A brand new single-track of sprawling blackness from this mysterious Idaho duo, offering up their own version of the template laid down by Earth way back around their album 2. Which as you probably already know means, metal riffs slowed down to tarpit tempo, the various notes struggling to move forward through a field of crumbling distortion and near static buzz, the riffs allowed to ring out and fade away almost completely, before the next one comes lumbering up behind it.
The strange thing is that live, Pussygutt are a full on band, much more traditionally heavy, with a drummer and everything, even on their last record the epic double lp Sea Of Sand, the band was a lurching doomic behemoth, bordering on the industrial at times, but here, their sound is stripped way way down, and it suits them. They're able to evoke all sorts of moods with their carefully constructed downtuned ambience. This is some seriously sinister shit for sure, sweeping and darkly cinematic, the soundtrack to the eventual collapse of the universe, the sound of dying stars, or of some long slumbering beat awakening after millennia, or maybe Goblin at 16rpm, some haunted house music way too scary for any haunted house you'd ever want to visit.
It's not all heaviness though. Long stretches of sound dip into hushed shimmer here and there, while elsewhere the low end slips away leaving a creepy string section do drift spectrally, like some secret Satanic classical music, but even these moments are always tense with the knowledge that right around the corner, could be lurking another churning black wave of slow motion doomdrone crush. Really fantastic, and more than most of this stuff, infused with a deep otherworldly beauty.
Definitely require listening for folks whose cd racks/record crates/iPods' are packed with Earth, SUNNO))), Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, To Blacken The Pages, Hum Of The Druid, Expo '70, Nadja, Vulture Club, Hjarnidaudi, Monument Of Urns, Fear Falls Burning, Half Makeshift, Tunnels, Seconds In Formaldehyde, KTL, Light Of Shipwreck...
BLACK SABBATH! There. Got your attention. Now let's explain.
We thought we were pretty up on all the bands that followed the Sabbatherian path: Witchfinder General, Angel Witch, Trouble, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Candlemass, Pentagram, etc. etc. But we'd missed out on one -- Quartz, from Sabbath's hometown of Birmingham, England, in fact. Turns out that this New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) band definitely also deserves a place in that list -- because they're very, VERY Sabbathy and also an awesome band! First off, this, their self-titled debut LP from 1977 (ok, predating the NWOBHM explosion by a couple years actually, though their later records were in the thick of it) was produced by none other than Black Sabbath's riff king Tony Iommi!! And, also, one of the Quartz guys, Geoff Nichols, ended up playing keyboards for the Sabs later on...
Yet Quartz don't sound very much like any of those other aforementioned Sabbath-worshiping bands. Not at all. That's because, with Iommi at the helm, this takes after what Sabbath sounded like at the time, albums like Sabotage (1975), Technical Ecstasy ('76), and Never Say Die ('78). If you're familiar with those, you'll definitely hear their influence here! This later '70s Sabbath sound isn't as often emulated, being so much more proggy and polished than their rawer, earlier, doomier LPs. Which is great, 'cause it's not a done-to-death sort of Sabbath sound. As the Sabbath clones proliferate, even today, -these- guys still sound fresh. It also helps that they seemingly share the Sabbath attitude that they're just playing rock music, not something as strictly defined as 'heavy metal'. There's no metal formula being followed. So while this IS heavy and metallic '70s style, there's bombastic prog and pretty pop and acoustic folkiness here too, with Tony Iommi contributing an uncredited flute solo to "Sugar Rain". (Ozzy apparently also sang back-up on that track!) Furthermore, Quartz, formerly known as Bandy Legs, had their roots in '60s psych-pop (featuring members of obscure acts Idle Race and World Of Oz). Though sounding -most- like Sabbath, you'll also hear Yes and Queen and Rush and the Beatles and more...
But if it's Sabbath parallels you want, you got 'em: their vocalist exudes sincerity and emotion, echoing Ozzy's loss-of-control laments. And Tony's mid-seventies guitar (and synth) sound is reproduced perfectly...apparently he's playing on a couple tracks, in fact. The riffs on here could have been written by the man -- "Around and Around" sounds like it should have been on Sabotage! And leadoff track "Mainline Riders", one of the heaviest here, sounds remarkably like Sabbath's "Heaven And Hell" even though the latter wasn't recorded until three years later... hmm, who was influencing whom?
Ultimately, Quartz' debut is a great, varied, hard-rockin' album that uniquely captures all the energetic yet melancholic charm of the latter days of Ozzy's original tenure with the Sabs, unlike any other band ever did. A lost classic for sure. We wish someone had told us about Quartz before, which is why we're duty bound to tell you about 'em now that we have this new reissue!!
Era Vulgaris is Josh Homme and co's fifth album. At this point he's got quite the well oiled stoner rock cruise mobile. Willfully poppy amid his more testosteroned hard rock brethren, Homme ably brews up some big beef and grit from the guitars and drums while his unmistakable multilayered vocals satiate any sugar fix with those candy-coated choruses. He definitely doesn't shy away from the tasty hooks. It's a full course stick-to-yer-ribs meal. Always great late night driving music. Distinctly west coast-y, and almost sun baked as his old outfit Kyuss. Features a guest appearance by The Strokes' Julian Casablanca.
Ok, c'mon. Do we really need to tell you about Queens Of The Stone Age? Seems to us that pretty much everyone we knows loves 'em. Whether you're an MTV teenybopper, a stoner rock dude clinging to some sort of misplaced Kyuss loyalty, a metalhead who likes the occasional melodic rock record, or a total music nerd who finds QOTSA a perfect guilty pleasure. But what's there to be guilty about? This stuff totally rocks and absolutely rules! Warm fuzzy guitars wrapped around perfect pop hooks and Josh Homme's velvety croon. There seems to be a lot less all out rocking this time around, and a lot more almost-ballady crooning which is fine, those songs are still killer, but it's when Homme's semi-secret stoner desert rock past peaks through that things get good. Rollicking and riff heavy, head banging and fist pumping. Crashing drums and that umistakable fuzz guitar. How can you feel guilty about that?
The post-Kyuss band formed by guitarist (and now vocalist) Josh Homme follows up their great self-titled debut (a sleeper hit here at Aquarius, and elsewhere), with this new album for Interscope. Not nearly as all-over laid back and catchy as the debut, this disc is more eclectic (with a variety of guests and instrumentation -- everything from lap steel to piano to a horn section). Mark Lanegan shows up to sing on a couple of songs, and they've even pursuaded Rob Halford to do some backing vocals on one track (tho why you'd want him to do backing vocals rather than the lead puzzles me, especially when your own lead vocals are passable but certainly not up to the "Metal God"'s standards!). "R" veers from raucous drug-fueled grunge to the more mellow "desert rock" Homme & Co. coined in Kyuss, to some avant-garde pseudo-jazz shennanigans. Will this get played on the radio? Hard to say.
Now, WITHOUT the limited bonus dvd disc! Here's what we said about this last time for those that somehow overlooked it... This one scarcely needs a review. By now you've been hearing this record on the radio and MTV and in malls. Odds are you already own this if you like the Queens Of The Stone Age previous albums, or you bought it for the single. Or you loved Kyuss and think the Queens suck. But setting all that aside, and taking this record just on its musical merits, 'Songs For The Deaf' is a kick ass hard rock/pop rock record. Great sound, great songs! What's not to like? This is easily their best record since their super heavy debut. 'Songs For The Deaf' has it's heavy moments, and the warm fuzzy Kyuss guitars are still in effect, but it's way more of a pop record. And while they do stretch out occasionally, with headbanging stoned desert jams, things always return to the hook. Which is not a bad thing. Just the opposite. And the addition of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and solo) have added a lot in terms of sonic breadth and songwriting complexity. Way more dynamic and WAY MORE CATCHY. Listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. The last "hidden" track is a piano driven, string laden psychedelic pop epic. It -sounds- great, but just wish it was a better song (although our friend Drew is convinced it is a 'masterpiece'). But so what? This record is full of great songs!! Plus lots of weird guests: Dean Ween, Twiggy Ramirez, Casey Chaos, Blag Dahlia! The only downside, which has been an annoying QOTSA quirk from the beginning, is their relentless in-joking. This record is rife with said in-jokes, a bunch of stupid fake radio DJ's, occasional joke songs and the like. Easy to skip by but they tend to kill the flow of an otherwise solid record.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Intercontinental stoner rock summit between Queen of the Stone Age (the reincarnation of Kyuss, although they freshen up the Kyuss sound with seeming nods to Foo Fighters and Black Flag) and Beaver, sludge rock from Holland, where you'd think there'd be lots of competition in the stoner rock field, and yep, they're good.
We first heard Queens Of The Stone Age on a split with late great stoner rock legends Kyuss way back in 1997, and at the time, QOTSA, a side project of Kyuss axeman Josh Homme, didn't sound all that different than Kyuss, in fact in some ways it sounded even better, a little bit stranger, slightly more poppy, whatever it was we dug it, A LOT. Then came the first full length in 1998, and holy shit, an ass kicking, catchy as fuck, post stoner rock metallic pop wallop, every song a killer, heavy and hooky like few bands before or after. It's easy to forget how good that first QOTSA record really was, in the decade plus since, QOTSA have become a sort of mainstream/MTV/jock band, there have been multiple grammy nominations, there has also been the Eagles Of Death Metal, but if you can forget about all that, this reissue of that record will totally blow you away.
Reissued on Homme's own label, all of these songs sound as good as they did the first time around. The Kyuss vibe was still huge here, especially in Homme's blown out guitar tone, but Homme's vocals definitely suited these poppier songs, which while poppier, were still plenty heavy, just rife with groove and hooks killer chorus, and even more killer verses, the drums powerful and catchy in their own way (a bit like Dave Grohl's drumming in Nirvana, where you find your self humming drum fills!), and the songs, unbeatable. "Regular John" melds thick distorto riffage with some sweet vocalizing, and some cool mathy arrangements, and some crazy catchy melodies, while "Avon" is a dirgey doomy slice of chugging heaviness, but it too is impossibly poppy, a sound so distinctly QOTSA at this point, but when we first heard this stuff, we were so smitten, and we're realizing we sort of still are.
This is one of those records where we could go track by track, and talk about every one and how rad it is, and the thing is, a record that's both heavy and poppy, metallic and sorta weird, those records are rare, few and far between, and odds are like us, it's probably been a while since you've heard this, so might be time to revisit, and odds are you'll kick yourself for not listening to this all the time, cuz it RULES.
One complaint, the new version comes in a slipcover with a huge CENSORED over the original artwork, a black light style painting of a scantily clad woman, hardly censor worthy, makes us wondering if it was a plot to titillate, or simply a requirement to get into Walmart and other conservative spots, either way, kinda silly...
Reissue of this Swedish stoner/grunge band's debut. More Soundgarden than Kyuss, but should appeal to fans of both. Includes their cover of Trouble's "A Sinner's Fame".
We were pretty into the R.Y.N 7" we reviewed a while back on the mighty Drone Records label. But this is the first full length we've gotten our hands on (apparently there's another companion full length released earlier this year) and it's pretty amazing. Huge tectonic slabs of glacial doomic drone, equal parts Sunroof!, Sunn 0))), Wolf Eyes, deep grinding low end, shimmering black expanses of churning, washed out murk, blurred and smeared into apocalyptic dirgescapes. Deep dense and ominous, but strangely pretty as well. What we didn't know until quite recently, was that R.Y.N. features the man behind long time aQ faves Marzuraan, which makes sense when you think about it, as most of the R.Y.N record sounds like it could be the early stages of a Marzuraan album, or more accurately, a Marzuraan record with all the metal and pummel removed, no vocals, no buzzing downtuned guitars, just the blackened shadows beneath, and the guitars that DO surface, are blurred into long sheets of undulating washed out muted buzz, wreathed in sheets of feedback, often building to high end symphonies that threaten the very fabric of your inner ear, before slowly subsiding into something much more tranquil and dronelike. And these aren't simple tones either, these are rough edged crumbling sonic expanses, rife with metallic buzz, haunting overtones, layered and dense, a sound active and ALIVE, a burning buzz that often sounds like it's barely being restrained. Often slipping into something soft and smooth, drifting in the distance, lulling the listener before exploding into a sound much more fierce, white hot and glimmering violently like a collision between two sonic suns, with the tracks that follow, like the aftermath, long glowing streaks of sound, unfurling in an endless expanse of blackness, peppered with soft focus glimmers, and barely audible rumbles.
The sound of R.Y.N. manages to shift from krautrocky new age to post industrial black ambience and back again, often finding a sonic space right in between that we probably didn't think even existed.
By now, it should be obvious if this is your thing, but here's a few other names, that if found in your collection, probably speaks to the likelihood that you need this: Atavist, Hlidolf, Encomiast, Troum, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Fear Falls Burning, Expo '70, Half Makeshift, Sorc'Henn, Xela.
A heavy, hard rocking Dungen? From actually back in the day? That's kind of what this newly reissued (first time on cd) Swedish hard rock rarity sounds like. Recorded in 1975 by a teenage band with big league chops, equipment, and ambition, the sole album from Rag I Ryggen (Strength And Courage, in English) is what collectors/dealers like to term a "fuzz monster". And it is full of that fuzz we love. The Rag I Ryggen boys were basically trying to be Sweden's answer to Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. And while they've got all the guitar heroics, heavy riffs, and Hammond organ action required, they're a heck of a lot more Swedish sounding, in part 'cause they sing in Swedish (and sometimes English too, on such tracks as "Queen Of Darkness") and also because they bring in a lot of folkiness on tracks like "Jan Banan" that remind us of bands like Kebnekajse. It's very rockin' mix of melody, folkiness, Moog-ed symphonic prog bombast and '70s heaviness. What's not to like? And this reish comes with three live bonus tracks, detailed liner notes, etc. Nice.
It's about fucking time! This is one of the best and most overlooked hard rock/metal records of the past 15 years, a big fave of Andee and Allan here at AQ. Its obscurity might have something do with the fact that that they were, as frontman Greg Strzempka
But the bottom line is always the songs. And Raging Slab, at least on this record, has SONGS coming out their ass. Unforgettable hooks and sing-along choruses. So catchy and fun (and funny) without being stupidly ironic. Bizarre lyrics that are sung so forcefully and with such emotion that you find yourself singing along full force: "GET OFF MY JOLLIES!!!!" or "I can bust a gut on Heebie Jeebies and holy rollers poppin wheelies", or "Just try and shave my wooly bully, I'll use the fur as fuel for folly." In fact all the lyrics are almost nonsensical but oddly satisfying and completely compelling (especially when you're in full on air-guitar, or 'air lead vocalist' mode). This should have been the "Nevermind" of groovy boogie stoner hard rock, but the money and success and fame somehow didn't happen. But now with this reissue, folks have another chance to catch on to this slab of truly unique, Southern-fried metal-rock nirvana.
Rainbows Are Free? Did they really name their METAL band that? Really? Well, they are on the psychedelic/stonery side of things, so that sort of thing kinda makes sense, just like the local band called Glitter Wizard, but still. You gotta really kick ass to pull off having a name like that. And, they do! Bottom heavy, fuzzed out, swinging riffage explodes out of the gate on opener "Slow Train". They don't really let ever let up, with wild, even more fuzz-filled soloing and a vocal style that surprises by morphing from a stoner drawl into what sounds more like a frothing rabid Rob Halford from Judas Priest! Really, on the second track the singer busts out a gruff, staccato style that's more metal than thou, over the top like Halford singing "The Ripper" with a frog in his throat, not at all what we were expecting but pretty damn awesome. That's actually when we knew we really liked this band, that they were willing to roam outside the standard stoner rawk template, the singer especially, screaming and/or crooning as the mood strikes, while the band RIPS right along. As a result, there's moments here that remind us of everything in the stoner/psych/doom/grunge realm from Kyuss to Reverend Bizarre to Skin Yard (or Gruntruck) to Goatsnake to Danava ... From their name on down, it's hard to peg these guys, but we like 'em and their chunky grooves and freaky ways. They get particularly far-out and bad-trippy on "Sinking Ship", and the singer's yowl on "Are You Dead?" even conjures up the shade of Saint Vitus' Scott Reagers.
Recommended to anyone into all the killer stoner stuff we've been giving the thumbs up to lately from the MeteorCity and Small Stone labels, for instance the Solace we listed last week. And, everyone who dug Freedom Hawk oughta dig the heck outta this too!!
Yet another depressing and doomy export from our beloved Finland. Man, these people must be so miserable. How else could a single nation produce so much depressing music? This time around it's the Rapture, who musically, bear an uncanny resemblance to AQ favorites Katatonia. And for those of you unfamiliar with that sound, it's a bit like a metal Cure; dark and droning, melodic and hypnotic, but heavy! The Rapture take their obvious Katatonia influence, and rough it up, adding screaming, shrieking, growling black metal vocals, instead of the more melodic Katatonia croon. Really fucking great.
Gloomy, gothy melodic metal from Finland's Rapture (not to be confused with NYC's The Rapture!), who are kind of a Katatonia clone band. Nothing wrong with that, though, you can't have too much doomy yet catchy Nordic misery wethinks. This is quite good. Compared to recent Katatonia, Rapture perhaps remain MORE "metal" (though both bands are quite heavy): Rapture's vocalist still does the RAWRRRAAHH death-metal growling thing along with some more melodic, clean singing, and you can hear some Metallica and In Flames in there along with that hypnotic Katatonia downer-groove and Cure vibe. (If, after reading this, you're wondering who the heck Katatonia are, please find their reviews on our website and check 'em out...once you've become a fan, come back for the Rapture cds!)
Primitive proto-metal reissue alert here, folks! Reaction were a heavy, hairy power trio bashing out boogie-blooze-based hard rock. Technically, Reaction could be considered a krautrock group, we suppose, since they did hail from Germany and this rare record originally came out back in 1972. But it's nothing cosmic nor proggy that's for sure. No flutes, no synths, no motorik beats. Instead it's just loud and lumbering and riffy and mean (well with a bit of poppiness at times, those lumbering riffs being fairly catchy after all).
Yer basic, raw, fuzz filled rockin' good times, the nine tracks here taking the likes of Cream and Cactus to the next (lower) level, more wasted, more fuzz, more cowbell! (There's plenty of the latter on the awesomely titled "The Funeral March Of A Marionette".)
Some of the obscure and not-so-sophisticated heavy psych acts of era we'd compare 'em to include Moses, Blues Addicts, Road, Toad, and Speed Glue & Shinki, plus fellow "krautrockers" like Tiger B. Smith, Blackwater Park, and Hairy Chapter (their first album Eyes anyway). Like we said, in the vein of Cream and Cactus, moreso than Can or Kraftwerk! Nothin' wrong with that though, when you wanna rock.
Everything about this screams "Cult!!". Cult in the "epic true metal" style of Manilla Road, that is. But even doomier than those eccentric '80s metal masters, who are most definitely one of Realmbuilder's major influences. This band has that obscure, underground vibe for sure, as it should 'cause that's what it is, just two guys obsessed with a certain sort of metal and the imaginative realms of fantasy and history that that sort of metal evokes, those guys being one Czar (also of weird black metallers Charnel Valley), who sings and plays drums, and one J.H. Halberd, who takes care of rhythm guitar, bass, and keyboards, as well as harmony backing vocals, and on one track, trumpet! (Lead guitars are handled by a session axeman from the prog metal band Luna Mortis).
Now released by I Hate Records on compact disc after a limited edition vinyl issuance last year, Realmbuilder's debut album Summon The Stone Throwers really creates an unusual, ancient atmosphere, quite convincingly as if they're relating warriors' tales of long-lost ages. From the primitively painted album cover (featuring a mystic castle, wind-blown adventurer, and malevolently skulking wolf-creature all garishly rendered in sunset purples, yellows, and greens) which gives us a flashback to the cover to Manilla Road's Crystal Logic, it's obvious that Realmbuilder are for a select audience only, those with an innate feeling for the raw, doomy, almost psychedelic heavy metal on offer here. Melancholic, melodic, and above all majestic, the seven tracks here comprise chunky spiralling guitar riffs, expressive/depressive vocals, glorious guitar soloing, wordless oh-oh-oh choruses, effective chant-like repetition of the evocative lyrics (we love hearing the words "silver ziggurat" and "colossal glaciers" being sung over and over in the respective songs of those same names). The clean vocals are somewhat nasal and really not-so-metal, comparable maybe to Snake from Voivod and the guy from super obscure '80s Detroit doomsters Coven. And that really helps set this apart, and add to its strangeness and sense of sincerity.
There's much lumbering riffage and galloping rhythms and clashing of swords... with, also, weird quasi-poppy parts that sneak in amidst the grim bombast, which we think might actually cause this to appeal to fans of Steel Mammoth and other "NWOFHM" acts! Though, as we said, this comes across as serious and sincere. So most likely for fans of the aforementioned Manilla Road, and Coven if you've ever heard 'em... Other bands whose fans might dig this, for various reasons, include fellow I Hate recording artists The Wounded Kings, Doomsword, Dark Quarterer, Reverend Bizarre, The Gates Of Slumber, Slough Feg, Cirith Ungol, Manowar, Hyborian Steel, Ironsword, Ophthalamia, Cloven Hoof, Helvetes Port, even Dwarr and some moments of the more recent Darkthrones, just to throw a few names out there that may or may not be helpful without further explanation... Really, though, despite their obvious inspirations (they cite several bands, some of the above among them, before whom they "genuflect") Realmbuilder is ultimately its own unique thing.
Bottom line: the esoteric metallurgists here at AQ can't stop listening to this! As far as Allan is concerned, his favorite metal cd of the year, quite possibly. And although this is quite new, it still almost seems as if a relic from another time and place, like it should come with a papyrus scroll or better yet carved stone tablets, instead of a cd booklet (though the cd booklet it has, with thick, purple-printed paper, is quite nice). Join the cult and bow down before Realmbuilder!
NOW ALSO HERE ON CD, with bonus trax!
Awesome obscure late sixties/early seventies British blues rock outfit's only album, originally released in 1970, newly reissued! Some of it's melodic acoustic folk psych with mellow, rustic vocals, while other tracks are more like lumbering, proto-metal blues, with heavy guitar riffs and really raw, rough vocals, kinda like Captain Beefheart singing for early Black Sabbath. There's some harmonica blowin' too along with the grungy guitars. Other reference points: Edgar Broughton Band, High Tide, The Doors, Fraction, Josephus...
This compact disc edition includes five bonus tracks, getting more Tull-soundin' but with violin instead of flute!
Maybe you've already seen it. The best music video EVER. On YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQiHORkdE_0
That's this band, Red Fang, doing this album's lead off cut "Prehistoric Dog". We won't spoil the video by telling you too much about it before you watch, let's just say it involves a most excellent mocking of LARPers (technically speaking, the LARPers look more like members of The Society for Creative Anachronism, but same dif pretty much).
After seeing that, how can you not need the Red Fang album? Which, as we expected is grungy, loud, heavy, shit kickin' and beer swillin' (as per the video). There's a moodier cut or two ("Humans Remain Human Remains" ferinstance) but mostly this is a walloping dose of balls out rockin' from this hairy bunch of stoner metal reprobates from Portland Oregon (who among 'em include ex-members of such bands as Last Of The Juanitas, All Night, Shiny Beast, Trumans Water, Bad Wizard, Party Time, and Facedowninshit). As raw and riffy as it gets, there's still hints of melody, even in the vocals, that are sometimes sung, sometimes screamed and shouted. Should appeal to fans of High On Fire lookin' for a good time, or Harvey Milk's Pleaser... Also, imagine a cross between Karp and Priestess, or a more punk and disorderly Burning Brides.
This debut 10-song full-length incorporates the tracks from their previous self-released tour-only cd-r ep, all except for their cover of Dust's proto-metal classic "Suicide", darn it.
UK label Miskatonic, supporters of true underground doom metal, bring us this disc by the semi-legendary Revelation from Maryland (of doom). Featuring Revelation's 'new' line-up, this disc consists of eight demo cuts plus two live tracks circa their 1995 European tour supporting Saint Vitus and Solitude Aeturnus. It comes as a prelude to a brand new fourth album on which this long dormant band is now, at last, at work. To certain doom fanatics, these 'demos' are going to be more thrilling than many proper albums from other bands, such is the regard in which this band is held. If you've never heard Revelation before, expect doom metal (or, alternatively, depressive stoner rock) along the lines of The Obsessed and Place Of Skulls -- heavy, slow, Ozzified.
We always talk about how something is super limited and sold out and out of print so we won't go into too much detail, but then we invariably do, but not this time. We have less than 10 copies, originally limited to 500, sold out and out of print. Once these are gone it's off to eBay with you.
Two covers, one recorded in 2001, one recorded last year, Saint Vitus' "Dark World" and Judas Priest's "Deceiver", both given a Reverend Bizarre makeover. With vocalist Albert doing his best "Vocal Impersonation" according to the liner notes. His Rob Halford is wildly over the top and pretty amazing. And he already sounded a lot like St. Vitus's Scott Reagers to begin with, as that band such a huge influence on Rev. B.! As always, heavy and doomy, the songs obviously classics, too bad we got so few of these.
Along with the post-Reverend Bizarre project we just got in and made our Record Of The Week (Sami "Sir Albert Witchfinder" Hynninen's ultra-doomy The Puritan, you already read about it above, right?), we also were finally able to get some copies of this, a MUST HAVE for all fans of these now defunct Finnish true doom metal legends. In fact, it's so good we would not hesitate to recommend it to any curious persons who have yet to hear ANY Reverend Bizarre. It's not an official "best of", actually this posthumous collection consists of uber rarities from various vinyl split ep's and other obscure sources, but it does still have some of their best stuff on it. And, since Rev. B. had fashioned themselves into one of the best "traditional" doom metal bands around (in part by not being TOO traditional) that means this is one of the best double discs of doom we've heard since, well, the LAST Reverend Bizarre album, the 2cd swansong that was III: So Long Suckers.
There's 15 tracks here, leading off with "Demons Annoying Me" from a long vanished split 12" with Orodruin, which happens to be a NON-boring nearly 18 minute epic, a true masterwork of heedless heaviness, built from raging riffs, distorted noise, and cathartic screams, one of the tracks that transcends this band's obvious influences and definitely deserves pride of place as the first track on this altogether awesome double disc. Other standouts abound, from the anthemic "Blood On Satan's Claw" (boasting some King Diamond-y falsetto in the vocal dep't.), to the brief and bludgeoning "Odinn's Men", to the seemingly Current 93 influenced "Apocalyptic Riders", to the also pretty darn epic eleven and a half minute "From The Void II", complete with slo-mo drum solo...
Then there's the two killer cover songs included here, both from a long out of print 7" we once stocked: Judas Priest's "Deceiver" and Saint Vitus' "Dark World". As the liner notes put it, it's as if Saint Vitus wrote that song for RB to cover. And while Albert's vocals are quite impressive throughout this entire collection, it's really amazing how well his wildly over the top "impersonation" of Rob Halford comes off on "Deciever", and with Vitus such a huge influence on RB to begin with, it's no surprise that Albert channels Scott Reagers perfectly on "Dark World" (heck he channels Reagers perfectly all the time, check out the track "The Tree Of Suffering" for another very good example). Wow.
RB's music can get pretty trancey, doing a dirgey drone at a creepy crawl, with the likes of the gloomy "Bend" (an unlikely "cover" of a track by Finnish electro artist Mr. Velcro Fastener, by the way, from a split they did!) and a bunch of others bringing in hints of black metal grimnity. But also some tracks are fairly uptempo and succinct, like the '70s Sabbatheque rockin' of "Broken Vows", which any Witchcraft fan is gonna love. And if you get at all bothered the Devil in your music (why are you reading this then?), beware the backwards shit going down on "The Gate Of Nanna" at the end of disc 2, that's Satan worship if we've ever heard it. So cool.
The cd booklet deserves mention as well, they didn't neglect the liner notes that's for sure. There's many pages of text in tiny tiny type discussing the what/when/where/why of each track in great depth.
R.I.P. Reverend Bizarre... and doom on brothers, Doom On!!
Reverend Bizarre is so worshipful of their obvious influences (Sabbath, St. Vitus, Cathedral, Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Trouble, Sleep, Electric Wizard, etc.) that it might be easy to dismiss them as being just fans instead of the real thing... but we've got to say, there's something just so darn charming about how much these lads LOVE doom metal. It's infectious. And their songs are even ABOUT doom! Sloganeering for doom, that's their thing -- sing-along album opener "Doom Over The World" is a doom-lovers anthem basically. And they've chosen stage names guaranteed to amuse: Albert Witchfinder (vocals, bass), Peter Vicar (guitar), Earl of Void (drums). Yup, they've got some sort of extra-special, amateur fanboy appeal that makes you root for 'em. And they've worked so hard at living up to the standards of their heroes that they're not half bad, in fact, we're darn impressed. They come across like a hybrid of Saint Vitus and Cathedral, with dramatic, clean vocals definitely owing something to original Vitus singer Scott Reagers.
Their discs are always adorned with cryptic inscriptions like "Lohja Power" and "C.O.T.D" -- the latter standing for "Circle Of True Doom" something I think these guys invented, though I've seen it on other bands' cds. It also says "Apocalyptic Doom Metal" in big letters on the back cover of this one but when you first spin the disc, for the first few songs you'd think that "Party Time Doom Metal" or something like that would be a better motto since there's a definite headbanging catchiness to the first few tracks, the Rev. Bizarre boys rockin' out whilst dooming it up. As "into" doom and depression as they and their audience (you?) might be, the listener can't help but have their frown turned upside down when the band kicks into such rollicking, riffy, uptempo tunes as "The Devil Rides Out" and "Cromwell". It's heavy metal, and it's doom. But II: Crush The Insects ain't all fist-waving rockers. They do play slooooooow a lot of the time too. After the first three cuts, the album takes a turn into the realm of, well, apocalyptic doom metal, with track lengths in the double digits. Like the crawling epic "Slave Of Satan", which was apparently a number 2 HIT song in their native Finland!!! Hard to believe, as it's 13 and a half minutes long!! And that's the edited album cut, which is considerably shorter than the 21 minute single version!!! Torturously slow, anywhere else in the world it'd be a miracle if it made it into the Top 40 THOUSAND. The record continues in this vein, with some brief bursts of speed, through to the very last song, with the dumb/brilliant title of "Fucking Wizard".
The end is nigh! Heck here it is, at long last. The final tolling of the bell for Finnish apocalyptic doomsters Reverend Bizarre. Thus this album is titled So Long Suckers, and there's a sticker on the front that says: "Doom Metal Is Dead". What could be doomier than that? Funny how these guys, who started off as not much more than an enthusiastic fanboy tribute to their favorite doom metal acts, have now become almost one with the genre itself. Or at least their own, admittedly redundantly denoted, subgenre of "Apocalyptic Doom".
When we heard they were breaking up, that was a bummer, but we were eager to hear this promised swansong release. So, sad to see them go... but what a way TO go. A sprawling double cd, six slo-mo (like swimming in a moat filled with molasses) songs of super heavy repetitive riffage and lyrical lethargy, lasting over two hours total. Everything that we love about the bizarre Reverend sorta summed up right there. Spirited, eccentric and extreme, the sort of band that thinks nothing of writing 25+ minute long songs, like some sort of oppressive, epic, plodding prog, giving them all the more space to display their guitar blunt force trauma and deep voiced vocal drama... so massive and monotonous. Disc one starts off with the twenty nine minutes of "They Used Dark Forces / Teutonic Witch". Track two, "Sorrow", is a 25 minutes. Track three, "Funeral Summer", a mere 11:41... and that's the whole of disc one. There's a few shorter numbers on disc two (like the fuzz ripping instrumental "Kundalini Arisen"), but also another 25 minute bruiser (the majestic and martial "Anywhere Out Of This World"), which becomes psychedelically trance-inducing by the end, for us, almost like Om.
Of course, song length doesn't put the o's in yr dooooooooooom alone. Reverend Bizarre take their final shot here at the classic crush of heroes like Saint Vitus (also a big influence on their cleanly-crooning vocalist), Cathedral and of course Black Sabbath. The riffs they repeat forever and ever are forged from the heaviest of distorted tones, the overall atmosphere is one of weighty, weary, weirdness. This is one monolithic tombstone all right, an end to this band's 13-year career that itself seems rather endless while you're listening to it. Endless and eternal. Reverend Bizarre, R.I.P... and doom on!!
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Rev B do a song called "Rotestilaulu", Kuolema reply with "Kaljaa Nuorille".
Ratto Ja Lehtisalo are a weird band. Made up of half of aQ faves Circle, their sound is less krautrock, and more like some weird hybrid of eighties new wave faves, Oingo Boingo, The Fixx, Sparks, Talking Heads, but then Circle are pretty weird themselves, flitting from murky propulsive hypnorock, to bombastic metal to atmospheric drone to eighties style New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and back again. And the side projects, too many to name here, but needless to say, they are all pretty far out.
This here is the latest from Ratto Ja Lehtisalo, and find the band, doing what they do best, confounding and confusing, and even more confounding and confusing is that they are teamed up with the mighty late great doomlords Reverend Bizarre!! Sure they're both from Finland, and yeah, RB's Albert Witchfinder got recent aQ Record Of The Week recipients Quest For Blood signed to Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, but sonically, the couldn't be more different, and yet, weirdly enough, they sound kind of cool back to back.
Anyway, Ratto Ja Lehtisalo start things off with some demented court jester music, sounding very twisted and Renn Faire, before slipping into some moody almost Circle-ish drama, a weird almost-krautrock, but way lighter and jazzier, with chanted vocals that sometimes sound like Queen, sometimes like Circle, the first thing that came to mind was Cluster mixed with Shadowfax, which sounds bad, we know, but is more, just sort of, strange, it's like the music to some insane production of seventies mime troupe Mummenschanz, the band lock into a very Circle-like jam, but soft and fuzzy and jazzy, but just like the Circle mothership, easy enough to get lost in and carried away by.
The flipside comes from Finnish doomsters Reverend Bizarre, who like Tupac, just seem to keep releasing records post mortem, but heck we're not complaining ONE BIT.
A new track composed over an improvised drum track, and it's obvious cuz the drums steal the show. Huge roiling guitars, throbbing doomy bass, and those vocals, deep and resonant and soaring. This is, my friends TRUE DOOM! The track lurches and sways, grooves and swings, sometimes slipping into seriously dense tangles of angular riffing and freaked out drumming, near the end the band launch into a blissed out psychedelic space rock drift that devolves into a bizarre coda all bellowed vocals and wild drums, and yep, a DRUM SOLO!! Before slipping back into the riff and dooming their way to the very end. As always. awesome.
A weird and wonderful, and did we say WEIRD, split of far out Finnish freakiness. Super limited. Pressed on thick swirled opaque white vinyl, with killer cover art by Albert Witchfinder.
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So, sure, "experimental/improv/psych" bands based outta Brooklyn are probably a dime a dozen these days, so what makes the debut from this new Thrill Jockey signing worthy of glorious Record Of The Week status here at aQ? Well, for one thing, Thrill Jockey have had a pretty good track record in that area lately, with aQ fave bands like White Hills and Barn Owl, and fans of either ought to check out Rhyton. At least, we had to give it a listen, and when we did, WOW! Totally tripped out and hypnotic, stonery psych explorations embraced our ears - and we think gently tingled any mystic sixth or seventh senses we may possess. Their jamming has a fuzzed-out edge, and a definite exotic, Eastern vibe, buzzing with electric saz for one thing... as if they're not from Brooklyn, they're from Brooklynistan!
The mesmeric music of Rhyton is a mind-melting mind-meld involving three well-matched musicians, a supergroop of sorts, the trio consisting of D. Charles Speer from the No Neck Blues Band, Jimmy SeiTang of Psychic Ills, and Spencer Herbst from some bands we confess we've not heard of before. Speer is on the strings, playing electric saz, electric mandolin, and baritone guitar. SeiTang is on bass and tape delay. Herbst is on drums and percussion (and videocassettes, we read somewhere?). A good set up for playing something that's rock, but not.
Over the course of the five, mostly long, mainly instrumental tracks here, Rhyton easily convinced us to make this Record Of The Week, or maybe hypnotized us into doing so! We just couldn't say no to their repetitive, reverby bath of shuddering soundwaves, sub-bass pulsations, meandering raga-like "split stereo, dual amped" leads, and loads of oscillators, loops, n' effects.
Relatively mellow opening track "Stone Colored" eases us in, giving us a sense of, if not where Rhyton is going, at least how they're gonna get there. And, as the cliche says, the journey is the destination. That's before the 12+ minute "Pontian Grave" heavies things up even more, and the raw side of Rhyton's experimentation is revealed. And so it goes, Rhyton getting into outre modes of instrumental psychedelic possession, centerpiece "Teke" being the perhaps the most druggily dubbed-out of the album's varied transmissions...and then, on the fantastic final cut, "Shank Raids", we REALLY hear the Middle Eastern influence come to the fore. It's not just the electric saz they've been making use of, on this one the rhythms n' melodies sound straight out of the Turkish psych songbook, stately and spacey, but also gnarly, warped and distortion-damaged, almost what it would be like to Greg Ginn's Gone, or Black Flag circa The Process Of Weeding Out, attempting a Mogollar or 3 Hur-el cover, yeah! There's a whiff of Sun City Girls to this as well.
Eastern aspects aside (or not), Rhyton's unique vibrations are on roughly the same wavelength as those of such outfits as Carlton Melton, Davis Redford Triad, White Hills, Titan, Bardo Pond, etc., and thus this should appeal to quite a few of you. So we say, get it! And get it quick, as the compact disc edition, packaged in a slim handmade sleeve (abstract art glued on front, hand-stamped text on back), is ultra limited to only 200 hand-numbered copies!! We got a bunch, but that bunch is probably all we'll get. Meanwhile, the similarly-appointed vinyl version is just a bit less limited, 500 copies made, and it comes with a postcard insert and free download code.
We talk a lot about how weird Finland is, so before we go any further, let us apologize to the majority of Finland who to be fair are probably not weird at all. Now that we've got that out of the way, HOLY SHIT! Is there no end to the amazing and damaged and demented music coming out of Finland. We're beginning to think not.
The latest evidence comes in the form of the brand new full length from Ride For Revenge, who we first heard a while back on a split with fellow countrymen Torturium, their half of the split a downtuned black trudge, like Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT but with that impossible to describe Finnish something that transforms everything into some special sort of what-the-fuck. Creepy synths, plodding drums, grinding guitar and harsh vocals, not exactly black metal, not in the traditional sense at least, but most definitely metal.
On King Of Snakes however, the band have gotten even weirder, and distinctly less metal, but no less heavy. Supposedly there are guitars, but to our ears it just sounds like just drums and lots and lots of bass. Each song a plodding doomic lurch, the drums pounding out a simple rhythm, the riff repeating over and over, most songs with just a single part, very mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a caveman Circle or a guitarless Gore, these guys just bash out endlessly cycling looped low end and killer crushing doom drum pound. The vocals are a super affected gurgling growl, not in the death metal sense, instead, super dramatic, intoning unspeakable evils, a rumbling demonic baritone, peppered with the occasional super delay drenched goat metal grunt.
Some tracks also have cool creepy keyboards as well, that add all sort of mood and texture, and it's not cheesy metal synth either, it's all strange analog buzz, a sort of krautrocky blur draped over the endlessly pounding groove.
Ride For Revenge are another one of those black metal bands, who seem to be black metal more out of pedigree than sound, but even though this doesn't sound like metal, it is most definitely black. It sounds a bit like Godheadsilo jamming with Finnish alchemical dronelords Tiermes, with the occasional injection of Hawkwinded FX and SUNN-drenched rumble, mysterious and murky swaths of throbbing low end thrum wrapped around the drums like some evil warlock's cloak.
Imagine if Amphetamine Reptile was a black metal label... then these guys would be Halo Of Flies... Most definitely one of our new favorite 'black metal' records...
We were totally blown away by the last Rigor Sardonicous record, a massive crushing black hole slab of funereal doooooooom (WAY more than two o's!) with its slow motion sludge, impossibly guttural vocals, but more importantly (to us at least) was what we dubbed "the most evil cymbal in the world", a huge trashcan like crash, that punctuated almost every measure. As we reasoned, it HAD to be the most evil cymbal in the world, why else was it so frigging HIGH in the mix?! To praise the Dark One of course. And while the ridiculous aspect certainly appealed to us, the 'evil cymbal' only added an extra element to what undoubtedly would have been a completely amazing doom record anyway. But add the evil cymbal and we've got a metal record of the year contender for sure. But now we have a brand new record, or more accurately a brand new recording, as these tracks are re-recorded versions of the band's pre-Principia Sardonica demo. So now, if the weirdly mixed cymbal was a fluke or a recording mistake, here's a chance for the band to fix it, change the levels, record it correctly. But they didn't!! In fact just the opposite! Which most definitely proves the 'evil cymbal' theory!! The cymbals, yes there are more than one, are EVEN LOUDER, clanging and clanking even more dark praise to the most evil one. In fact every aspect of Apocalypsis Damnare pushes all the stuff we loved about the first record even further. The riffs are thicker and slower, hugely sludgey and downtuned. There's more bizarre stuttering double kick drums, and the vocals are SO low, they are dangerously close to dipping below the boundaries of human hearing. A rumbling subsonic gurgle that sort of just drips like tar all over these tracks. And that would already be enough to kick our asses for sure. Maybe the heaviest slowest 'funereal doom' record since Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet or Thergothon's Stream From The Heavens. But then there's those 'evil' cymbals. Holy fuck?!?! Like giant dented trashcan lids, a massive clattery crash demarcating the ponderous plodding rhythms. Imagine UK ultradoom outfit Esoteric, jamming in the garage, spewing that thick viscous doom we love so, while neighborhood kids stood outside throwing bones and sticks at the metal garage door. So weird. And so completely genius.
There's been tons of good doom lately. Especially of the funeral death dirge type. You know, the reviews we usually start with the word dooooooooooooooooom. The more o's the slower and creepier it is. So we'd have to give this one about 10 o's, cuz man is this dark and dismal and glacier slow. This is straight up Skepticism / Thergothon worship. And we love it! Huge tarpit guitars, broadcast from the bottom of a fiery pit, so the sound is a throbbing muted hum, struggling to be heard through the damp stone walls of whatever keep you're holed up in. So overdriven that even at low volume it cause the speakers on our computer to practically melt. Simple pounding drums keep the doom from spilling into space and becoming shapeless rumpling drones. But Rigor Sardonicous have two things that set them apart from the doooooooooom (yes, ten o's) pack. First, the vocals. So gutteral and subhuman they sound like the growl of an angry mother bear defending her cubs. Or sort of like the recent Caninus record that featured pitbull dogs growling out the vocals. So impossibly low and rumbling and demonic. The second is "the most evil cymbal in the world." It must be the most evil cymbal. Why else would it be so much louder in the mix than anything else? Right. It must be because as the most evil cymbal, the best way to praise the Dark Lord, is to offer up a crash every few seconds. But wait, track three contains what can only be "the most evil gong in the world!" And again proper worship to the Dark Lord requires whacking a big ol' gong every few seconds. Definitely bizarre (too bizarre for some -- AQ pal and Stalin Claus mastermind Steven Schultz could not handle the evil cymbal!) but it all adds a certain weirdness that we can't seem to get enough of. So just imagine Benighted Leams mixed with Skepticism. And then of course include the "most evil cymbal in the world". Oh, and the "most evil gong". And on further listening there seems to be a "quite evil hi-hat" as well. Fucking awesome!
Ah, nothing like a glacially slooooooooow blast of ultra mega doooooooooooooom to calm the nerves, at least that's the way it seems to work around the mail order department for the boys (and girls!) who work back in "the Tombs" of AQ. Rigor Sardonicous - one of our all-time favorite "apocalyptic doom" bands - sent a package recently containing their latest CD, "Risus Ex Mortuus" along with some stickers and a hat...we all fought over the hat a bit, but Andee doesn't like to mess up his "drummer hair" and Jason already sports a bitchin' Rigor Sardonicous glow-in-the-dark print T-shirt, so Allan scored the new lid. Besides, we see him wearing that hunter's orange/camo cap a bit too often lately and - where were we - oh yeah - Risus Ex Mortuus!!!
Once again, Rigor Sardonicous is back, and on this CD we get a bunch of re-recorded versions of early tracks from long out-of-print releases, an unreleased track, and even a Kiss cover! You haven't heard "God Of Thunder" until you've heard it Rigor-ized, a thick syrupy sludge-y Sunn-y crawl, with the vocals belched out in impossible guttural grunts. The CD even somehow sports some beautiful "Rigor Sardonicous" Old English script printed on the UNDERSIDE of the CD - SICK !!!
Also back again is the signature drum machine (who has occupied the throne since 1991) and the return of 'the most evil cymbal in the world', tha clanged-out trash can lid of a cymbal that we have been totally obsessed with and completely transfixed by since we first heard RS. It's like nothing you've ever heard in the realms of dark murky doomy sludge-pyre music (except on the other RS records obviously). It is back and better (and louder) than ever - way out in front where it constantly rears its ugly head again and again, crashing forth with a clanging clattery crash, before quickly fading back into the sludge. Sounds like Sunn 0))) playing Moss covers at the bottom of a giant sewer pipe while someone drops metal garbage cans from above... a strange kind of beautiful.
Mr. drum machine also seems to be taking it up a notch rhythmically with more blast beats, faster and louder, while somehow not actually making the music sound any faster, just weirder and heavier. And there's no mistaking the downtuned, strings-so-slack-they-touch-the-floor, buzzed-out slow sludge rumbling roar coming from the guitar. Like the sound of low-flying aircraft "strumming" overhead power lines... And again those vocals, spread all over the proceedings like some viscous black paste, a subsonic curdle / gurgle that is hardly human. If you close your eyes, you can't help but picture some goo spewing giant lizard ready to consume you whole, or some creepy Hellraiser / Pinhead style hellbeast declaring your doooom. WE LOVE IT.
The AQ dark lords, sit upon their throne of skulls, surrounded by fire and burning flesh, demons swooping through the murky skies, the earth trembling, the ground littered with the dead, gazing cooly at the scorched landscape that stretches forever in all directions, before looking to the sky and letting out a blood curdling cry of "MORE EVIL CYMBAL !!!"
(The band claim that these are indeed actual cd's, although, we're pretty sure they're cd-r's, but who the hell cares, you can't go wrong for $10.98, and you can't print bitchin' olde English band logos on the playing side of a real cd... or can you?)
We'll keep this one simple: if you're a fan of the 'stoner rock' genre, and especially if you're into those lords of space Monster Magnet, you must buy this disc!! Atomic Church is second album by Sweden's Roachpowder (the name comes from Burrough's Naked Lunch
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Swedish 'Southern' groovy stoner metal. Who would've thought that something this southern fried and stoned sounding could come out of Scandinavia? Huge crushing riffs, ultra catchy hooks, and an amazing Phil Anselmo (Pantera/Down) sound-alike vocalist (that is, like Phil when he's actually singing, not when he's sounding stupid). Incredible.
The proto-metal lovin' legions who read the AQ list should be quite pleased with this reissue - take a trip down this particular Road and it's heavy riffing all the way, early '70s style! A power trio put together by former Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding in 1972, Road only made this one record for a rock-oriented Motown sub-label (the eco-friendly Natural Resources) before they broke up, and it quickly became lost to the mists of time, though we'd have thought Hendrix fans, if they'd heard it, would have been chuffed... anyone who likes stoned hard psych, with loads of wah wah wailing will dig this, it's total hippie heaviness (well, "I'm Going Down The Country" isn't so heavy, it's an acoustic jam, natch). There's some sixties sike-pop to it as well. But tracks like "Mushroom Man" and "Spaceship Earth" are spaced out and heavy all right, these three long hairs dishing out quite the din, with the 9+ minute album closer, title track "Road" gettin' almost DOOMY riff-wise.
Certainly deserving of recognition in the proto-metal realm, Road goes with Toad, Cactus, Moses, Tiger B. Smith, etc., and is probably the best thing that Redding did post-Hendrix, though we haven't heard his whole discography, to be sure. But it beats Fat Mattress, in volume and heft for sure, despite that earlier outfit's name (the drummer here was also in Fat Mattress, by the way, while the guitarist hailed from Rare Earth).
This is one of several new reissues from the new Relics label (Churchills, Aguaturbia are some other, more internationally-oriented titles that just came out, we'll be listing soon too). Nice to have, though the booklet's a bit skimpy, the cover reproduction looks kinda washed out and blurry. It does include something in the way of liner notes, though, from which we learn that Redding fell down some stairs at Frank Zappa's place prior to the formation of Road. Hmm, that almost sounds like the description of a band, but not this one! Thankfully he recovered from the accident and added Road to the list of awesome proto-metal obscurities.
All you need to know is that the record is called Stormbringer, it's one single thirty minute track, and the instrumentation listed is: drone, sub-sonics, drone & invocation, and temporal distortion. Okay, maybe some of you need to know a little bit more, how about... DOOM. Or DRONE. Or SLUDGE. Or maybe... SUNNO))), Khanate, Whitehorse, Marzuraan, Monarch, Moss, Boris, Corrupted... uh huh, you see where we're headed. Portland's Roanoke are the latest outfit to dive headlong into that same black doom tarpit, And their glorious din, while having much in common with their slow motion brethren, definitely has a hellish charm all it's own. The guitars are huge, of course, riffs are so slow and low they sound less like riffs and more like molten flows of distorted rumble, the drums are a simple pummeling thud, the vocals are like death metal growls at 16rpm, an impossibly low gurgle, but Roanoke have a crazy dynamic thing going on too, wherein their endlessly droning downtuned sludge is occasionally punctuated by strange stop start stretches where the guitars tighten up and cling to the drums and lock into a sort of stuttering chug. Pretty cool. And definitely way more dynamic than most of the droning sludge doom outfits around. But never fear, this is first and foremost, slooooooooooow, drooooooooooooning dooooooooom, ultra mega sludgy and haevy as fuck. Listening to it right now and even at super low volume it makes the speakers on this computer sound like they are crumbling to bits!
LIMITED TO 100 cd-r copies.
Latest from these Texas based heavies, and their first record to make it on the aQ list. Which seems weird considering how fucking kick ass and so very aQ this stuff sounds. Plus as much as we try not to judge a book by its cover, how can we not when said cover is a sprawling expanse of forest, with a rainbow soaring overhead, and in the midst of this jungle like foliage, a row of full stacks and a drumkit, right in front of what appears to be a river. Hell had we not already heard this, we would have been sold big time. And then, there's the fact that the first two minutes of record opener "Candle Black" essentially sounds like a Slayer 45 spinning at 33rpm, one of THOSE riffs, and then when the band does kick in, and cranks it up, it sounds like a doom-ed out stonery sludge combo channeling Slayer, into something much less speed metal, and way more lurching, lumbering doom sludge majesty. The band locking into mesmerizing and supremely headbangable grooves, the vocals a gruff growly bellow, the sound slipping from low slung riffery, to soaring epic almost-post-rock, to churning math flecked doom, to death march plod and back again.
Four songs, nearly 40 minutes, the longest jam 14+, the shortest nearly 7, this is dense, chugging, crusty, metallic, grim, doom-ed, sludge-y, slow burn, blackened, tripped out, mathy, stonery, Sabbathy heaviness that will no doubt hit the spot for anyone into similarly minded outfits like Bongripper, The Sword, Sourvein, Eyehategod, etc...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super heavy, deluxe gatefold sleeve. Includes digital download too!
OK, here's an Aquarius-approved 'high concept' album, all right: Estonian medieval music group Rondellus performing covers of Ozzy-era BLACK SABBATH songs translated into Latin!!! Now *this* sounds like a Black Mass! Backed by lute, harmonium, psaltery,
One of the best, and most original, 'tribute' records ever. Now they should go on tour with Apocalyptica (the Finnish cello quartet that does Metallica covers)!
Yet another band to add to the current crop of boys club crashing, ass kicking female fronted, hard rock / heavy metal bands (alongside The Devils Blood, Jex Thoth, Loon, Cauchemar, Christian Mistress, Wooden Stake, Blood Ceremony), this one hailing from Atlanta, not so much a metal band as a hard rock power trio, with a lead vocalist with a serious set of pipes on her, no screeching, or buried in the mix warbling, Miny Parsonz dominates, her vocals sexy and sultry and witchy and powerful and dramatic, super distinctive, a little rough and raspy, but perfectly suited to the groups, swaggery, groovy, hard rock, almost Southern rock sounding at times, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, probably more than Sabbath honestly, the songs slow building and smoldering, the guitar smokey and spidery, the drums, subtle and laid back, the band creating lush dark mysterious twang flecked drifts, Parsonz' vocals slithering over the top, deep and throaty, the riffs getting more and more distorted, the drums crashing in, and suddenly it, the heaviest seventies hard rock jam you never heard, the hooks perfect, the vocals, so BAD ASS. There's a serious slowcore thing going on here too, like Loon, reminding us of aQ faces True Widow, that slithery moody minimal crawl, plus there's a definite eighties metal vibe happening too, mostly in the vocal melodies, that had us thinking of Lita Ford and Doro Pesch, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact, it adds a whole other dimension that other current female vocalists lack, and the fact that these guys (and gal) are obviously more about writing songs, that just SOUNDING heavy, means the more you listen to these jams, the more they stick. When we first heard this, we thought it was pretty cool, but now we can't stop listening, and damn if "Sleeping Witch" isn't the hard rock jam of the year. A new favorite for sure. And if you dig any of the above mentioned bands, this might be one of the best of the bunch. We've got cds, and colored vinyl, take your pick!
Demo tapes, now on cd. Occult '80s doom metal from Italy, super underground. Includes a track later covered on the first Paul Chain Violet Theatre album!!!
This ultra-heavy, occultic doom/death outfit from Sweden have fashioned themselves into a cult of their own, steadily releasing limited album after limited album to a ensorcelled fanbase of Runemagick worshippers. With Dawn Of The End, the trio of Nicklas, Emma and Daniel have returned to their studio (cavern? lair? tower?) to perform and record another eight rites and rituals of sludge-riffed, dirge-tempoed Runemagick... hear and heed the call of their necromantical spells! Combining both grim atmosphere and raging brutality, portions of Dawn Of The End even sound to us like a death-metal version of Om.
Includes the track "Chthonic Temple Smoke" from their recent split with fellow Swedish doomsters Ocean Chief (which we never listed, as we unable to get enough... though we might still have a spare copy or two in stock if you ask).
Non-shrinkwrapped, digipack release, limited to 1000 copies.
Swedish doom/death vets Runemagick follow up last year's AQ-hailed album On Funeral Wings with Envenom, another excellent example of the occult dirge metal that they do so well, in a ritualistic style all their own. I mean, they're not just a doomy death metal band anymore, this is something else, eldritch and eerie. Definitely heavier than thou, and almost progressive its arcanity (and track-length: there's six cuts here, the shortest over eight minutes, the longest closer to fifteen). Their death metal heritage is most evident in the grunts of the vocalist, though lines like "vultures of doom in magick circles, the dark alchemic" aren't standard DM fare... But blasting brutality this music ain't, Envenom moving at a torpid, trudging pace, a necromantic ceremonial procession of DOOM.
If previous exposures haven't already summoned sufficient demons for your nefarious purposes, here's another disc of epic occultic dirge doom death from these Swedish masters of the arcane arts, sure to conjure some Hellish servitors. Heavy and haunting, the atmospheric sludge of tracks like "Invocation Of The Doom Runes" and "Black Magick Sorceress" should send all posers hiding under their beds. Limited to 999 numbered copies in digipack (which includes two bonus tracks).
This Swedish band has been rumbling along for untold eons now (well, it's actually been probably just six years or so, but their music seems more ancient than that). Their doomy tarpit dirge and sludgy trudge conjure prehistoric visions, and their lyrical bent towards the occult also sets them in a cosmic, not human, time frame. But their true ancestors aren't dinosaurs and demons, they are bands such as Hellhammer/Celtic Frost from the '80s and the death metallers of the '90s. Sounding as if it was recorded by torchlight, Runemagick's latest is a 73 minute death knell tolling of Hell's bells, with unrelenting riffage, drums beating like black leather wings, and some sort of eternal, underlying bass drone that's always just under the surface. These unlucky thirteen tracks often seep and segue into one another, making invocations unbroken and epic. It's super heavy stuff with death metal vox, weird atmospheres and arcane inspirations, tough to catagorize exactly (experimental doom death? how about "Monolithic Death", the title of the first track here?) but something we think the doomiest subset of AQ customers should like. Imagine some sort of cross between Corrupted and Candlemass, ordinary death metal slowed down and ritualized...
We'd had a couple cd-r releases from Australian math doom trio Fire Witch, so we were super psyched to discover they had an actual cd that came out on a label in Japan, when we finally got the cd, we discovered it was a split with a band we had never heard called Ryokuchi. All it took was one listen to convince us that we loved 'em and needed to hear more!!! So while this is not a full length proper, it is a brand new record from this Japanese bass and drums duo, one thirty minute track, dense with all manner of low end riffing, blown out distortion and convoluted arrangements, mathy breakdowns, melodic drift and dark ambient shimmer. Ryokuchi call what they do�"Experimental doom tribal hard core" and that's pretty much what it sounds like.
The track begins as an atmospheric post rock jam, with blooping reverbed bass, and mathy percussion, sounding not unlike a more drum heavy Three Mile Pilot,� but a few minutes in, the distortion pedals kick in and the band lurches into a crazed doomic plod, heavy and chugging, loping and swaying, gradually slowing down to an almost full stop, before bursting back into action, with a bit of complex mathy Ruins-y prog. For the next 10+ minutes these guys wildly careen from dense proggy rhythmic tangles, to huge slabs of slow shifting doom, to blissy stretches of moody slowcore, occasionally peppered with super distorted vocals buried in the mix, everything recorded super hot and in the red, before finally, with about ten minutes to go, the band pulls back, revealing an ominous dronescape behind the curtain, cymbals sizzle and shimmer, low end rumbles sway back and forth, muted melodies drift intermittently amidst the strange bass heavy landscape, when suddenly and dramatically, the band crash back in, and we're off, a pummeling slow motion downtuned doom drenched sludge, plowing along endlessly, interrupted by brief spurts of splattery spastic prog, before terminating in a huge squall of wild drumming and explosive bass feedback.�
Phew. So intense and so amazing. Think the Ruins covering Corrupted, or a doom metal Three Mile Pilot. Or just drums and bass and distortion and doom raining from the sky like some lesser known plague...
Packaged in a cool cd-sized DVD-style plastic case, with a full color, two sided cover, and a little mini full color booklet inside that folds out into a mini-poster and hides a sticker inside.
Aussie noise rockers the Grey Daturas had been telling us forever about some killer band called Fire Witch, who they played with all the time. It took forever, but we finally managed to get a bunch of copies of their Critter / Kritta 3" cd-r, which of course sold like crazy and was gone before we knew it. We stayed in touch with the band, but had been unable to get anything else until now. The strange thing is we had to go all the way to Japan to get this, a split with Japanese duo Ryokuchi...
It was well worth the wait though. Fire Witch are another band who traffic in the slooooooooow and heavy, but they definitely give it their own twist. Not sludgy like SUNNO))) or their legions of followers, and not really noisy like many of their countrymen. Instead they're some sort of strange downtuned slowcore mathrock. Massive guitars churn and throb, the drums a crushing pound, over the top, drawn out wailing leads, all the makings of a proper rock band, but instead they fuck it all up, gloriously, lurching forward only to pause briefly, allowing the silence and bits of room sound to seep in, before launching back into downtuned action. And they go on like that for ages, never attaining any momentum, instead engaging is some crowd baiting bit of stop start torture, and we love it. A slow motion wall of psych guitars and slow shuffling drums.
Here and there, the band reels it in, allowing the drummer to just wander, while the guitars squiggle and oscillate, a dizzying warbly soundscape of tangled melodies and sea sick shimmer. They finish off with the brilliantly titled "I Spilled A Lot Of Blood To Get This Meal", a lengthy chunk of abstract soundscaping, reverberating metal, soft swells of feedback, lazy basslines, drifting harmonics, shuffling rhythms, eventually bursting into a dense doomy plod, but laced with all sorts of killer melodies, making it sound like a doomed version of June Of 44 or Engine Kid.
Fire Witch are teamed up here with Ryokuchi, a Japanese duo (what is it with Japan and duos?), just bass and percussion, who offer up an ultra dense, and relentless onslaught of mathy grinding doom-drenched metallized noise rock. Beginning with strange percussion and fuzzy minimal drones, the band suddenly launches into a massive wall of sludgy pummel, like a more hyper kinetic Eyehategod, or a doom metal Ruins. Relentless and hypnotic, the drums pounding away, the bass a swirling wash of blackened buzz, amidst the chaos duel vocalists howl and shriek. Fuck! And that's just the first track, their second number is way more spread out and sprawling, offering up some stretches of relative tranquility with affected bass and tribal percussion, sounding a bit like a more metal Three Mile Pilot, but the majority of the nearly seventeen minutes is spent furious and chaotic, grinding and crushing, a Tasmanian Devil of sound, going from wild thrashing to slow motion plod and back again in a matter of second. Dense and complex and convoluted and so fucking great!
