Modest Mouse or something like that, way more than it does what the band actually sounds like. Which is the Beatles, Neil Young (they cover his "Bad Fog Of Loneliness"), a little country-Stones, a little Pink Floyd, maybe the Pretty Things circa their Parachute LP, and some Wings (or more Beatles). More obscurely, I'd say a lot of this has the same magical effect on me as do the albums by early '70s Peruvian Paul McCartney worshippers We All Together. (Some of you might be familiar with those guys, we used to stock the reissues of their two albums when we could get 'em). Relaxed, super melodic, stick in your head songwriting. Another kinda obscure comparison would be to the quieter, acoustic side of heavy British '70s rockers Budgie (!) who also were devoted Paul McCartney fans I'm sure. And, additionally, this has a restrained-but-effective hard/psych rock side to it that also could relate to the riffing of Budgie (a lot of critics apparently say Cream, but I don't hear that as much). Like the guy from Budgie doing their more sensitive songs, the intimate, gentle vocals here have an air of wistful melancholy I always find hard to resist. Pretty, exquisitely crafted songs that are so very seventies but also evoke the current folky indie-pop of, say, Belle & Sebastian. I wasn't entirely surprised to find out that Elope apparently includes some member(s) of stoner rock band Lowrider. Indeed, Elope had a release (a split with a band called Backbiter) on the defunct Man's Ruin label some time ago, and have been called "possibly the mellowest stoner rock band ever", although they certainly are capable of rocking out, as on the track "Pride Approaching". They do it rarely but they do it well. But unlike a lot of 'stoner rock' bands, whatever inclinations they have towards psychedelic guitar jamming are balanced by the melodic/structural needs of the song at hand. So good. I know I'll keep spinning this for some time to come. Quite possibly top ten 2004 material as far as I'm concerned!
Back in stock. Might just be your final chance to pick one of these up!!
When we first heard about this record, a split release between some unknown band and ultradoom AQ crushworthy sludgelords Monarch, whose track was an hour long, we wondered how the heck that was fair to the other band. We then discovered that the other band was in fact French grinders Elysium, whose songs average around the one minute mark (one song here clocks in at a whopping 8 seconds) it started to make sense. And what an awesome idea, what a great combo, the two extremes, blazing buzzing hyperspeed grindcore and slow motion sludge. Two great tastes... er, sounds... So here we have 4 tracks from Elysium, total time 5:55, and one track from the mighty Monarch, total time 58:27. Fucking awesome!
So first up Elysium, fast and furious, guitars like squiggles of white hot lightning, the drums like rhythms being fired from a machine gun into your head at point blank range, vocals that screech and gurgle, everything a head spinning blur. Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Nasum, Rotten Sound, you might as well add Elysium to that elite list.�
But they're just the warm up, the appetizer, Monarch's "Amplifire Death March" is why we're here, and they do not disappoint.
So Monarch, for those who don't already know, are one of the slowest, heaviest bands in existence, whose artwork consists of weird Hello Kitty like crosses, skulls and burning churches, as is fronted by a very cute, non-tattooed, non-pierced, spikeless, leatherless, young lady in a sensible skirt and top, who howls like a banshee from the depths of hell and who write in the liner notes "Listen To Judas Priest"? How rad is that? RIDICULOUSLY RAD! And sure we'd be crushed out on Monarch just based on their lugubrious tarpit sonic sludge, we're just like that, but having an adorable frontperson just pushes it over the edge.
So yes, this rules, and is suitably funereal, appropriately slow and somber, so slow in fact it makes Khanate sound like speed metal. Okay, maybe that's stretching� it a bit, but this is some seriously slow motion shit. The riffs stretch out for ages, the drum hits are MILES apart, the vocals a screech / howl / moan, a mouthful of dirt and broken glass, a voice so harsh and hatefilled it seems impossible that it could come from Monarch's diminutive sensibly dressed leader. There are huge stretches of near ambience where it's just the hum of the amplifier, some soft lilting chords, a pounding single drum rhythm, vocals screeched across wide expanses of space, draped across fading riffs like flayed skin before the next chunk of sludge drops.�It's almost as if some leather winged demon was flying above, soaring through the black night sky, hurling huge hundred ton chunks of sludge at the ground every few seconds, or few minutes, where they splinter into a million pieces, filling our ears with shards of searing sludge. A pounding ultra-dirge, a tempo well below 16rpm, the sort of creepy crawl that were it to slow down any more would be just a single tone, albeit a crushing pummeling one. So heavy, and so slow it's almost stops being sludge and simply becomes some abstract heaviness. By now you should know what we're getting at. This is doom, ultramegadoom, doom with a page full of 'o's, wallowing in the same murk as Moss, Rigor Sardonicous, Stumm, Catacombs, Esoteric, and all who bow before the power of dooooooooom.
This is a split release between TEN labels (count 'em:�Shifty / Amanita / (((Parade))) / 213 / Throne / Amertume-Corruption #2 / Fidelio / Murder / Wee Wee / Solitude) which is kinda cool, but also kinda dumb, as each label only gets a handful of copies and therefore it goes out of print before you know it. We got 50 copies originally and those disappeared in a flash, and only now finally managed to get a handful more from one of the labels' secret stash! Probably the last copies ever.
2nd mortuary slab from this doom/death duo whose 2010 debut, Ritual Ascension Beyond Flesh, proved deservedly popular 'round these parts, with the underground abuzz about it like flies on a corpse. If you liked that, you know what to expect from this sequel, which is equally up to snuff in terms of old school slowed-down, doomed-out death metal sickness.
If you haven't encountered Encoffination before, you know the old adage? "Only death is real." That's what death metal is always all about, right? A lot of death metal is specifically about the moment and manner of death; unnatural death, the gory act of killing in war and crimes of violence, bloodthirsty horrors. But some bands take other approaches - Carcass ferinstance infamous for their clinical, medical lyrics. And Encoffination, as you might surmise from their name, are about death itself, and what happens afterwards... no, not so much regarding the soul's journey into the afterlife (if any), but what happens to the physical form of the body after death, the ceremonial rites and rituals of our culture, about embalming and burial and so forth, and the meaning of such... Dust to dust, flesh to filth, that sort of thing. Although all that is part of sending the soul where it is supposed to "go" as well.
Therefore, song titles include "Rites of Ceremonial Embalm'ment", "Elegant in Their Funebrial Cloaks, Arisen", and "Washed and Buried". Encoffination's obsession here is part metaphysical, part aesthetic, and part professional - as one of the band members is studying to become a mortician!
So unlike most death metal, this is so much aggressive, then, than rather almost literally funereal. Fuzzed out, full of painful feedback and tolling bells, the hoarse, fetid crypt-breath vokills but another layer of many beneath which the listener is sonically, symbolically buried.
So very serious and gloomy, and gorgeous, if you dig it. It's all about atmosphere for sure, Encoffination's songs and riffs subservient to the sounds, towards the totality of effect of the entirely of the record. It's all one ritual, from first track to last (the 10+ minute "Annunciation of the Viscera"). Imagine "typical" death metal, but at 16rpm... on downers... with production by Leland Kirby, 'cause there's often ambient crackle like you're listening to a scratchy old lp... though in comparison to the debut, the production here is perhaps thicker and fuller and even more miasmal, heavy-ing 'em up a few notches in that dep't. Quite an experience.
And once again, the cd booklet is beautifully designed, also the work of band member Ghoat (the mortician-in-training).
So, enough. If you're still reading, you probably already love this band as much as they love the dead...
The underground's been buzzing about this band, they're the latest and one of the greatest doing the extreme death metallized ultradooooom thing, a style harking back to the days of Incantation in the '90s. Much like the Vasaeleth release on Profound Lore we recommended last year, Encoffination have turned the slo-mo brutality of death/doom into something almost artistically ritualistic, murky, morbid, and mesmeric, convincingly conveying blasphemous atmosphere. Bathed in funereal fuzz, Encoffination's riffs and rhythms are both akin to death knell bell tollings, the vokills guttural exhalations of fetid crypt breath, the guitars thick and foul and almost gaseous as well, this music mostly slow, sullen, a plodding funeral procession indeed, everything working towards a totality of insalubrious effect. Which, oddly enough, embraces a certain sort of sickly beauty. Their attention to detail extends to the b&w graphics in the cd booklet, elegant and old fashioned looking.
All in all an impressive debut from this depressive duo, the band consisting of Ghoat (Father Befouled, Festered, Hills Of Sefiroth, Vomitchapel, etc.) on vocals, guitar and bass, and Elektrokutioner (Decrepitaph, Scaremaker, Festered, Tombstones, and myriad others, including Wooden Stake, also reviewed this list) on drums. Your rotting corpse couldn't be in better hands... We're not kidding, turns out that Ghoat in fact is studying for a mortuary sciences degree and currently works as an assistant funeral director!
Brand new vinyl only, ultra heavy match up between NY's low end doom metal titans Unearthly trance, and Canadian powerviolence grind duo The Endless Blockade. Unearthly Trance go first, and fill up a whole side at 33 rpm, of their roiling doomic dirgery, thick downtuned riffage, bellowed howls, the sound epic and majestic and blackened, like a crustier version of Mastodon or Neurosis, that same sort of mighty bludgeon, but here sprawled into something way more abstract, with the track drifting fro, churning crush to loose doomy drift, with creepy tangled minor key melodies, a gorgeous and haunting, repeating motif, ominously intoned vocals, it sounds like the track will eventually erupt into more heaviness, but instead it goes the opposite direction, or at least explores a different kind of heaviness, breaking down into a long stretch of ambient dronemusic, a shadow of that original riff/motif remains, ghostlike, the track shimmering and slithering and evolving into a sort of ultra doom dirge, spacious and spare, a spaced out plod, that gradually grows more and more abstract before dissipating completely.
On the flip, Endless Blockade temper their usually furious flurries with some lumbering riffage and almost doomy drift, beginning with a dense cloud of glitched out electronics and feedback drenched shrieked vocals, before exploding into a face melting wall of blasting powerviolence crush. Flurries of frenzied drumblast, insane insectoid riffage, dueling grunted/howled vox, a furious grind wrapped in thick swaths of swirling noise, occasionally slipping into something a bit more dirgey or doomy, but eventually erupting back into some seriously aggro pummel. Their side finishes off with a dense and intense abstract noise squall, all grinding and crumbling in-the-red buzz and skree, tangled vocal freakouts, and then finally a strangely pretty field recorded ambient outro.
First record in almost ten years from this Italian depressive black metal horde, and it's apparently been in the works for most of that decade! Throned Upon Ashes Of Dusk is a desolate, mournful sonic sprawl, that sounds like it was crafted by candlelight, or in a fire lit cave. Clean spidery guitars unwind over squalls of black buzz, the drums are a simple plod, the opening a doomy death march, but soon, the drums explode into a furious double kick barrage, the vocals into an anguished wail, but the guitars remain blurry and blown out, it's not until a couple minutes in that the sound shifts, and darkens, the riffage becoming more churning and malevolent, a minor key melancholia wrapped in swirls of crumbling caustic distortion, the band perfectly pulling off the rare feat of balancing fierce blackened heaviness, and truly emotional sounding depressive sonic miserablism. The songs are long too, so it's easy to become entranced and enraptured, droned out and hypnotic, all the while the guitars subtly shifting, bleeding into a single black mass for much of the proceedings, but then unfurling a gorgeous achingly lovely lead, transforming the song briefly into something closer to the dour doom pop of Katatonia, or slipping into some super mathy post rockiness, again transforming the sound into a Slinty post-black metal, but always returning to that, bleak, black buzz that is the rotting, broken music hear of Enthroning Silence's sound.
Some of the tracks are more overtly classic black metal, but even then, the riffs, and the melodies, the mood and the vibe, just ooze dark energy, furious blasting blackness recast as droned out sonic sorrow, and more often than not, those tracks are still dotted with doomy stretches, and laced with haunting depressive, slo-mo passages, while other tracks get downright gothic, gorgeously bleak, downer-doom slowcore, that sans distortion, would have fans of Codeine and Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500 freaking out, but here, bathed in black buzz, they become a glorious sort of blackened, buzzing, doom-ed grimnity that will definitely hit the spot for fans of Make A Change, Kill Yourself, Happy Days, Loss, Nortt, Hypothermia, Silencer and all the rest of those depressive black hordes...
Along with the new Gnaw reviewed below, there's another despairing dose of heaviness from the Seventh Rule camp this list, the debut of Portland, Oregon's Ephemeros, a band playing "funeral doom metal" to strict perfection. They definitely know what they're doing, Ephemeros featuring members or ex-members of such bands as Graves At Sea and Uzala, among others. The two word review would be thus: UTTERLY CRUSHING. To elaborate further, this disc is super slow and dirgey, deceptively simple but well-crafted, the guitars generating moments of morose melodic beauty, the guttural vokills a sorrowful, anguished roar. Ephemeros employ effective loud-soft dynamics that see utterly crushing (there's those two words again) riffs obliterating, over and over, all before them - all life, all hope. Those in the mood for this sort of thing will appreciate just how good Ephemeros is. They really nail it, being more musical than you'd expect at first, their performance also very convincing on an emotional level as well. The disc contains three long songs clocking in at 40 minutes total - and they may as well be ONE long song, but it never gets boring. Bravo.
For fans of other excellent Seventh Rule sludge like Atriarch, Stoneburner and Batillus. Also, such like-minded doomlords as Samothrace and Thou.
