If your cover art looks like a lost Unleashed album, sign me up. Portland's Oakhelm arrived at our fortress walls with axes in hand -- both electric guitars and battle weapons, yes. Their debut album, Betwixt & Between, shows these rookie Vikings doing some serious shredding that would easily make it onto Dan Swano's iPod, possibly even Peter Tagtgren's just because of the vocals. That being said, these North-Westerners probably don't think you should be laughing because this ain't no joke, it's a call to arms. What are we fighting? Our best guess is dragons and Christian invaders. But seriously, all of the necessary ephemera is here, while a sense of irony is thankfully conspicuously absent. A very good thing. Now that that debate is over, you're free to embrace everything fantastic and mystical that died out alongside the popularity of many of the classic Century Media bands of the past. This is a die-hard attempt to re-create the glory of mid-'90s Northern-European death/black/Viking metal. We're especially reminded of ol' Viking horde Mithotyn at their most dark and doomful. Go ahead and headbang, but make sure not to fall off your horse. Did we mention that they have members of Fall of Bastards, Wormwood, L'Acephale, Black Queen and Assuck among their ranks?! Well, they do. Recommended!
Remember our review not long ago praising the spaced out heaviness of Utah's Iota? We mentioned how we've learned now to pay attention to the label they're on, Small Stone, for such heavy psychedelic gems. Here's another, Obiat! Small Stone are ostensibly a "stoner rock" label, but this London based band (with members from England, Poland, and Hungary), while certainly quite HEAVY and also certainly sometimes spacey, perhaps belong more in the "Neur-Isis" metalcore post rock fold, they've got those post rock loud-soft dynamics anyway... Well, mostly loud, though the six-minute "Passive Attack" is all delicate atmosphere. Vocally, though, they remind us more of doomlords Yob, soaring Ozzishly in a higher pitched mode with what we could call "dark grunge" overtones (we see both Alice In Chains and Jesus Lizard t-shirts in the band photos). In fact, if you were to combine Yob with Iota and also, say, Samothrace, you'd get something like this awesome and oddly titled Obiat album, their third since 2002 though we've never seen the other self-released ones. Gotta start looking.
The seven songs here are all pretty long, 5, 6, 9 minutes, they stretch things out to 12 on the most epic one, "Serpents' Rites". And every minute is either crushingly heavy or quietly fraught with haunting portents of impending doooooom. We most definitely like. Chalk another one up for Small Stone, who went out a bit further on the stoner rock limb with this one, to where it branches into international alt-prog-ambient-post-rock not quite like anything else.
If you've been reading this week's New Arrivals list in alphabetical order, you've already come across many interesting items, lots of cool stuff to sate your drone jones, get your indie pop fix, etc., right?? But, you might also want sumthin' that just simply kicks out the jams, in a badass heavy rock n' roll / metal kind of way. Of course you do. Like, the list before last's Danava for instance, or Children Of Doom not long before that. This time 'round, a record we discovered recently and immediately knew we just HAD to order in and review, that's just the thing for all you denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swillers (or at least for your INNER denim clad longhaired Satan worshipping beer swiller, as the case may be).
Mortui Vivos Docent is the debut from Swedish stoner/doom outfit Obrero (and as an aside, we're beginning to wonder if the international community is gonna have to consider placing musical export restrictions on Sweden, as it's unfair to other countries how many amazing bands they produce, though of course we're not complaining!!!).
It offers up eight awesome trax of ripping, rollicking riffage, doomed-out atmospheres, and fists-clenched vox. The singer's ballsy, rough wail is one major component of this band's appeal, he's got a shrill edge that, in combination with the music, makes us think of Trouble (the band) some of the time, maybe Metal Church too. Meanwhile, the riffs are up there with those on the first Witch album, which we think you know we like a lot. So, yeah, Sabbath inspired sonics for sure, also early Judas Priest is probably an influence. To mention some of them Swedish bands who this is at least as cultishly cool as, well, imagine a combo of Graveyard and Grand Magus, perhaps. But with more umlautish umph even than that. Americans Ogre could be another comparison, as would Pharaoh Overlord with their recent Out Of Darkness lp.
This is one of those albums wherein every component moment contributes to the baddassitude of the whole, and will have you throwing the horns the whole time it's on. We're finding it hard to pick the tracks to mention in particular 'cause we're digging 'em ALL, but definitely "Son Of Tutankhamun" is an utter epic rockin' classic, and we're partial to the good time groove and stoner stomp of "Santovit". Reverend Bizarre fans will be happy with the hammering metal of "Charles The Hammer". And how can you not love a song, "Exterminate", that's about Daleks!?!? (And comes to a rather transcendent, musically uplifting conclusion, too).
Basically, one of the best heavy metal bands writing actual rock n' roll songs we're heard in a long while... Damn catchy, weird in a cool geeky way (heck they're into Dr. Who), with plenty of proggy light and shade amidst the out 'n' out headbanging material, of which there's plenty. Probably not for everybody, but what on our list is? If this is something you "get" though, you'll be glad you got it!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You know an artist has special 'cult' standing when not only do their actual albums get reissued but so do their outtakes and rarities. Actually we're still waiting on The Obsessed's album reissues (coming soon we're told on Southern Lord) but the Lord has first blessed us with this enhanced reish of Incarnate, a collection of demos, seven-inch tracks, and so forth from the infamous doom metal (pre-stoner rock) trio The Obsessed. You know, the band led by guitarist/vocalist/recent Arthur 'zine cover star Scott "Wino" Weinrich both before and after he was in Saint Vitus. After The Obsessed folded for the second time, Wino bounced back with Spirit Caravan, and now does time in both the Hidden Hand and Place Of Skulls. But you DO probably know all that or you wouldn't have read this far in this review...
Anyway, what we said about it the original edition released in '99 still holds true: in the still ongoing stoner rock boom/glut, this stands out as fairly essential. They've managed to put together stuff from various eras (1983-1994 or so) and line-ups (some including members of Kyuss and the Melvins, and our friend Guy who's in Acid King now: dig the pictures of him here w/ long hair!) and got it all to sound excellent and flow well, more like an actual album than the odd-n-sods comp that it is. The highlight is perhaps their rulin' cover of Eric Burdon's "Inside Looking Out" (perhaps inspired by the Grand Funk Railroad version). Originally this came out semi-simultaneously with Spirit Caravan's debut, now it follows up Meteor City's 2003 Spirit Caravan compilation The Last Embrace. Oh, we said it was 'enhanced' didn't we? Yep it's got five bonus tracks (four more demos and one live cut) and a mpeg video ("Streetside") not found on the original! So all true Wino fanatics (we know you're out there) now have the opportunity to give their old copies to unenlightened friends and buy this new edition for themselves. Double LP version coming in May...
Scott "Wino" Weinrich. Ok, he's maybe a -wee- bit overrated, but after all these years definitely deserving of his status as stoner metal's number one guitar hero and favorite frontman, a true "lifer", going strong today in not one but two bands, Place Of Skulls and The Hidden Hand. His career stretches back into the '80s, when he fronted SoCal doom legends Saint Vitus for a spell, a job he got on account of his reputation from his original, also now legendary band The Obsessed from Maryland. He then left Vitus to reform The Obsessed, recording this album, Lunar Womb, in 1991 for the German doom label Hellhound, which somehow led to Wino, incredibly enough, winding up on major label with The Obsessed's next album, The Church Within (Columbia, 1994). The post-grunge major label indie rock feeding frenzy of the early nineties somehow swept a lot of surprising signings, and I guess it helped that the harDCcore scene was always singing Wino's praises (in fact, a blurb from Ian MacKaye appears on this reissue), funnily enough considering his tattooed, drug-fiending, dirtbag heavy metal biker persona. Anyway, The Church Within is out of print, and with Hellhound long since defunct as well, so too has Lunar Womb been unavailable. Now Meteor City and 20 Buck Spin (who handle the vinyl) step in to rectify the situation in regards to that album, much like Southern Lord did with Saint Vitus's V (another lost Hellhound release featuring Wino).
Well served by Wino's distinctively gruff, authoritative vox and lead guitar prowess, Lunar Womb is a tuneful, mid-tempo slab of chunky head-nodding heaviness that should have all heshers (and closet-heshers) happily rockin' out. Almost as prescient of QOTSA as it is derivative of Sabbath, this is a post-punk, more-metallic variant on the grunge of its era, with plentiful and catchy riffola, some tricky parts, and a definite downer vibe overall -- though not quite so wasted and psychedelic as was Saint Vitus. Maybe it does make sense that Lunar Womb would lead some LA label suit to think The Obsessed could take it to the next level. CoC did after all.
'Nuff said, really -- if you like any of Wino's current outfits, or were a fan of the several albums he released with his post-Obsessed comeback band Spirit Caravan, and you don't already have this, you'll want it for sure!! (Likewise if you're into Kyuss and/or Goatsnake, which also have familial connections with The Obsessed...)
Oh, and this cd reissue boasts liner notes by Joe Carducci of "Rock And The Pop Narcotic" fame.
Reissue of this stoner/doom classic, Wino's big major label debut (and finale).
Strange but kinda cool department: This is the second album (we missed the first) from this international, intergenerational hybrid kraut/psych/spacerock band, featuring members of Peru's La Ira De Dios, the USA's Dragonwyck, and Germany's Karmic Society and Treacle People. Well, we're fans of rockin' fuzzpunks La Ira De Dios anyway, don't really know the others. Apparently, inspired by residual '60s psychedelic vibrations, these likeminded folks got together to do some jamming, and that's what this is, all improvised, each track edited down from one-take jam sessions! Well, except for the surprise SLAYER cover, they do "Black Magic" from Show No Mercy! (Or, had we been paying attention, maybe not such a surprise, as apparently they also did Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" on their first album, we'll have to look into that...)
Otherwise, it's all in the realm of spacey stoner rock jamming with lots of fuzz guitar, Hammond organ and Hawkwindy FX, also wailing female vocals dubbed in over top (someone channelling their inner Grace Slick). Not the hippest band in the world, no, but fun and far out. Their unexpected speed metal obsession sure helps heavy it up, keeping this from totally retro tie-dye hippiedom, while at the same time, they manage to make Slayer fit in with their spaced-out sound. Some parts remind us of Circle, some parts remind us of Jex Thoth!
Two years on from their Three And Seven debut, the two doomladies and one doomlord of the Occultation trio return from their negative plane (one of them is IN the band Negative Plane, actually) to offer up another spooky slab of their dimly-lit darkside rituals, playing again an obscure, ominous style of female-fronted, majestic dirge-doom, lashed to hectic bursts of prog-pounding.
The witchy, gothic vocals dip and soar, while flurries of organ notes send shivers up the spine... Shades of Paul Chain and other esoteric Italian doom, that sort of arcane atmosphere, as if performed by Ides Of Gemini or even Hammers Of Misfortune. Also, Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" seemingly is always echoing in these compositions (along with some melancholic organ runs out of "Hotel California"). 'Tis haunting and HEAVY and sometimes even quite lovely. Quite a cult-sounding hybrid of many things - '70s prog, '80s metal, goth, doom, even a hint of surf at one reverby-moment or two. Light some candles, play it loud, let it really sink in.
Recorded, appropriately, in Salem, Massachusetts, with producer Kurt Ballou (Converge, Beastmilk, many others).
This band from Portland, Maine is the latest to lumber into the realm of the uber-heavy. Now, don't confuse 'em with the band called THE Ocean, from Germany, whose uber-heavy Fluxion album we listed not too long ago. Although you certainly could confuse them, as uber-heaviness has its hallmarks. Indeed, this line from our review of The Ocean's cd actually describes this Ocean quite well, as well: "The basic sound will be familiar for sure, massive guitars, pounding drums, propulsive, relentless riffing, blissed out, post rock parts that build and build and build into huge squalls of gargantuan guitarnoise, throbbing and pulsing, minor key and epic." Yep, another one of those bands, here we go again. Just how much single-riff repetition and down-tuned sludge trudge can we take? Quite a lot, really! Ocean's Here Where Nothing Grows debut consists of three long songs, each one an ultra-slow doomful dirge ridden with gutturally growled vocal angst. Yet, there's a sorta melodic post rock thread running through this, for a sound somewhere betwixt Corrupted and Isis. You could file this alongside the likes of Buried At Sea, Mare, Indian, Pelican, Tides, Yob and Conifer, too. If you're a fan of all that sort of stuff you'll like this. It's nothing you haven't heard before but it's exactly what you like. Extreme sludge, but droning and artful enough to catch the ears of a non-metal label like Important... and on the more soothing side of the sludge spectrum, not so nasty and harrowing as something like Khanate, Bunkur or Graves At Sea. We'll admit that this took a little while to seep in, but as the waves of this Ocean wash over you, you'll happily sink beneath its depths (sorry, it's hard to avoid such aquatic metaphors with these guys, as you'll see the cover sticker blurb writer also found).
Germany's THE Ocean, not to be confused with Ocean from the US, have always been a pretty impressive proposition, their soaring epic post Godspeed Neur-Isis style metallic grind, their phalanx of guitarists, their triple vocal attack, the fact that they're a sort of musical commune, but more importantly, the sound they make is MASSIVE, thick and churning and so so so so HEAVY. It boggles the mind how a band can sound this heavy, on record even, we fear for the brave souls that subject themselves to this sort of crushing brutality live.
A lot has changed in The Ocean camp since 2006's Aeolian. Where that record was moody and nuanced, majestic and cinematic, Precambrian is much more immediate, more furious and intense, the guitars downtuned and crunchy, even heavier than before, the vocals a metal howl, bordering on hardcore bark. The drums swinging wildly from monstrous pound to lightning fast blast beats. And the compositions, holy shit! Mathy and complex and convoluted, Much grindier than before, relentless and maniacal. But wait! That's only the first half of Precambrian. Ultra high concept, separated into two discs (or three lps), the first disc, if we're going by the cd (nicely designed as a 3" cd embedded in a 5" plastic disc) is short and sharp and fast and furious and is the first movement. But the second disc (the third and fourth lp) is much more of the Ocean we're used to. Beginning with some abstract clean guitar shimmering in an expanse of distant drones and mournful melodies, quickly shifting into some mathy post rock, all noodly melodies and jagged harmonies, some seriously dark riffing, even some clean vocals, piano, strings, this is epic shit, wound around gnarled bursts of furious intensity. The record is super strange, shifting from almost gypsy sounding folk, with moaning fiddles, and chime like melodies, to dens chunks of Neurosis style sludge, from expansive shoegaze-y bliss outs to full on Eyehategod howl and chug, tripped out almost-jazz to straight up chamber music, and back to punishing ultra heaviness.
Makes no sense to us that The Ocean guys are not as huge as Isis or Pelican or Neurosis. And if you dig any of those bands you owe it to yourself to get into these guys. The cd comes in a double jewel case, one normal 5"s disc, one 3" disc in a 5" plastic disc, with multiple booklets, packed with lyrics and woodcut illustrations. Wow.
But if any record was one for the vinyl nerds it's THIS ONE. So over the top. A triple lp, gatefold, the whole thing black on black, with silver and white ink, spot varnish flourishes, diecut front and back with amoeboid shapes so the inner sleeves are visible, metallic ink on matte black inserts feature lyrics and illustrations, each lp a different color, orange, dark swirled red and swirled grey. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Holy shit!!! It weighs a ton, and is so beautiful and damn if it wouldn't be worth buying just for the packaging. Thankfully the record is definitely worthy of the packaging. WAY recommended. ESPECIALLY the limited vinyl!
Over the top, '70s worshipping B-movie sci-fi stoner rock? Yes indeedy. You gotta give 'em props for this. Whacked out heavies Ogre from up in Maine - who we already liked for their riff rockin' retro-proto-doom-metal on such previous albums as Dawn Of The Proto-man and Seven Hells - have upped the ante with this new release, totally progging it up with a concept album consisting of just one long song (that's right, one track, but it's over 37 minutes long)! Although it's programmed as one track on the cd, it consists of eleven seamlessly segueing parts, including "II: End-Days", "IV: Queen Of Gasoline", "VIII: Battle At Doom Capital", and "XI: Dawn Of The Proto-man". To be sure, after a few listens, we're still not quite ready or able to summarize the narrative here, but we get the idea that it has something to do with a post-apocalyptic scenario involving environmental catastrophy, gasoline rationing and rampaging dog-men? It's all very Flash Gordon, campy and comic book-y (hence the Kirby-esqe cover artwork) with an underground comix '70s Heavy Metal magazine vibe.
Musically, at various points, and for various reasons, this reminds us of King Crimson, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Queen, Jesus Christ Superstar, and, let's see, Steamhammer's Speech (at about the 27 minute mark). Among other things... The storytelling aspect also might appeal to fans of Hammers Of Misfortune's The Bastard and Slough Feg's Traveller (which also features dog-men), though Ogre isn't at all power metal.
Vocally, Ogre are as always eccentric and expressive, the singer sounding sorta Ozzy-ish, but really dramatic, rising into unhinged screams. He's a bit Mike Patton-y, too (circa The Real Thing?). Once again, we have to say that the vocals here will make it or break it for a lot of folks. Well, that and the whole uber-prog concept deal. Yup, Plague Of The Planet is a love it or hate it proposition for sure. We happen to love it, and say kudos to them for going for it like this. And there's no question that the rollicking riffage on offer is gonna be a positive for anybody who likes, you know, heavy music. (Heavy this is, several members of Ogre also now having joined the new lineup of cult doomsters Blood Farmers by the way.)
This was originally released last year on the Japanese stoner/doom label Leaf Hound, who have unfortunately since folded. Thankfully, Shadow Kingdom in the USA has picked up this disc for domestic reissue.
Here's one of the latest two releases from Japan's super stoner Leaf Hound label (home to the likes of Church Of Misery and Sonic Flower). Orange Sunshine (also reviewed this list) are Dutch, and these guys, Ogre, are Americans (hailing from Portland, Maine to be precise). Leaf Hound apparently appreciated the promise of Ogre's self-released debut from a few years ago and made a good bet in putting out this even better sophomore effort. The guitars are thick and heavy, the rhythms rollicking. This is a heavy duty, '70s influenced steamroller stoner riff-rock righteousness. Damn. We can't imagine too many objections to this from those who love kick ass retro-proto-metal... except that the wildly expressive vocals might take some getting used to. They can be slightly pinched and definitely over-the-top, like a camp(ier) version of Ozzy Osbourne, sometimes breaking into a twang or dipping into a growl, but we think that works just great and personality-wise gives these guys just a bit more of lock on the "weird" which we're pretty sure is OK with them.
Clearly, their influences are doom metal classics like Sabbath and Saint Vitus, with hints of cult acts like Manilla Road and Blood Farmers (whose Eli Brown mastered this album). And a dash of Monster Magnet too. That means loads of psychedelic metal heaviness, played with a rabid sense of abandon but also plenty of sure-handed finesse. We're loving it. What else to say? Well we should also mention that they do a killer cover of Pentagram's "Review Your Choices". And that the track "Sperm Whale" includes a full-on drum solo. And oh yeah, Andee's especially thrilled that Ogre wrote a song here based on his favorite "adult" sci-fi novel, The Gas by Charles Platt, a notoriously violent and pornographic book first published in 1968. Sweet. Now that's rock and roll.
These outrageous '70s-sounding stoner rockers from up in Maine are back at last, after like a six year absence, with an excellent new opus of their over the top, hard riffing retro-rock. As we had expected, it's a doomy, proggy concoction, lots of Sabbath goin' on (the wailing, nasal vocals sound a bit like Mike Patton doing an Ozzy impression). Ogre don't hold anything back, this is a wild ride of unabashed old school heaviness with a theatrical flair, and lots of fuzz and wah.
Lyrically, the songs concern themselves with a range of subjects: the science-fantasy works of Roger Zelazny, Greek myth, the French and Indian Wars, drugs, madness. And then there's one mellow instrumental named after an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module.
Of further note, the song "Soulless Woman" is a cover, originally by an even more obscure band also named Ogre, who were actually from the '70s, and its sure seems to be a lost garage psych classic, giving this album a bit of a detour into more of an Uncle Acid or Satan's Satyrs direction, not that they were too far removed to begin with.
Italian import, on the label best known as the home of cult doomster Paul Chain. Gatefold miniature-lp style jacket.
Italian desert-style stoner rock, produced by Michael Davis from the MC5!
This all time aQ favorite, originally a cute little 3" cd, was recently resurrected and pressed onto vinyl for this year's Black Friday "Record Store Day", but as is the way with those things, got delayed and delayed, and only just recently showed up here. Needless to say, if you don't already own this, or have been dying for it on vinyl, this may be your only chance. And for those of you who like us, dream about the day OMG return to rule, this just might tide you over until then. Here's our (slightly revised) review from when we first listed it way back in 2004:
Our favorite primate-obsessed doom metal drone outfit finally return! Old Man Gloom are back with a three inch ep (now 12" lp) to hold us over until their next epic. The centerpiece is the two part "Christmas Eve". The first part is all dreamy drone-y acoustic guitar strum and mournful electric guitar melodies over an ominous rumble that becomes a thick sheet of amps-gone-wild before dissolving into misty ambience again. Part two starts off just like part one but is quickly transformed into a hyper distorted, black hole dirge, with earth crushing downtuned guitars and chanted vocals sounding not unlike Alice In Chains slowed down and run through a bank of distortion pedals (which is definitely a good thing). The rest of the tracks are random bits of OMG ephemera: a thirty second blast of shrieking downtuned metallic grind, two tracks entitled Masami's Music Box I and II, presumably Masami Akita aka Merzbow contributing two thirty second bursts of uncharacteristically sweet melody and ambient hum, and a bonus track, a Mr. Big cover that is so stupid that it's funny (sort of), but has such an amazing ending (why hasn't anyone done this before, but more importantly, how the fuck did they do it) that it would be unfair for us to deprive you of discovering it for yourself. Just don't complain to us when you finally hear it. There is nothing wrong. It's just the OMG Simian Alien Defense League fucking with your mind! Resistance is futile!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. In heavy swank cardstock sleeves, printed in yellow and blue, with all new artwork!
Our favorite primate-obsessed doom metal drone outfit finally return! Old Man Gloom are back with a three inch ep to hold us over until their next epic. The centerpiece is the two part Christmas Eve. The first part is all dreamy drone-y acoustic guitar strum and mournful electric guitar melodies over an ominous rumble that becomes a thick sheet of amps-gone-wild before dissolving into misty ambience again. Part two starts off just like part one but is quickly transformed into a hyper distorted, black hole dirge, with earth crushing downtuned guitars and chanted vocals sounding not unlike Alice In Chains slowed down and run through a bank of distortion pedals (which is definitely a good thing). The rest of the tracks are random bits of OMG ephemera: a thirty second blast of shrieking downtuned metallic grind, two tracks entitled Masami's Music Box I and II, presumably Masami Akita aka Merzbow contributing two thirty second bursts of uncharacteristically sweet melody and ambient hum, and a bonus track, an Extreme cover (Extreme the band, not extreme the sound) that is so stupid that it's funny (sort of), but has such an amazing ending (why hasn't anyone done this before, but more importantly, how the fuck did they do it) that it would be unfair for us to deprive you of discovering it for yourself. Just don't complain to us when you finally hear it. There is nothing wrong. It's just the OMG Simian Alien Defense League fucking with your mind! Resistance is futile!
If you've seen the documentary Blood, Sweat + Vinyl, about the Hydra Head, Neurot and Constellation labels, and all the various bands that call those labels home, you'll see our very own Andee publicly profess his undying love for mysterious simian drone metal combo Old Man Gloom. And he's most definitely not alone. For a band that started off as a joke (or at least not as a serious or 'proper' band), OMG quickly became an obsession for lots of metalheads, heck even (and maybe especially) for non metalheads. Their sound a killer concoction of grinding downtuned dirge metal and all manner of experimental drone music, equal parts rocking out and spacing out, even the heaviest jams constantly disrupted by the bands experimental streak, or even more often their twisted sense of humor. And no this is not some joke band, although they can sometimes be funny, and their obsession with monkeys borders on the pathological (but then so does ours, thus another reason we love them), but it's that weirdness and funniness, when wedded to some killer songwriting and some seriously bad ass musicianship (courtesy of members of Isis, Converge, Cave In, Zozobra, etc.) that makes these guys so utterly ruling. And to a degree, the freedom of not taking your band all that seriously definitely makes it more likely that you'll have fun, do whatever the fuck you want, and in the process come up with some mind melting, ear drum shredding shit.
But it's been more than 8 years since the last OMG record, so the question is, getting these guys back together again, after all that time, everyone older and wiser, and maybe, heaven forbid, returning to OMG as a proper band, do these musical representatives of the Simian Alien Defense League still got it in them? Thankfully the answer seems to be yes. The sound maybe a bit more modern, but not that far removed from the last OMG missive, starting off with a long stretch of rumbling drones, before some brittle blackened riffage ushers in some crushing downtuned bombast, howled vox, pounding drums, the whole thing wreathed in what sounds like a guitar that keeps shorting out, glitchy and constantly dropping out, which only gives the proceedings a bit of a Faxed Head vibe, which is NEVER a bad thing. The sound shifts to some churning chug, before splintering into a starfield of prismatic effects, processed vox and all manner of blurred sonic shimmer. And we're only about ten minutes in!
And so it goes, the heavy parts utterly crushing, the melodic parts crazy catchy, sounding a bit like Torche, that sort of hook heavy sludge pop, and the sounds and songs constantly seeming to malfunction, or implode, or buckle, or crumble, guitars become sheets of static, drums stumble and invert, guitars slip into backwards swoops, low end rumbles thrum and shimmer beneath twangy clean guitars, only to be buried beneath an avalanche of almost symphonic heaviness, only to constantly slip into a grind metal stutter, there's even a gothy steel string acoustic apocalyptic folk jam, that is actually pretty great, and it too rife with all sort of fucked and fractured sounds and production. And finally the record finishes off with the 14 minute "Shuddering Earth", which opens with a blast of super melodic math metal, before slipping into some dark dolorous drift, tons of space, streaked with static, and anguished vox, gradually building to a Harvey Milk like sludgedoom ballad, all about to crack vocals, churning chug, and woozy melodies, but even then, we're only halfway through. A field of minimal crackle/static turns into a sheet of near Merzbow electronic noise, the sounds gradually intensifying, before unexpectedly transforming into a bit of hazy, shoegazy, noise drenched prettiness, that ends in a gorgeous squall of psychedelic high end skree. Fuck yeah! Here's hoping this is not just a one off reunion, cuz even after all these years, we still sorta find ourselves digging OMG more than any of the members' other bands. WAY recommended for sure, and essential listening by order of the Simian Alien Defense League!
With the "Use Your Illusion"-style simultaneous release of these two new discs on HydraHead sublabel Tortuga, Boston's Old Man Gloom have vaulted to the forefront of the so-called "noisecore" scene, at least in our estimation. We were already big fans of
With the "Use Your Illusion"-style simultaneous release of these two new discs on HydraHead sublabel Tortuga, Boston's Old Man Gloom have vaulted to the forefront of the so-called "noisecore" scene, at least in our estimation. We were already big fans of
A lot of OM related dub on this week's list, elsewhere you'll find a review of the latest dub single from OM mastermind (and former Sleep bass slinger) Al Cisneros, and here we've got a track from OM's most recent full length, Advaitic Songs, stretched way out, spread out over two sides of a 12", and then dubbed the fuck out! You'd have to be deaf to not here the dub influence in OM, even when they're engaged in churning metallic crush, their sound always had a dubbiness to it, lots of space, a definitely groove, but here, that sounds is allowed to flourish into something purely dub, but unlike Cisneros; singles, this dubbed out version of OM, seems to take less inspiration from classic Jamaican dub, and more from the eighties, On-U Sound style digi-dub, and it sounds great, in fact, once again, even though these are remixes, we find ourselves wishing there was a band who sounded exactly like this dubby doomy dreaminess.
The sound here is all looped programmed rhythms, vocals clipped, and chopped, doused in echo, and sent swirling into the ether, same with the snare cracks, each crack unleashing a sky full of sonic ripples, but the swoonsome darkly dramatic strings from the original remain, giving the sound a much more moody and mesmeric vibe, the B side adds some Tikiman like toasting (new OM member Robert Lowe? Cisneros himself?) while the track oozes and slithers, a downtempo groove that ends up reminding us of Muslimgauze and African Head Charge in equal measure. Fucking awesome. Here's hoping wither the whole record gets a dub makeover, OR, that the next OM record ends up being a pure, straight up dub record. Here's hoping!
We fully expected to dig this new Om record. After all, we've been fans of the band since their debut
hit back in 2004. Since then, Al Cisneros' ultra heavy bass vibrations and one of a kind stoned vocal delivery have remained pretty constant, and the main changes in the course of Om's history have revolved around two very distinct yet quite different drummers; while original skinsman Chris Hakius carried Om into territory that might well be viewed as the next step in the saga he and Cisneros developed in Sleep, current drummer Emil Amos (also of Grails and Holy Sons) brought a new, less overtly heavy approach that seemed to suit Om just as perfectly, and things have taken on a more meditative quality since his arrival. Still, some people like to joke that Om's variations on a theme have deviated little since Variations On A Theme. With that, we humbly admit that the greatness of Om's latest record, 9 years into their existence, has pretty much knocked us on our asses and led some of us to conclude that it is the best thing we've heard from them yet.
While there will be no mistaking who this is, there are in fact some of the biggest surprises on an Om record so far. Perhaps the most notable of these surprises come in the form of Robert AA Lowe, he of the 90 Day Men and Lichens, who has become a full fledged member of Om since the completion of Advaitic Songs. Indeed, Om sound more invigorated (but not *too* invigorated, for obvious reasons we would imagine) and more willing to venture into new mysterious realms. Along with additional contributions from Amber Asylum alum Jackie Perez Gratz (cello) and Lorraine Rath (flute), Advaitic Songs is by far the most diverse of Om's albums, bringing to mind everything from the Taj Mahal Travellers to Alice Coltrane to hints of early Pink Floyd and all manner of dubbed out atmospheres, while never abandoning the formula we've all come to love. In other words, shit DOES get heavy and rifftastic, but not before the introduction of female chanted vocals (which sound at times like a significantly less crazed/terrifying Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and yes, we mean that in a good way) and tamboura that open the album on the majestic "Addis". This track really absorbs you into the sound of the album and billows out steadily, with the vibe carrying on into "State Of Non Return" until the band abruptly shifts into one of the heaviest, most stoned out jams of Om's existence. And to return to the subject of drumming, kudos to Amos for his completely amazing work on this track. All we could do was bob our heads and let out a hearty "fuck yeah". Fuck yeah for sure. Interestingly, the track is monolithically heavy but still adheres to some sense of discipline and restraint. Quite simply, not many people could pull this off with these results. "Gethsemane" begins with a super heavy tamboura drone before some clean sounding Middle Eastern influenced bass and strings merge with a heavily focused drum pound with nice use of the ride. When Al's vocals come in, it sounds, well, how do we say this? Like a better version of Om. It's just so great, familiar but also exotic and surprising. "Sinai" begins as another heavy drone and makes brilliant use of distorted field recordings of some religious ceremony (sorry to be so non-specific) before ultra crisp drumming and bubbling bass create a foundation for the cello and tamboura to hover above. It's another great one to get lost in. "Haqq al-Yaqin" brings the album to its conclusion, with the memorable cello work giving the song a distinct feel and some typically awesome Cisneros vocal work. Instead of building to some predictable moment of catharsis where things get all heavy and everyone rocks out all "passionately", the song retains its focus and rides out with some beautiful acoustic guitar work before fading with some cool tabla rhythms. Wow.
At this point it's fair to say that Om are masters of their craft, and their desire to explore new worlds is made completely clear here. No one can touch them. We were going to make this a Record Of The Week, but our suppliers didn't have quite as many of the cds as we wanted in stock this week, so we had to demote it to Highlight status instead. Still, we encourage everyone to snap this one up.
Second live record from this post-Sleep duo, this one a live recreation of their 2006 Conference Of The Birds album, recorded live in New York last year, giving most people their first earful of new drummer Emil Amos, courtesy of epic post rockers the Grails, replacing long time Om drummer Chris Hakius, who was also in Sleep with Om bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros.
The drum switch is pretty dramatic, where Hakius was a bruiser, who pounded his kit, Amos is much more refined and restrained, jazzier for sure, his parts busier and skittery than the Hakius' Conference originals.
"At Giza" is a low slow rumble, mantra like and haunting, doomy for sure, but more abstract than crushing, the bass rubbery and almost clean, unfurling slow motion grooves, the drums a stripped down shuffle, the vocals reverbed and clean and way up in the mix, everything hushed and hypnotic. It's not until nearly 3/4 of the way through that the distortion kicks in and the band let loose, and that Sleep pedigree becomes apparent. And while in some ways, Amos's drumming makes the sound less obviously 'heavy', it also pushed it in new, almost proggy directions, adding more complexity and counterpoint, and things get seriously frenzied and frenetic, with a distinctly Ruins-worthy coda.
The flip side, "Flight Of The Eagle", is not that far removed from the original, minus the slightly different drumming style, the sound is still plenty sludgy, droney, groovy, druggy, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Thick diecut jackets, the printed inside sleeve visible through the diecut, pressed on ultra heavy vinyl. And yeah, most definitely limited.
This killer slab of tranced out heaviness, now back print on vinyl, as a picture disc this time! Here's our review of Conference Of Birds when we first reviewed it waaaaaay back in 2006:
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
Their debut last year, Variations On A Theme, was heralded by many as the second coming of Sabbathy stoner/doom legends Sleep. No surprise, considering that Om consists of two thirds of Sleep, and pretty much sounds like two thirds of Sleep too. Same low-end bass (Al Cisneros), thundering drums (Chris Hakius), and druggy, chant-like vocals (Al again, stepping up to the mic). All that's missing is the guitar (Sleep guitarist Matt Pike is busy with High On Fire right now). We gave that album the thumbs up, won over by the psychedelic trance-like heaviness of their jams and their mantrically soothing yet (to us) unintentionally amusing singing, which made us giggle 'cause it just never let up, delivering endless deadpan lyrics of cosmic hippy nonsense in a zoned-out monotone. We don't want to say it was so bad it was good, 'cause it really wasn't bad, but there was some of that kind of bad/good alchemy going on. And we ended up lovin' it.
And of course, the resemblance to old faves Sleep helped too.
Now Al and Chris are back with the second Om opus. It's simultaneously a heckuva lot like their debut but even better somehow. Productionwise, yes. And also perhaps 'cause while the two-piece line-up on Variations sounded like Sleep without the guitar, and maybe (heck, definitely) would have been even better with a guitarist, now they've made that lack of guitar seem more the ways things should be, by getting more and more hushed and spacious and minimal here, thereby making it seem like just bass and drums is enough, not like something's missing. They've made a virtue out of a necessity, realizing that by really adopting a "less is more" aesthetic they'd be playing to their strength. And it works. Listen to it straight through (you'll want to... it's two tracks, about 33 minutes) and you'll find it quite floatational, even without chemical assistance. This riff-repetitive spaceout drone dirge drug is all you need. And Al's lyrics remain occultic, obtuse and slightly absurd, giving this the effect of a hypnosis tape meant to help build your vocabulary (along with heightening your consciousness). He uses such everyday words as "clesiast", "epison", "aurican", "tunnement", and "agurate". It's heavy rock that requires a heavy dictionary to decipher!
So if you liked the first OM, you'll love this. And if you weren't sure before, definitely check this one out. As with their first album, file with Sleep's Jerusalem, Electric Wizard's Supercoven, and UFOmammut's Godlike Snake.
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
Their debut last year, Variations On A Theme, was heralded by many as the second coming of Sabbathy stoner/doom legends Sleep. No surprise, considering that Om consists of two thirds of Sleep, and pretty much sounds like two thirds of Sleep too. Same low-end bass (Al Cisneros), thundering drums (Chris Hakius), and druggy, chant-like vocals (Al again, stepping up to the mic). All that's missing is the guitar (Sleep guitarist Matt Pike is busy with High On Fire right now). We gave that album the thumbs up, won over by the psychedelic trance-like heaviness of their jams and their mantrically soothing yet (to us) unintentionally amusing singing, which made us giggle 'cause it just never let up, delivering endless deadpan lyrics of cosmic hippy nonsense in a zoned-out monotone. We don't want to say it was so bad it was good, 'cause it really wasn't bad, but there was some of that kind of bad/good alchemy going on. And we ended up lovin' it.
And of course, the resemblance to old faves Sleep helped too.
Now Al and Chris are back with the second Om opus. It's simultaneously a heckuva lot like their debut but even better somehow. Productionwise, yes. And also perhaps 'cause while the two-piece line-up on Variations sounded like Sleep without the guitar, and maybe (heck, definitely) would have been even better with a guitarist, now they've made that lack of guitar seem more the ways things should be, by getting more and more hushed and spacious and mimimal here, thereby making it seem like just bass and drums is enough, not like something's missing. They've made a virtue out of a necessity, realizing that by really adopting a "less is more" aesthetic they'd be playing to their strength. And it works. Listen to it straight through (you'll want to... it's two tracks, about 33 minutes) and you'll find it quite floatational, even without chemical assistance. This riff-repetitive spaceout drone dirge drug is all you need. And Al's lyrics remain occultic, obtuse and slightly absurd, giving this the effect of a hypnosis tape meant to help build your vocabulary (along with heightening your conciousness). He uses such everyday words as "clesiast", "epison", "aurican", "tunnement", and "agurate". It's heavy rock that requires a heavy dictionary to decipher!
So if you liked the first OM, you'll love this. And if you weren't sure before, definitely check this one out. As with their first album, file with Sleep's Jerusalem, Electric Wizard's Supercoven, and UFOmammut's Godlike Snake.
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We just scored a handful of copies of the Japanese import edition of the most recent release from psych-drone-trance lords Om, which features a BONUS TRACK not on the domestic version, but which can be found on the ULTRA limited split Six Organs Of Admittance / Om 7" on Holy Mountain that comes out next week (7/11/06)!! Here's what we had to say about Conference Of The Birds first time around:
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
Their debut last year, Variations On A Theme, was heralded by many as the second coming of Sabbathy stoner/doom legends Sleep. No surprise, considering that Om consists of two thirds of Sleep, and pretty much sounds like two thirds of Sleep too. Same low-end bass (Al Cisneros), thundering drums (Chris Hakius), and druggy, chant-like vocals (Al again, stepping up to the mic). All that's missing is the guitar (Sleep guitarist Matt Pike is busy with High On Fire right now). We gave that album the thumbs up, won over by the psychedelic trance-like heaviness of their jams and their mantrically soothing yet (to us) unintentionally amusing singing, which made us giggle 'cause it just never let up, delivering endless deadpan lyrics of cosmic hippy nonsense in a zoned-out monotone. We don't want to say it was so bad it was good, 'cause it really wasn't bad, but there was some of that kind of bad/good alchemy going on. And we ended up lovin' it.
And of course, the resemblance to old faves Sleep helped too.
Now Al and Chris are back with the second Om opus. It's simultaneously a heckuva lot like their debut but even better somehow. Productionwise, yes. And also perhaps 'cause while the two-piece line-up on Variations sounded like Sleep without the guitar, and maybe (heck, definitely) would have been even better with a guitarist, now they've made that lack of guitar seem more the ways things should be, by getting more and more hushed and spacious and mimimal here, thereby making it seem like just bass and drums is enough, not like something's missing. They've made a virtue out of a necessity, realizing that by really adopting a "less is more" aesthetic they'd be playing to their strength. And it works. Listen to it straight through (you'll want to... it's two tracks, about 33 minutes) and you'll find it quite floatational, even without chemical assistance. This riff-repetitive spaceout drone dirge drug is all you need. And Al's lyrics remain occultic, obtuse and slightly absurd, giving this the effect of a hypnosis tape meant to help build your vocabulary (along with heightening your conciousness). He uses such everyday words as "clesiast", "epison", "aurican", "tunnement", and "agurate". It's heavy rock that requires a heavy dictionary to decipher!
So if you liked the first OM, you'll love this. And if you weren't sure before, definitely check this one out. As with their first album, file with Sleep's Jerusalem, Electric Wizard's Supercoven, and UFOmammut's Godlike Snake.
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
The second track from OM's recent Advaitic Songs gets the dub reworking, again by Alpha & Omega, who redid Addis for the first 12", and like that, this new one doesn't need to stretch to far to transform OM into straight up dub, since OM's sound is essentially a doomy dub to begin with. But here, that doom is shed in favor of some old school classic dub sounds. Upstroke guitars, simple grooving rhythms, bass for days, in fact, the bass, and the vocals are really the main thing thee new version retains, the bass driving everything, the sound warm and and hypnotic, a little mellow, but with just a hint of sonic shadow. The vocals translate perfectly, although they're a wee bit more cringeworthy stripped of the supporting sonic heft of the original. And like that first 12", if you weren't familiar with OM, you might not even know this was a remix/reworking, it sounds pretty genuinely old school dub. That said, not all OM fans will dig. A quick look online and seems like lots of folks didn't really get it, or like it, which is surprising considering how dubby in spirit at least OM's actual sound already is.
The B side amps up the dubbiness even more, dousing the vocals and rhythms in echo and delay, words and snare cracks careening into the ether, wreathed in warm swirls of melodica melody, everything dreamily druggy and delightfully hazy and washed out.
We'd recommend spinning this at 33rpm though, if you want to get some of the doom back, at that speed, it's a dirgey doom-dub creep, the vocals a demonic bellow, the music tarpit thick, the rhythm a droney dubby dirge. Either way, cool stuff, fans of the first 12" will want this one too, and open minded OM fans, give this a try, cuz you know these days it seems like dub, more than metal is the sound that influences OM's sound, see also OM frontman Al Cisneros' dub solo singles for more proof of that!
Here it is, the first post-Chris Hakius Om studio record. And there sure has been a lot of whining. "How could Al Cisneros continue when half the group (Om being a duo) left?" "The new guy doesn't hit as hard," "It's on Drag City," blah blah blah. Fuck all that. If people cannot understand that music should be about progression and taking new risks, then they should stick to the old records and leave it at that. That said, there will be no mistaking this for anyone other than Om. The template hasn't changed drastically, but new drummer Emil Amos (who also pounds the skins for Grails and has a kick ass project of his own, Holy Sons) has certainly brought something new and fresh to the table. His drumming is more meditative, less pounding than Hakius' style and at times a little, ahem, "jazzy", and it honestly suits the direction Om had been heading in perfectly. And when the band does kick into its trademark fuzzed out monolithic jams, the changes come off as more dynamic and drastic. So, if you loved what Om has done before, chances are God Is Good will not disappoint.
The album kicks off with "Thebes," a 19 minute monster that begins life as a subdued sitar drone. The band jams it out for a while with clean bass and focused drumming, and of course, Al's amazing and totally out there stoner lyrics, before switching gears into the musical theme they have been exploring since, uh, Variations On A Theme. The best part is how it recalls the foundation from which Om was born while still showing the progression they have made since Amos' arrival. And it's fucking perfect. With Steve Albini once again at the recording console, you can safely bet that it sounds incredible, spacious yet controlled, with every nuance of Om's minimal but super amplified approach coming out nice and clear. Following an epic fadeout comes the second song, "Meditation Is The Practice Of Death", which is carried forward by a snaky, Middle Eastern styled bass groove as Amos provides some awesome drum work heavy on the cymbals and toms. The droniness just feels so great, with Al's monotone voice maintaining its steadiness over production that seems to show off a heavy dub influence. Probably weren't expecting that the first time you heard these guys, were you? But it actually makes total sense. Towards the end, there is a killer FLUTE solo, and its awesomeness should be enough to silence any of the non believers out there. This is still Om, but believe it or not, they are taking things into new realms, which is made even clearer on the next track, a two part song called "Cremation Ghat". Perhaps the fastest and busiest Om song to date, the song begins with a highly focused cyclical bass groove and percussion accented by hand claps playing out over a steady pound and a serpentine vocal chant. It's actually a bit reminiscent of Circle, but then Part II goes into a slow burning groove with the same sitar loop from "Thebes" entering the picture over more Middle Eastern inspired melodies. The album ends as it began, with the sitar loop urging you to press play once again. This is seriously great stuff.
So yeah, God Is Good is good, and we can only wonder where Om will venture after this. Luckily, it will probably still include 19 minute songs, thundering bass, hypnotic drumming, and totally stoned shamanic incantations, so really what's to complain about?
If you've ever heard OM live, well, you know what it's like to see them live. A piece of vinyl, no matter how weighty, can't really compete with that. But, if you'd like to experience OM's stoned live ceremony from the comfort of your own recliner, divan, or yoga mat - and there's a lot to be said for that - the simply titled Live lp on Outer Battery will do the trick.
Mean to emulate a '70s classic rock live boot, with raw sound (no overdubs, man) and a simple white sleeve with a pasted on, wraparound b&w cover photo of the band on stage, this document from one date on OM's 2013 European tour is a must for all OM-heads. It features four tracks - on Side A, "Sinai" and "Meditation Is The Practice Of Death"; Side B has "Cremations Ghat I" and "Bhima's Theme".
Featuring much echoing drum-thwack, zoned out chant, mesmerically heavy riffage, and a worshipful crowd of Belgians, it is very much like "you are there". While at the same time, OM can help you to "be here now".
On "Acapulco Gold" colored vinyl, LIMITED TO 800 COPIES.
People have been dying for this one. Two epic sidelong tracks, recorded live in the Holy Land, from one of the world's heaviest duos, thee mighty Om. And in fact, this lp is the final recording of the original duo, with drummer Chris Haikus, who has since left the band to be replaced by the drummer from the Grails.
And a fitting swansong it is, as these two tracks are monsters, one from Conference Of The Birds, one from Pilgrimage, and as you might expect, the sound is massive, the bass churning and throbbing, the drums relentless and pounding, the duo locking into trancelike grooves, hypnotic and mesmerizing, and of course so so so heavy. What else do you need to know. It's Om, two tracks, each taking up a whole side, pressed on super thick vinyl, in super deluxe sleeves, and of course EXTREMELY LIMITED, only 3100 copies made (each one numbered), we got 25 and there's a good chance we won't be able to get more. You have been warned.
The mighty return of the transcendental RIFF! The third Om record! By now the methods and purpose of their ultra heavy music of the spheres is clear. The music on this album, much like the first two, is stripped to its essence. Bass and drums churning out super hypnotic heaviness and repetitive chant-like vocals creating a cyclical whorl of trance-rock divinity.
With a lot of new releases from bands we love, change in sound and development of style is important, Om seem to operate with different principles than the average rock and roll outfit. The consistency of their sound lends itself to the eternal nature of the music, as if all three of their records are really just movements in some expansive, cosmic symphony. Within Om's canon, change is felt like the passing of time without the aid of a clock or calendar, existing in the infinite void. And what an ass kicking void it is! The riffs and rhythms on Pilgrimage are certainly just as good as those on either of their previous releases, which means amazingly heavy and heady slabs of stoned out ROCK!
The record starts off with the title track, which is an expansive slow burner. Mesmeric and spiritual, soft spoken vocals and a propulsive tom and tambourine beat. The riffs on this track, as well as the bulk of Om's material, have a certain eastern quality, like some strange Sabbath-raga meld, and they go on forever and ever, taking the listener on some sort of mystic celestial voyage. By track two, "Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead", the fuzzed out bass distortion kicks in, and the sound gets HEAVY! This Sleep-like heavitude continues into the 11 plus minute "Bhima's Theme", by which point in the album the listener is more than likely completely transfixed, eyes a-glaze with the eternal riff burned into their brain. The last song on the album is "Pilgrimage (Reprise)", which makes for a very circular experience, like when listening to the album all the way through, time disintegrates and 32 minutes seems like a split second or a week or an eternity! Heavy, mannnn...
Possibly one of the most distinctive things about Pilgrimage is the recording itself. This album sounds fucking great! We mean, for a band that just consists of bass guitar and drums, you could not pick a better engineer than Mr. Steve Albini, whose forte has always been the rhythm section, and he completely nailed the sound! It's warm and cavernous, and completely swallows the listener whole.
So, if you are in tune with the amaranthine vibes of Om's two previous records, you will most certainly appreciate this one as a continuation on the path towards the essence of musical anima mundi!
RIFF TO ETERNITY!
Have you been missing Sleep? No, not your forty winks, we mean the mighty stoner metal behemoth that was San Francisco's Sabbath n' sweet leaf worshippers Sleep. The endlessly repetitive riffs, the swinging molasses sludge jams, the massive, mantric starscapes of drugged-out space rock drone and dirge? Yeah, we've been missing Sleep too. They broke up after their magnum opus, the one-hour/one-song album Jerusalem (aka Dopesmoker), members eventally resurfacing in The Sabians and High On Fire. And now Om, the closest thing to the Jerusalem of olde! So if High On Fire's loud and speedy Motorheaded heaviness hasn't quite been giving you that same Sleepy feeling, then here's -another- post-Sleep outfit that might just do the trick.
First get rid of the guitars ('cause this is just Sleep's rhythm section, bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius). All they really need is a drum kit, a bass guitar and about 10,000 watts of amplification. Then set the controls for the heart of the sun, and ride all the way there seemingly on a single churning, hypnotic mesmerizing riff, stretched over three long tracks. A super distorted, fuzzed out magic carpet ride into oblivion. The main difference between Sleep and Om (besides the lack of guitar) are the vocals by Al Cisneros. Lots of vocals. And not screaming or growly, we're talking clean, chanting, trance-like vocals, WAY up in the mix. Well, they do sound a bit like the singing in Sleep, just way more prominent. It may be the single thing that keeps folks from getting into Om. But the vocals definitely grow on you, and the laconic sort of slurry sing song-y delivery just further enhances Om's druggy mesmerism. Al's stiffly delivered, endless nasal incantations are in fact now being imitated by the staffers here at Aquarius in our everyday conversations. They definitely give the whole thing a definite Hawkwind / Pink Floyd vibe, which is a VERY good thing. This is most definitely not 'metal', although metalheads will probably dig it. Electric Wizard fans especially! This is relentlessly riff heavy, ultra repetitive, simple, spaced out, hippy drug rock of the highest order. Musically it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt record played at 16rpm, that effortless bass / drum interplay slowed down to a loping lumber, a slow motion slither, a creepy crawl. Head nodding music for head bangers. A swirling, fuzzy, spacy, mesmerizing, drone rock trip! No wonder ol' Julian Cope wrote it up as a record of the month on his great Head Heritage website...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
NOW ON CLEAR VINYL! When the first pressing of vinyl sold out, Holy Mountain decided to repress on clear wax. Nice. Here's our review of the music, which remains available on cd too:
Have you been missing Sleep? No, not your forty winks, we mean the mighty stoner metal behemoth that was San Jose's Sabbath n' sweet leaf worshippers Sleep. The endlessly repetitive riffs, the swinging molasses sludge jams, the massive, mantric starscapes of drugged-out space rock drone and dirge? Yeah, we've been missing Sleep too. They broke up after their magnum opus, the one-hour/one-song album Jerusalem (aka Dopesmoker), members eventally resurfacing in The Sabians and High On Fire. And now Om, the closest thing to the Jerusalem of olde! So if High On Fire's loud and speedy Motorheaded heaviness hasn't quite been giving you that same Sleepy feeling, then here's -another- post-Sleep outfit that might just do the trick.
First get rid of the guitars ('cause this is just Sleep's rhythm section, bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius). All they really need is a drum kit, a bass guitar and about 10,000 watts of amplification. Then set the controls for the heart of the sun, and ride all the way there seemingly on a single churning, hypnotic mesmerizing riff, stretched over three long tracks. A super distorted, fuzzed out magic carpet ride into oblivion. The main difference between Sleep and Om (besides the lack of guitar) are the vocals by Al Cisneros. Lots of vocals. And not screaming or growly, we're talking clean, chanting, trance-like vocals, WAY up in the mix. Well, they do sound a bit like the singing in Sleep, just way more prominent. It may be the single thing that keeps folks from getting into Om. But the vocals definitely grow on you, and the laconic sort of slurry sing song-y delivery just further enhances Om's druggy mesmerism. Al's stiffly delivered, endless nasal incantations are in fact now being imitated by the staffers here at Aquarius in our everyday conversations. They definitely give the whole thing a definite Hawkwind / Pink Floyd vibe, which is a VERY good thing. This is most definitely not 'metal', although metalheads will probably dig it. Electric Wizard fans especially! This is relentlessly riff heavy, ultra repetitive, simple, spaced out, hippy drug rock of the highest order. Musically it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt record played at 16rpm, that effortless bass / drum interplay slowed down to a loping lumber, a slow motion slither, a creepy crawl. Head nodding music for head bangers. A swirling, fuzzy, spacy, mesmerizing, drone rock trip! No wonder ol' Julian Cope wrote it up as a record of the month on his great Head Heritage website...
Previously only on 10" vinyl via Neurot, now finally available to compact disc users! David Tibet is an obsessive man, amassing a huge collection of books, records, paintings, and ephemera from his favorite artists, religious leaders, and cultural icons; and he often incorporates bits and pieces from that collection into the apocalyptic hymns of his band Current 93. A couple years ago, Tibet found himself awestruck by Om's first album Variations On A Theme and approached the stoned-metal mesmerists about working together. Through their correspondence, Om's bassist Al Cisneros found himself a contributor to the Current 93 opus Black Ships Ate The Sky, and then the two projects decided to produce this split release. What you get from Om is exactly what you would expect: heavy-as-fuck bass lines, lumbering drum propulsion, and tranced-out vocal incantations very much along the psychedelic vein of Sabbath and the druggy side of Hawkwind. Normally Tibet outsources the guitar work on his Current 93 records to the likes of Ben Chasny, Michael Cashmore, or Tony Wakeford, but here he's picked up the guitar, the bass, and a ton of distortion to match what Om does on the other side. He proves that he too can muster a heavy doom-drone riff laced with caustic waves of distortion and feedback. Of course, his revelatory vocals emerge from the cyclical riffs as does a caterwaul of droning bagpipes.
David Tibet is an obsessive man, amassing a huge collection of books, records, paintings, and ephemera from his favorite artists, religious leaders, and cultural icons; and he often incorporates bits and pieces from that collection into the apocalyptic hymns of his band Current 93. A couple years ago, Tibet found himself awestruck by Om's first album Variations On A Theme and approached the stoned-metal mesmerists about working together. Through their correspondence, Om's bassist Al Cisneros found himself a contributor to the Current 93 opus Black Ships Ate The Sky, and then the two projects decided to produce this split 10". What you get from Om is exactly what you would expect: heavy-as-fuck bass lines, lumbering drum propulsion, and tranced-out vocal incantations very much along the psychedelic vein of Sabbath and the druggy side of Hawkwind. Normally Tibet sources out the guitar work on his Current 93 records to the likes of Ben Chasny, Michael Cashmore, or Tony Wakeford, but here he's picked up the guitar, the bass, and a ton of distortion to match what Om does on the other side. He proves that he too can muster a heavy doom-drone riff laced with caustic waves of distortion and feedback. Of course, his revelatory vocals emerge from the cyclical riffs as does a caterwaul of droning bagpipes. There have been a couple of different pressings of this single; and what we have is the domestic, blue translucent vinyl version.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
FINALLY THE REPRESS IS HERE! These split singles went out of print in a flash soon after we first reviewed 'em on list 244. But more were promised, and now at last they're here, for now...
Most of you have already smashed the add to cart button to bits before even getting to reading the review, so we'll keep this brief. A monumental match up of modern psychedelic masters from the NorCal locale. On one side is the mighty post-Sleep behemoth known as Om, a bass and drums duo who churn out extended sludge mantras, and on this track it's no different. A super fuzzed out doomy plod and groove. When we first threw this one, we accidentally had it on 45 and it sounded pretty dang killer and super blown out and weird, until the vocals came in and went all doom chipmunk on us. But at 33 it was even slower and heavier and dirgier just the way it was meant to be. Note: the track on this 7" is the bonus track from the Japanese version of Conference Of The Birds that we listed recently, so a few of you may already have this song! On the other side we have Ben Chasny and his Six Organs Of Admittance, who seem to be upping their own personal dirge quotient in order to compete with the sheer heaviness of Om. There is still some lilting folk, but it's buried beneath wild squalls of psych guitar freakout that sounds VERY Japanese (High Rise, Mainliner, Fushitsusha).
Definitely essential.
Has there ever been a better name for a doom / sludge band? We think not. And with a name like that we were imagining some multiple o'd mega ultra doooooooooooom, but instead these Italians aren't as ooze-y as you might expect, in fact they traffic in something a bit groovier, their psychedelic slo-mo doom rife with, stonery, Sabbathy swing, right from the get go (after a little intro with silly Satanic samples over a field of feedback) the band launch into the first of many serious stoner rock jams, but fear not, there's plenty of sludginess and abject downtuned churn, and the vocals too, a harsh, Eyehategod style glass gargling bellow/shriek, the sound massive, the guitars thick, and practically oozing (yep!) crumbling distortion, and yeah, there are grooves all over the place, the band lumbering druggily between stonery riffage, and knuckle dragging dirgery and back again, with some tracks landing somewhere right in the middle, a few bordering on classic doom, others something all together more harsh and hateful.
It's all heavy though, extremely heavy, blown out psychedelic stoner doom stomp of the highest order, druggy and dirgey and slithery and Satanic and while maybe a little too groovy for the grim, troo, ultra doooooooomlords out there, for everybody else, this is some seriously primo stoner-sludge psych-doom, and if you're anything like us, it's a sound you just can't get enough of...
The first thing you notice is the amazing die-cut artwork. Orange and red overlapping circles each with target like concentric inner circles, cut to resemble a fuzzy washed out mountainscape of orbs and spheres, with the tray card cut so the cd nestles perfectly into one of the valleys. So nice. The second thing you notice, or the first thing you notice once you throw this in the player, is how compltely KICK ASS this record is. This is literally all we've been listening to the last few weeks! We always talk about Queens Of The Stone Age as being this guilty pleasure we all seem to have. But what's so guilty about liking them? They rock, have great catchy songs, the remnants of that huge sun baked Kyuss fuzz guitar. What's not to love? Well, it could be our aversion to the whole MTV / VH1, dating or not dating Brody Dalle?, People Magazine / US Magazine, Dave Grohl killing time, supergroup, more crooning than rocking, not really about the music anymore?, corporate rock element. Yeah, could be.
So what if there was a band of young guys, who put out a record on punk / metalcore label Trustkill, and who took all of the stuff that made QOTSA so great, but turned that stuff inside out, and added all sorts of other disparate elements, turning what could have been just a decent QOTSA rip off into one of the coolest, catchiest rock records of the year?! Well, we'd probably make it record of the week and gush like giddy music nerds. So let us commence gushing, shall we?
Imagine huge fuzz guitars, unfurling super rocking Kyuss / Rocket From The Crypt / Burning Brides sort of stoner garage pop riffs, sometimes langorous and lysergic, sometimes so heavy and intense it's almost impossible to not air guitar! One track in particular, "The Kaleidoscope" has perhaps one of the best riffs EVER (sez Andee and Jason) an impossibly God-like Kyuss / Sabbath fusion, that gets everyone in the store nodding along like Wayne And Garth in Wayne's World. So we've got the riffs, now we go to the vocals, which go from breathy falsetto, to growly indie whine, to howled rock wail, with plenty of occasional female vocals, sometimes employed in surprisingly unorthadox ways giving a couple of the songs a really bizarre edge. Hard to describe, you just have to hear it.
But this is not just about rocking, as much as we wouldn't mind that at all. No, there's lots of weird wonderful pop experimentation all over, from loping bass driven Pinback-ish lullabies, droning brooding minor key dirges reminiscent of the Deftones or maybe Tool, some Sonic Youth-y skree and textural weirdness, even some moody electronic miserablism that has Depeche Mode worship written all over it. It all works so well together somehow, heavy and head banging, dreamy and blissed out. Can't believe this band isn't HUGE. But we're secretly a little glad they aren't. For now at least. The sticker on the front insists that You And Me "obliterates the boundaries between indie rock, stoner rock, metal, emo and garage." Before we heard it we were pretty sure that was some serious label hyperbole, but now we're not so sure. Open Hand take all that stuff and more, wrapping everything around some of the best pop songs we've heard in ages and comes up with a record that hasn't stopped kicking our ass since we got it. Record of the week is always a tricky proposition, we try to make it something out of the ordinary, something mysterious and weird, maybe something hard to find or impossible to get or maybe just overlooked, but once in a while, those things don't seem to matter as much as the simple fact that a record gets played over and over and over over, every day, all day, here AND at home, on our computers, in our iPod's, with no end in sight, that speaks volumes. And sure, maybe you can catch their video on MTV once in a while, or maybe hear them on the radio, but that's not a bad thing at all. If only everything on the radio or on MTV was this good. The world would be a much better (and most likely much stranger) place!
New on Man's Ruin. Operator: Generator are the Bay Area's answer to Kyuss. Groovy doomy swinging stoner rock. Not quite as heavy though, O:G sit somewhere right between Kyuss and Queens of the Stoneage. Warm fuzzy guitars, reverb drenched vocals, and a rhythm section that spits out prime chunks of seventies groove.
We made The Puritan our Record Of The Week a couple lists back, the twisted ultra doom project of Reverend Bizarre's S.A. Hynninen, aka Albert Witchfinder, and that record was indeed twisted and doomy, crushing and slow, warped and mysterious, a little bit gothy and dramatic, a lot bit pummeling downtuned crush. So now we have Opium Warlords, Hynninen's most recent project, which we would have made our record of the week as well if it was a bit easier to get, cuz holy shit, it's like an even more fucked up Puritan, the slow parts are slower, the croony gothy parts, are, well, MORE. It's a creepy crawly burning, sprawling avant doom juggernaut, equal parts classic doom a la My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, Japanese sludge a la Corrupted, Boris, Solar Anus, and strange minimal prog, but it's WAY poppier too, and pretty, so much so, that we often forget what we're listening to, seventies British prog? Peter Hammill? Sounds strange, and it definitely is, but even in true doom outfit Reverend Bizarre, Hynninen and his crew were way weirder than your average doom band. And the thing with Opium Warlords, is at first it just seemed slow and weird, but it totally blossoms, the more melodic songs revealing themselves as epic and catchy, well crafted avant prog. Or something.
The record opens in full on doom mode, big crashing chords ring out, lots of space, the vocals a mewling croon that goes from growl to falsetto, as the track plods along for 8+ minutes, lurching along doomily, yet melodically, before slipping into the second track, a super spacious skeletal drift, that sounds more like Bohren than Boris, before finally stumbling into full on doomsludge, harsh howled vocals, and strange twisted melodies, until the record shifts gears entirely.
The next two songs, nearly 22 minutes, is a smoldering dark cabaret, guitars distorted and spidery, with Hynninen really singing, dramatic and emotional, it almost sounds like some long lost dark krautrock ballad, no drums, minus the occasional rumbling percussion off in the distance, just a warm drift of lush chords, and minor key melodies, really gorgeous, and timeless sounding.
Which gives way to another bout of doomic pummel, but again surprisingly melodic, all instrumental this time, just the guitars churning, the drums pounding, all wound into a tense chunk of doom pop heaviness.
The next track gets all Eastern with some layered guitars, and abstract percussion, heavy for sure, but also a bit raga like, with a strange mix, big bass thrums way up in the mix, the song eventually transforming into a convoluted math metal workout, which gives way to yet another chunk of more classic sounding doom. Slooooow, and spare, harsh growled almost falsetto vocals, over the pounding drums and big distorted chords left to ring out, heavy and slow, but still really pretty...
The final proper track, is all muted bass strum, jangly clean guitar, total dreamy pop vocals over the top, eventually growing more and more rocking, before finishing off in a tangle of almost Champs sounding guitar harmonies and then 30 seconds of feedback and amp buzz.
The whole thing put to bed by the 5 second closing track, a brief burst of pounding grunted furious grind metal. Phew.
Baffling. Brilliant. Even the booklet is utterly confusional. Packed with random text, strange doodles, diagrams, there's even a fragment of one of his papers from grade school, plus the record is NOT live, and it's unclear if this is a band, or if Hynninen plays everything himself, the artwork is super striking, very pink, and on the back, Hynninen offers up this description of Opium Warlords' self described "Black Gobi Desert Rock", which just may render the above review moot:
"A ritual of jet-black sonic occultism inside an imaginary subterranean temple. A mental trip to the minimalist galaxies of suffocatingly slow and heavy nekroambiences. A ground-breaking bi-polar exploration. A droner's delight and headbanger's holiday. A rave of deranged militarist dance beats. A celebration of psychosexual isolation. Essential and easy-to-listen-to fear music for unbalanced and self-hating youth. Kutu-vibrations for sweatshirt-sporting rillirillos. A message "from beyond". Uncontrolled emotional outbursts to cheer up those with the long faces. Something just for you, who "have heard it all" and "really could not care less". Quality time for a suicidal inner-space astrodoomonaut."
3rd album from this aQ fave band with perhaps the best "truth in advertising" name in the realm of psychedelic doomy druggy heaviness. They also have some of the strangest album titles too. A project of Sami "Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen, of Reverend Bizarre (R.I.P.) and The Puritan fame, Opium Warlords' brand of doom metal is often on the minimalist, avantgarde ambient side of things, and oddly prog-inflected. Sprawling Finnish weird-ass doom dirgery at its best!
These slo-mo riffscapes meld the sombre Sabbathy-ness of Reverend Bizarre with the more experimental, extreme likes of early Earth (Extra-Capsular Extraction era), some of the tracks being stripped down to just guitar only, others accompanied by the plodding of a live drummer, or the even more precise plodding of a drum machine. They can range from the somnolently super-sludged to the curiously acoustic, always massively moody in any case, simple and effective. Several are purely instrumental, while some feature Sami's deep voiced vocals ponderously intoning melancholic lyrics, like on the morose, majestic organ-laced 12 minute epic "The Self-Made Man" (which concludes with a noodling, jamming outro that Orthodox might do in one of their more Greg Ginn-ish moments). Sami also occasionally unleashes some wretched black metal style anguish in the vokill dep't. as well, as on the quietly despairing "The God In Ruins".
Depressive and dreary, but strangely comforting and beautifully mesmeric at the same time, Opium Warlords have again come up with a hard to describe, quite original slab of less-is-more, confusion-infused doom (or doom-infused confusion). Scratch your heads and bow down, as they doom on!
We flipped for the first Opium Warlords record, so much so that we wanted to make it Record Of The Week, but like this new one, it was just too difficult to keep in stock and available. Otherwise you might be reading a Record Of The Week review right now instead of just a VERY enthusiastic highlight review! OW is the most recent, and most active solo project of S.A. Hynninen, aka Albert Witchfinder, he of late great doomlords Reverend Bizarre, not to mention, the man behind weirdo avant doom outfit KLV, as well as spaced out doom sludge psychedelic one man band The Puritan.
So here's mysterious missive number two from Hynninen's Opium Warlords, the very strangely named We Meditate Under The Pussy In The Sky, and if anything, it's even more far our and difficult to describe. We'd say it's doom, but really it's not, not really, or it is, at least in places, but otherwise, it's pretty experimental. We'd like to say it's heavy, and it is, but only in places, we CAN say, it's psychedelic, cuz it is all over, and weird, and warped, and demented and damaged. This is definitely one of those records, where all you can really do is describe the sounds.
The brief opener is a five minute drift of shimmering guitar, of clanging chords, a droned out psychedelic guitarscape, that flits from hushed drift to crashing chaotic clang and back again, it's slow building psychguitar intro to what is essentially the record's centerpiece, the 12 minute "Slippy", which also just happens to be the most whatthefuck track here. Beginning with tribal drums and haunted house organs, we were preparing for a sort of majestic creeping doom, but instead, after about 2 minutes, the sound shifts dramatically, like someone switched channels, and the sound is suddenly a weird sort of calypso-like prog, angular guitars, super distorted, bursts of jagged cymbal crash, harsh hellish vokills, looped and loopy, all over a strange sort of shuffling groove, but that only lasts for a couple minutes as well, before the sound slips into a hushed barely there drone, before exploding into that calypso prog freakout once again. Eventually, the sound settles into a dark bit of psychedelic shimmer, all clean guitar, minor key melody, clean vocal croon, sounding almost like fifties doo wop, this too goes on for ages, until suddenly, the track explodes into a heaving blast of lurching distortion drenched doom, laced with weird jagged dynamic stop/starts, and then again, slips into that weird calypso like percussion for the last minute or so. Holy Finnish whatthefuck. So nuts, but so genius!
The last three songs are on the shorter side and are not nearly so twisted. The first is a sprawl of doomic dirgery, laced with chiming clean guitars, and underpinned by roiling basslines, and what sounds like hysterical female screams, the sound growing more and more Eastern sounding, and buzzy, as the track progresses, sounding like some droned out snake charmer jam by the end. The second is a seriously distorted drum and bass dirge that sounds a bit like Ride For Revenge, super murky and minimal, before shifting gears partway through into a sort of Hypothermia style post-black metal / post rock clean guitar and drums groove, which is soon joined by buzzing psychedelic guitar tendrils, ending with an abstract sprawl of dubbed out FX drenched bass buzz. Finally, the third, and last track of the closing three, erupts in a billow of amp buzz and rumbling distortion, out of which emerges a dreamy tangle of guitar melodies, laid back and woozy, the final track playing out more like an outro, nothing too weird or tripped out, just a darkly psychedelic coda, surprisingly lovely considering the tweaked and twisted nature of the rest of the record.
Another blast of confusional brilliance from this Finnish master of baffling psychedelic heaviness and outsider minimal doom confusion. Recommended to all Finnish music freaks for sure, but also anyone into confounding heavy outsider weirdness, which we're guessing is a whole lot of you.
Fantastic! One of our all-time obscure proto-metal, heavy psych faves has now been reissued on vinyl. Long, long ago we had a cd version, but that's long gone and this is definitely a nicer, more definitive reissue, done totally legit (for the first time we're now told) with the cooperation of the original band members. Here's more or less what we said about it before:
Here's good 'un for you Seventies proto-metal lovin' brothers and sisters out there, being another reissue of a vintage slab of heavy psych rock from way back when, in the vein of Captain Beyond, Dust, Bang, Leaf Hound, Jerusalem and the like... We don't know much about Orang-Utan other than that this was probably their only release, a self-titled album from 1971, and they hailed from England (we think). Certainly this is a bit Zeppish in spots. A minor lost classic? This rocks hard and melodic with a melancholic emotional edge to many of the songs, not just the mellower ones. Great vocals and riffage!
This new vinyl reissue enlightens us a bit, we've learned that Orang-Utan were indeed from London, England, but operated there under the name Hunter. But their sole album was issued only in the USA, under the name Orang-Utan, unbeknownst to the band themselves (sneaky management shenanigans afoot!). Comes with insert featuring rare photos as well as liner notes, by Ugly Things writer Jeremy Cargill, explaining the whole weird story. Also we found out that the singer was previously in cult popsyke band Jason Crest.
VERY RECOMMENDED HEAVY PSYCH PROTO-METAL!!
We want to like this British stoner rock band, really we do, but despite their hard-rockin, heavy ways we really just can't get into 'em that much. But, they're ok. This, their third or fourth album (see, we just don't care) is produced by one guy from Kyuss and has another, their singer, doing guest vocals on two songs. But (to their credit, perhaps) they don't sound like those oft-cloned desert rockers. No, "Coup De Grace" is more of a shit-kickin' motorcycle-ridin' rawk affair with gruff vocals and cowboy boots. More nu-grunge for the '00s. We can't really say what if anything is wrong with this, but it's just not grabbing anyone here at the moment, sorry. Maybe we need to hear it at a party or something. Stoner rock types should check out the audio clip for yourselves and see what you think.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The newest from these retro-'70s English stoner groove merchants, fixated on motorcycles and mushrooms and similar good things. Heavy, similar to Sheavy, ready to party. Plus there's lots of blissful spaced out grooves to relax to after the party as well.
Orange Sunshine are a freaky, fuzzed-out power trio from Holland who really really wish they existed in San Francisco circa 1969. Their sound, their graphics, even their name is inspired by heavy Frisco sixties legends Blue Cheer (Orange Sunshine being another "brand" of LSD). They just were in the USA on tour, and we saw 'em live a few weeks back at the Hemlock. Their singing drummer was definitely the star of the show. Long haired, bearded, totally hippified, he was a wild man, pulling crazy faces the whole time he was playing. It seemed quite likely that his number one drummer hero growing up was Animal from The Muppets. Coming to San Francisco to play their Blue Cheer-y music, they took it as far as they could -- even doin' their own version of "Summertime Blues"!!
This new album of theirs (don't believe where it says on the back cover that it was recorded in 1970, that's more fantasy on their part, though they do their best to make that claim almost seem likely) makes us think Acid Mothers Temple crossed with Blue Cheer. Not too hard to imagine, eh? This disc's opener, the 15 and a half minute "Ruler Of The Universe" leans towards the AMT side of that equation, being a spacey, faux Eastern sitar and tablas raga meets flying saucer lift-off sort of epic. Following that, the three minutes of "Speed" sizzle nicely. Then we get a fairly faithful cover of Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love". They just couldn't resist cranking out Jack Bruce's (not Eric Clapton's) most famous riff themselves we guess. Nothing wrong with that, but we liked how on their earlier Love=Acid, Space=Hell album they picked things to cover that actual '60s heavy rock bands would have done, like stuff by Bo Diddley. Still it's cool hearing it given the Blue Cheer, we mean Orange Sunshine treatment. Next up, "Demonize" (or is it "Demon's Eye"?) is a blown-out, wailin' stomper that wouldn't have been out of place on Vincebus Eruptum -- although it's actually a Deep Purple cover. And then the album comes to a fuzzy finale with another Blue Cheerish number entitled "Balls Knockin'". Turns out that's the only track here that's NOT a cover. Though we've never heard of the bands that did "Speed" and "Ruler Of The Universe" before: Ron Allen Light Show and Terry Brooke's Strange, respectively. Kinda makes up for the obviousness of the Cream choice. Seems like these guys really DO live in their own drugged-out, time-looped 1968-1971 universe and it's real nice of them to let us join 'em for the authentic acid rock experience now and then!
Once again, not to be confused with the old sceamo band THE Orchid, but yes very much to be confused with BLACK SABBATH, that's their schtick as it were, this Bay Area based doom metal act now offering up their debut full-length album after a four-song ep that we considered almost a guilty pleasure because of how much Orchid sounded utterly, EXACTLY like Black Sabbath. That's what they do, and they do it damn well. There's been other bands who emulate the Sabs, of course, that's the whole "doom metal" genre really, but Orchid sound more like Sabbath than even, say, Iron Man, sHeavy, or Sleep on Sleep's Holy Mountain!
The vocalist's version of Ozzy, though, is maybe more of a malevolent one, he comes off like Ozzy with a grimacing, evil edge. Riff wise, it's Iommi all the way. Really, every moment here sounds like it's been lifted of an old Sabbath lp, but rearranged/rewritten into Orchid's all "new" Sabbath songs. They can't complain about us saying that, that's obviously their intention, to recreate the Sabbath vibe circa 1970-73 as closely as they can, becoming Earthly vessels of sheer Sabbathiness, originality be damned. "Black Funeral" here for instance, seems to channel Sabbath's "Hand Of Doom"... but without quite (quite) crossing the line into outright plagiarism. Pretty much all the other songs on Capricorn can also be mapped to their vintage Sabbath templates, it's almost like you're listening to an alternate universe Sabbath album that never existed.
All right, so we've established that it would be impossible to write a review of Orchid's album without referencing Black Sabbath. What else is there to say? The musicianship is excellent, the production heavy and '70s sounding, with psychedelic synth embellishment and other droning eerie atmospheres (see "Planet Caravan", we mean "Albatross") - and of course catchy riffage that rocks mightily when the band is going full-bore, as on "Eyes Behind The Wall" and "Down Into The Earth" among others. There's absolutely no duds among the nine songs here, we're digging 'em all, and we think all fans of heavy retro occult metal like Blood Ceremony and Witchcraft will likely enjoy these too... as well as, of course, Sabbath fans, especially if you've worn out your actual Sabbath records and want a fresh dose.
The Church Within has done this up in super-deluxe packaging - a heavy duty four-panel gatefold sleeve, adorned with art painted by Orchid's singer. We hear rumors of an even fancier, but way more expensive, limited leather bound book version, but this will do for us! Nice.
The Decibel magazine review of this, as if rising to some self-imposed challenge, did not once mention Black Sabbath, somehow. We can't do that. Orchid sound like Black Sabbath, to a ridiculously plagiaristic extent. There's other Sabbath clones out there of course but these guys maybe go a little too far. They're good at it, though, so this new album is once again a guilty pleasure. But we do have to call BS on the idea that Orchid is anything more than a Sabbath rip off. Rock and roll is built on rip off tho, so we're not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. But if they ever did an album that sounded like Sabbath without actually using actual Sabbath riffs and whatnot we've be pleased and impressed.
Uh, can you say Black Sabbath? 'Cause that's about EXACTLY what this new band from San Francisco sounds like, same vocals, same chugging sludgy riffs, same swinging groove, same apocalyptic hippie vibe, even moreso than other bands also on The Church Within label that admittedly have Black Sabbath as a major influence (Lord Vicar, Lord Of The Grave, Seamount...). Courting confusion with the screamo punk band Orchid, they're naturally named after a Black Sabbath song (amusingly, one of those acoustic-y guitar solo numbers Tony Iommi liked to do now and then amidst all the heaviness, "Orchid" appearing on Master Of Reality). You don't get "Fluff" like that here, though, it's all about the heaviness and rockin' doominess. And it IS super heavy, and super Sabbathy, make no mistake. Maybe TOO Sabbathy... They've got mega riffs that Iommi might come asking for back someday, those unmistakable incantatory Ozzyish vocals, and an authentically Sabbathy sounding production, all of which puts 'em in the same camp as Sabbath worshippers Sleep (circa their Holy Mountain album), sHeavy, Iron Man, etc. We're reminded of Trouble too, though they were never quite such copyists. So, not too many points for originality, none at all really, but plenty for verisimilitude. And, we can't help it, we're sorta suckers for this, being the huge Black Sabbath fans we are, this scratches that itch, y'know?
So, this ep from Orchid comprises four songs you could throw on after listening to Vol. 4 or Sabotage and, if you squint your ears a bit, consider hitherto unreleased Black Sabbath "bonus tracks" (which all Sabbath lovers know are in very short supply). Of course we'd be even more impressed with 'em if they'd somehow managed to write truly 100 percent NEW songs as good as Sabbath's, rather than what's closer to pastiche, but that's easier said than done, and it's still a fun listen if you want to hear a shockingly similar Sabbath sound-alike, fun too trying trying to figure out which specific Sabbath album/song each Orchid song is emulating, which isn't too difficult really... "Into The Sun", despite its "Into The Void" like title, reminds us more of "Symptom Of The Universe". "Eastern Woman" has a Technical Ecstasy feel, we think, while "Son Of Misery" sounds more like the first album Sabbath. And "No One Makes A Sound" is primarily in the style of stuff on the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath LP, with a bit of an "Iron Man" interlude in it too. You won't believe it's NOT Sabbath, that should be their slogan.
We will say, though, that we hope they add a little more of their own flavor in the future, 'cause when we saw 'em live the other day (opening for the Pentagram/Ludicra/Slough Feg show) they seemed a bit... well there's no nice way to put it... like posers. They had the '70s look, the vintage gear (well except the bassist wasn't playing a Rickenbacker for some reason, WTF dude, get with the program, what would Geezer think?), it all seemed a bit too calculated, not really "real" enough, and without anything of their OWN in the mix it they might as well have just played actual Sabbath covers, rather than the cleverly rewritten Sabbath songs it appeared they were playing. That said, listening at home, we can't help but enjoy this ep quite a bit, the worshipful spirit of the thing comes across better here somehow! Like we said a while back in our WhiteBuzz review, sometimes you want more of a certain band's sound, and if another band can channel it too, let 'em! And we ALWAYS want more Sabbath... Orchid obviously feel the same way.
By the way, it's funny that we originally found out about these guys 'cause they're on a cool German label that we order from, even though they're a local band!
