The return of ex-Pentagram axemaster Victor Griffin's born again stoner doom outfit Place Of Skulls, and damn if this ain't the best one yet! In the past we've always been a little bit wishy washy about Place Of Skulls. Sure, they sounded great, whether Griffin handled the vocals himself, or even better when he handed the mic over to Wino (Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan), but the songs just weren't that memorable. If we needed our Christian stoner doom fix, we could always turn to the almighty Trouble, but there was still something about Griffin and his band that kept us coming back, hoping that maybe suddenly, one day it would make sense and we'd be knocked out cold. Well, it never really happened. That is, until now. The sound is still perfect, if anything, fuzzier and more stone-y, heavy and super rocking, but the songs this time around are killer. The second track "Sense Of Divinity" might be one of the best stoner rock tracks ever. Sounding like some lost Acid Bath recording, dark and droning, a huge Trouble-some riff, with awesome psychedelic leads, and Griffin's voice, wow! We never would have guessed this was the same vocalist, a killer croon that sounds stronger than ever, still raspy and raw, but with way more emotion. There are plenty of slow songs too, all jangly strum and warm laid back groove, that sound quite a bit like Alice In Chains, which we don't mind one bit! In fact this whole record sounds like a gloriously perfect mash up of Trouble, Acid Bath and Alice In Chains, with some of the sludgier parts reminding us of other NOLA heavyweights like Down, Superjoint Ritual, Crowbar, etc.
Fans of all things Pentagram, Wino, stoner rock, Sabbath worship, NOLA sludge-groove as well as all you Christian doomsters who have worn your Trouble records to bits should be all over this.
Highly Recommended!
The much-loved Wino, grizzled underground doom-metal guitarist and vocalist extraordinare, who first gained fame with the legendary bands The Obsessed and Saint Vitus and more recently fronted the popular Spirit Caravan (R.I.P.), is back, riding high in the saddle again in not one but two new bands.
OK, Place of Skulls isn't actually new (more on them in a sec) but The Hidden Hand is. Basically they're the continuation of Spirit Caravan by other means it seems. Wino recruited a new rhythm section -- one without overt substance abuse problems -- that really allows him to fire up his trademark heavy stoner rock into punkier, more aggro realms than before. They really kick ass with some complex instrumental stuff goin' on. Definitely further out on a limb musically than the Caravan. Lyrically, Wino indulges in a lot of ridiculous conspiracy-theory -- he's really gone off the deep end with post 9/11 paranoia. But his heart's in the right place, politically revolted with the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft coup. It's redneck radical rock for X-files fans. Heavy riffs, heavy concepts, there's even a reading list.
Meanwhile, Wino also joined up with Place of Skulls, the band of ex-Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin (whoo-hoo! supergroup!). Their first album Nailed came out last year on Southern Lord and we gave it a bit of mixed review, criticizing the vocals particularily. But they had potential, and now with Wino in the band they're much much better. It's a funny thing, actually, 'cause they already sounded a lot like Spirit Caravan or The Obsessed, but I guess they needed the talents of the man himself to really shine. His vocals help a lot. Victor still sings, too, but he's somehow better now thanks to Wino's example I guess! Dunno if they're still a Christian band, I'm not sure how Jesus fits into Wino's conspiracy theories... but he's certainly a 'spiritual' dude, so it works. Anyway, both Place Of Skulls and The Hidden Hand worthy successors to Wino's previous projects, with Place Of Skulls more straight-up doom metal for doom heads and The Hidden Hand harking back in ways to The Obsessed's DC punk roots, Bad Brains jazz fusion lurking in the grooves, though neither band would exist if not for Black Sabbath of course. And the Place Of Skulls album cover wouldn't exist if it weren't for Steppenwolf's "7"...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
***Last copy - on sale!****
We've been going through a bit of a grunge revival around here. Andee's been listening to a lot of Tad (anyone who has one of those God's Balls / Salt Lick 2 on 1 cds that they would be willing to part with will be handsomely rewarded). We've dug up our old Skin Yard records, been spreading the word about how great Gruntruck were. It's been pretty fun. One of the bands we've been listening to again is Paw. Not sure if you remember. They were sort of like Pearl Jam but with heavier guitars and a much more distinct twang. Sort of Southern grunge. The band wore jeans and big shitkicker boots and cowboy hats. And their singer sounded like Danzig. Hell, their big hit was even a song about the singer's dog!! What the hell does all that have to do with the new record from Planes Mistaken For Stars? Well, all we could think when we were listening to Mercy was that they sounded like a heavy metal Paw. Which is awesome. A killer mix of grungy Southern rock and chaotic metalcore freakout. What could be better? Plus PMFS all have big ol' beards and glasses and torn up t-shirts and jeans and boots and -probably- wear cowboy hats too!
But fuck it, even if you have no idea who Paw was, or don't care about all the amazing grunge you might have missed out on, this is one killer slab of super heavy, super groovy, twangy hooky metal. Weirdly minor key melodies, wrapped in countrified riffing, but all supercharged and blown out, vocals that that go from throat shredding howl to country croon, even some lap steel buried in there (unless we just -wanted- to hear lap steel), groovy rhythms, killer drumming, and super catchy hooks all over the place. Like Raging Slab, Paw, Antler and Down all mixed up with bits of Skynrd, the Outlaws, Blackfoot, doused in metalcore, filled with burnt meat and whiskey, lit on fire and set careening into the pit at a Converge show. Fucking awesome!
Well, this is a bit of a weird one. Planet Aids is actually the side project of a band we've yet to review beacuse their records have been so difficult to get. But whatever, here's the story, there's a Belgian ultra doom band called Bunkur, whose records are supposedly on the way to us right now and should be reviewed on the next list. They are of the slow motion funereal doom variety, like Skepticism or Thergothon or Khanate. In fact they sound quite a bit like Khanate but with weirder dubbier rhythms. Well, in the process of trying to get Bunkur records for the store, Bunkur mainman Manuel suggested we check out his other band Planet Aids, who he said were way more fucked up and noisy, and damn if he wasn't right. The problematically monickered Planet Aids offer up one 30 minute track of sick glacial death doom, ultra de-tuned guitars, gargling hellish howls, and rumbling bowel churning bass. Sounds good huh? Well, it gets even better, as every once in a while, the crusty murk gets interrupted by bursts of bizarre industrial rhythms, that sound like a malfunctioning Godflesh. Weird as fuck but so so cool. On the same label that released the two equally amazing Urfaust records.
Warning: Emotional devastation alert! Planning For Burial is a one man project from New Jersey whose been toiling tirelessly (and gloomily) for a good few years now, and although this is only his second proper full length, Thom Wasluck has at least 12 releases to his name and with this latest monolith of gorgeously devastating post rock finally seems primed to reach the wider audience he so rightfully deserves. Coming courtesy of the ever-reliable Flenser Records, a local label fast gaining a Profound Lore-like reputation for its meticulous selection of dark fringe music free of genre constraints, Desideratum is an enthralling and mesmerizing blend of post rock, doom, shoegaze and ambient. It's at times pummeling but also beautifully melodic, undeniably sad but also lush and warm - a warmth that's offset by clinical programmed drums, all regimented and martial - which lend a really cool contrast. Contemplative piano rises over the plod of monotonous percussion and the heartbreak static wash of layers upon layers of guitar. The dusty fading light of drifting cinematic synths melts into freeform vocalizing and woozy guitar picking. Sparse riffing builds and builds to the point of breathless exhaustion. Then that dirge of sludgy downpicked guitar emerges again, draped over distant mournful singing and minimal synthetic drums. It's that perfectly irresistible crossroad between abrasive noise and gut wrenching bittersweet melody. At times bringing to mind Jesu and at other times Soundtracks For The Blind-era Swans, or even our recently reviewed (and raved about) Nothing and Have A Nice Life records. For fans of those bands and anything heavy & heartstring tugging this is a total must have, and a no brainer for an Album Of The Year contender.
For a lot of folks, the Plasmatics were a band that was more seen than actually heard. With Wendy O. Williams and her mohawk and duct tape covered nipples, nearly seven foot tall guitarist Richie Stotts, often clad in a mask and a French maid's outfit, the whole band was a motley crew of subversive imagery, punk, metal, bondage, sex and violence. When this record came out in 1983, a lot of us were just getting into metal, and the Plasmatics just seemed too PUNK. Sure, the young boys among us couldn't get enough of the near nude Williams destroying guitars with a chainsaw, or amps with a sledgehammer or even cars and buildings. But we just figured we wouldn't dig the music. When we finally did hear the band, this record specifically, we were blown away and kicking ourselves BIG TIME. This was indeed METAL. Sure it was punky in a lot of ways, but more than anything the Plasmatics were whipping up some serious heavy metal.
Described as "One part Grand Guignol, one part minimalist / kamikaze conceptual art and one part Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the Plasmatics also managed to be one part AC/DC, one part Motorhead, and one part New Wave Of American Heavy Metal (NWOAHM?). It was easy to forget that the Plasmatics were actually a band. A good one. Live shows were orgies of destruction, blowing up cars, smashing televisions, destroying instruments, in magazines and interviews, that's all anyone wanted to talk about. That and the nipples, but fuck if this isn't an absolutely killer metal record. Huge riffs, classic eighties metal hooks, and Williams' throaty growl/howl. Catchy and complex, head banging and fists in the air, like a female fronted AC/DC-Motorhead hybrid, with strange little bits of glistening pop here and there, where Williams would really sing, delicate and lovely, before launching back into a vitriolic face smashing metallic pummel. Awesome!
Totally remastered, with extensive liner notes, tons of photos, and FOUR bonus tracks: two demos, a work-in-progress recording and a hilarious radio ad! This is the first release we've reviewed from a new line of eighties hard rock and metal reissues on the Rock Candy label. Other releases include records by Armored Saint, Icon, Ted Nugent, Billy Squier, Coney Hatch, Ram Jam, Helix, Riot and more!!!
KHANATE ALERT!! ULTRA LIMITED CD ALERT!! ARCHIVE RECORDS RELEASE ALERT!! THIS DISC IS ALREADY OUT OF PRINT SO THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE ALERT!!
By now you should definitely know the drill. Archive records, who in the past have released the triple live Boris cd (now out of print), the live LSD-March (also out of print), the Khanate live cd (you guessed it, out of print), the live Growing cd (this too, out of print) and a live Earth double cd that ended up being so limited we never even got any, now offers up this newest ultra limited gem. As far as we know, by the time you read this review, this disc too will be out of print and we'll have the last 40 or 50, so, needless to say, ACT FAST! But why should you care? Well, howabout the fact that everything Archive releases is beautifully packaged, this release being no exception? Or howabout the fact that if you don't get this from us now, it's off to eBay with you! OK, the main reason to pick this up is it's 50 percent of mighty doom sludge behemoth Khanate. Guitarist James Plotkin (who you also might remember from such past glories as OLD and Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher) and his rhythmic partner in Khanate, drummer Tim Wyskida. But, don't expect any downtuned slow motion doom and gloom here. There are some sludgy moments, even one track that sounds like a single guitar track plucked from a Khanate song, but for the most part it's a lot more abstract, with Plotkin coaxing all sorts of sounds out of his guitar, from scaping angular riffing, to scarbbly percussive skitter to shrieking high end skree, to warm muted warble, and even one track of delicate moody drift. Wyskida is right there along side him, offering up subtle little shuffles, simple plodding thuds or wild octopoidal squalls, depending on the mood and what best will balance Plotkin's guitar action. Cool stuff whether you're into Khanaate or not.
Packaged as gorgeously as always, a three panel fold out, adorned with simple text and abstract blurry shark photos, the cd affixed to a small plastic nipple on one of the panels. Comes in red and blue, the color you get will be totally random.
And we hate to belabor the point, but this is VERY LIMITED and almost for sure already out of print!
Ok, here's this list's special treat for all you proto-metal fans: a reissue of obscure, early '70s UK hard rockers Pluto! This digipack reissue isn't new, it came out a few years back but we missed it at the time - and in fact, as far as we know it's out of print (the whole Breathless label being now defunct), but we found a handful of these at one of our suppliers and grabbed 'em all. So, they won't be here for long, act fast if you want one.
Pluto's sole album was originally released in 1971 (yes, once again, 1971 completely blows our minds, good grief!) on Pye's progressive, "underground" Dawn label. But the type of progressive rock Pluto plays isn't, y'know, like Yes or Genesis, or Comus for that matter (whose First Utterance was also a '71 Dawn release). No flutes or tricky time signatures. They just play poppy, heavy rock and aren't afraid to boogie. This digipack reissue contains 13 tracks in all, 3 of 'em non-album bonus cuts from singles.
Bonus single track "I Really Want It" is possibly the star of the show, it's been comped several times, on Dawn anthologies and so forth, and for good reason, with suggestive lyrics that are well matched by the song's slow, stomping groove. But there's LOTS of good songs here, from cowbell knockin' fuzz rockers to some more melodic, ballady, even Beatlesy ones.
Recommended for folks into the likes of early Wishbone Ash, Orang-utan, Leaf Hound, Human Beast, Power Of Zeus, Three Man Army, Luv Machine, Bubble Puppy, and other vintage, semi-heavy obscurities.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest slab of grinding destruction from these bay area thrashers. Wicked and heavy, pummelling fastcore. Complex and amazing. With Max from Spazz/What Happens Next on the skins. Awesome.
The return of Lithuanian black metallers Poccolus! Well, not so much a return, as these guys split up a while back, but we're super psyched to hear more from these guys. Their Supernal label full length was a huge hit with the metalheads around here, gloriously thrashy keyboard drenched, post rock flecked Pagan blackness, originally released in 1996, but reissued a couple years ago. The tracks on Ragana date even further back than that, 1993 and 1994, with a couple live tracks tacked on as a bonus, originally released as a super limited cassette in 1997.
Here, Poccolus sound even more raw, and strangely more melodic. The guitars offering up classic metal sounding harmonies, locked in with the drums, pounding way down in the mix. Shades of Iron Maiden, and at least one of the tracks musically is a dead ringer for Slough Feg, that is until it slips into grim blackness, the bellowy reverb drenched croon, switching to harsh hellish shriek, but even then, the music continues to lope along all mournful and minor key, with plenty of keyboards, although here they're buried under the buzz and lo fidelity hiss. The opening track is so melancholy and catchy it's almost not even black metal. More like some gloomy gothy slightly blackened hard rock, but whatever it is, it's pretty excellent.
In fact, as we dig deeper, all the tracks here are barely black metal, although they're buzzy and heavy enough to keep metalheads' attention, the sound is much more raw and old school and classic sounding, the vocals are the blackest element, but even those shrieks and howls just as often revert to clean-ish croons. And it sound like this was mastered from a cassette, so it's all a little warped and warbly, giving it a haunting woozy off kilter vibe, which only adds to the band's unique sound. One track does actually get super grim and blasty, but that's after about 6 minutes of super minimal rumbling drones. The record closes with another strange only sort of black metal jam, lurching, mid tempo, the guitars warbly and minor key, the keyboard drifting like a haze in the background, the melodies getting more and more grand and epic, the band whipping their lo-fi stumble and buzz into something truly majestic sounding.
The live tracks are way more raw and fierce, lo-fi, but still plenty blown out and brutal, but even then, the weird melodicism of the proper tracks still creeps into the bands grim buzz. The Pagan element is also more present on these later tracks, the overall sound sitting somewhere right between the more polished Pagan crush of the full length, and the warped lo-fi classic metal of the demo tracks included here.
All hail the lords of Baltic black metal. Ummm... really? Yep, really. Poccolus are, according to Supernal, the best black metal band (and most likely the first!) ever to come out of Lithuania (out of, according to the Encyclopedia Metallium, a total of 96 Lithuanian BM bands). And who are we to argue, especially since we've actually only -ever- heard 2 other black metal bands from Lithuania.
Even so, Poccolus are awesome, and just the sort of gloriously twisted blackness we've come to expect from Supernal. Originally released on a tiny Korean label over a decade ago, this record now gets the wicked deluxe reissue treatment, complete with all new artwork, the booklet and tray card printed on cool leather-like textured paper, lyrics in both English and Lithuanian, remastered sound, and pressed on an extra fancy gold cd.
But what does it sound like? A gloriously buzzy black thrash to begin with, but laced with all sorts of unlikely musical randomness, bizarre epic swaths of grandioseÔkeyboard, lots of long stretches of weird post rocky folk with arpeggiated steel string guitar, loping rhythms and folky arrangements, thick washes of murky drone-y Burzumy buzz, strangely melodic, with bits of epic Viking melody, strange sound effects, big drums, thunder, lightning, and of course some insane vocals, that go from high pitched shriek to banshee like wail to monstrous growl to chant like moan, all over a constantly shifting black metal weirdscape of blackened wah guitar, droning drifting buzz, and thrashing percussive blast.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Australian band that combine Sabbathy doom metal riffs and death metal vocals, a bit like Cathedral. Distributed in the US by Andee's label tUMULt, and we're the first store to have it.
Andee made us put this one on here.
We were first turned on to Poison Ring by the guys in Sutekh Hexen, and managed to meet the man responsible on a recent trip to Seattle. We were initially not sure what to expect. The tape packaging, while beautiful, evokes something else entirely, something maybe more gothic, and Mr. Poison Ring himself is quite elven, in appearance and attire, but instead of some gothic renn faire flutter, we were treated to something much more intense, dark and atmospheric, a hazy, faded landscape of woozy soft focus murk and buried melodies, a sound that definitely had us thinking of Philip Jeck and The Caretaker and Tim Hecker. While it's impossible to tell exactly what's producing these ghostly sounds, it does sound like a handful of dusty old turntables, spinning lazily in some giant abandoned ballroom, a series of gauzy melodies, and slowed down samples, layered and woven into softly undulating blurs, melancholy and mournful, imbued with a introspective otherworldliness, the perfect haunting lullaby for nights beneath pitch black skies, devoid of stars, a gorgeously abject drift into some other/underworld, laced with moments both sinister and ominous, but those moments seem to always eventually unwind, the sound eventually and inevitably diffusing into another stretch of blessed out somnambulant ambience.
On some of the tracks, the source does seem to be obviously old records and broken down turntables, and yet, instead of taking away from the mystery, it simply adds more color and depth, often some sort of disembodied rhythm, reminding us again of Jeck, but also Strotter Inst, especially in the stretches anchored by electronic squelches and distorted pulses, like some alien, haunted house music, an industrial creep that manages to evoke a strange tension, while still remaining otherworldly and lovely. The flipside spends much of it's time lysergically loping through fields of murk and pitch shifted melody, an achingly wistful sprawl of dreamdirges and waking sonic feverdreams.
Housed in a beautiful handmade slipcover/sleeve, with a built in mini booklet, printed on vellum, each copy hand numbered, LIMITED TO 89 COPIES!!
The last Poison The Well record was easily the best metalcore record, if not one of the best plain ol' METAL records, of last year. And this new one seems poised to repeat the feat! This is PtW's major label debut, taking the plunge, that years ago meant risking losing your core audience to cries of 'Sell out!' but now just means that we may be seeing Poison The Well on MTV and who can argue with that. It's getting tougher and tougher to describe metalcore, my thesaurus is worn away to the size of a matchbook. Yes, this is pummelling, crushing, brutal, punishing, the guitars are downtuned, thunderous riffs, and howled shrieks and furious double kick drumming and relentless rhythms and all that. So yeah, it's HEAVY. But Poison The Well write amazing songs. Every riff, every lyric, every melody, no matter how unlikely, is a part that you will find yourself humming to yourself days later. Incorporating the often problematic, clean vocals and melodic emo breakdowns more deftly than most into their overall sound, PtW drag you kicking and screaming on a rollar coaster of extreme dynamics, lush production and gorgeous catchy pop swathed in metallic brutality. The melodic parts, of which there seem to be a lot more this time around, owing more to their progress as songwriters methinks than their major label leap, are as soaring and captivating, as catchy and heart wrenching as anything the Get Up Kids or Reggie And The Full Effect could come up with on their best days. And so much less cloying, nestled the way they are, all snug and warm between a row of amps on 11 and a swirling, writhing moshpit. This definitely hits the metal spot, but pushes all our emo buttons and satisfies our pop sweet tooth at the same time. At first I didn't like this nearly as much as their last full length, but the more I listen, the more I am completely baffled and knocked out by how much more advanced this record is than its predecessor, so complex and varied, full of hooks, labyrinthine arrangements, beautiful melodies, sheer face-melting metal, gorgeous soulful vocals, lush, layered instrumentation, throat shredding demonic screeches and bizarre but subtle production. This definitely raises the bar impossibly high. It's about time!
First we've heard from this French instrumental math / post / noise rock combo, and holy shit, these guys push all our musical buttons, channeling the spirit of Polvo and Pitchblende, all droned out atonal guitars and wild mathy rhythms, mesmerizingly hypnotic metallic grooves and soaring layered sonic sprawls, the perfect post / math rock hybrid, fusing loping super melodic mesmer with gnarled dense near metal crush, but somehow managing the near impossible, making all of this weird mathiness insanely catchy, the sort of rare band that can conjure up swirling intricate landscapes of chugging and churning and soaring and droning, all manner of shimmer and crunch, pummel and pound, into something that you may find yourself humming hours later. Fans of outfits like Psychic Paramount, Dazzling Killmen, Laddio Bolocko, Phleg Camp, Don Caballero, Bastro, Breadwinner, Drive Like Jehu, Rodan and the like will flip. A new favorite band for sure!
It's been ages since we'd heard from these French math/noise/post rockers, but thankfully very little has changed in their sound world, still trafficking in a style of music woefully underrepresented these days as far as we're concerned. We'd still cite the same list of bands we did in our review of their first cd-r: Dazzling Killmen, Don Caballero, Bastro, Breadwinner, Rodan, Drive Like Jehu, Laddio Bolocko, you get the drift. Each song here is dizzying in its scope, sometimes locking into tense tightly wound grooves, other times obliterating structure entirely, the guitars churning and chugging, jagged and sharp, flitting easily from chiming melody to skull caving bombast, before unexpectedly unfurling weird bent notes, or strange detuned melodies, the drums don't hold everything together so much as make it even more frenzied, a constant cascade of wild, loose limbed fills, sometimes even slipping into total blastbeats, the guitars following along, the instruments doing some wild dance, lurching and stumbling, leaping and swaggering between styles and sounds, but somehow, the whole goddamn thing holds together like some musical math problem made flesh. It's short too, just 4 songs, but they cram as much into these 4 songs as most other math rock bands manage in their whole life span. Super limited too, and we get them direct from the band in Europe, so when we run out, it might take us a while to get more.
Heavy psych and metal freaks, perhaps you remember we reviewed a reissue of this power trio Poobah's 1979 album Steamroller a while back? While '79 was a late date for "proto-metal", that's definitely what this Youngstown Ohio outfit sounded like, heavy duty acid rock n' roll action with plenty of psychedelically shredding guitar work. Well, now you can check out where they wuz comin' from, 'cause this "Special Collector's Edition" of their 1972 independently released debut has just been "re-unleashed". Just peep the vintage b&w photos of the band, all long hair, beards, head bands. Total hippies! HEAVY hippies. Hard as nails. But definitely hippies (like the fabulous furry freak bro looking dude depicted in the crude cover cartoon, spitting up into a toilet - or is it the other way around?).
So, yeah, Poobah is "proto-metal" fersure on this one, right from the get-go with the aptly titled "Mr. Destroyer", which despite the peace-loving message of the lyrics seems to demonstrate that violence for violence's sake can work, in rock anyway! And aside from one (quite nice) laidback number, "Enjoy What You Have", the six tracks that make up the original release of Let Me In are all similarly raw rifftastic freakrock heaviness, very underground, their unhinged high wattage psychedelia almost kinda punk, a la the UK's Crushed Butler, Detroit's Death, or Australia's Coloured Balls. BAD ASS in other words. Heck the ominous creepy-crawl of "Bowleen" is practically doom metal, though Poobah do have their lighter side, with a penchant for funny voices and trippy rhythmic passages, hippy potsmoking stuff y'know...
The bonus tracks (there's 10 on the gatefold double vinyl version and 12 on the compact disc) are all also quite worthy, recorded circa '72-'73, mostly more high energy ass-kickery in the vein of the album tracks, with a few weird noisy studio experiments thrown in for good measure... or maybe not "studio" exactly as most of the bonus cuts were recorded live to 2-track in the guitarist or bassist's living room. It all sounds great though, from the surprise vocal harmonies in the midst of "Make A Man Out Of You" to the Ted Nugent style gonzo goings on of "Going To Rock City"...
Quite a treat, now we're waiting on a proper reissue of Poobah's second album, US Music, from '76, that's gotta happen someday too...
The Rockadrome label down in Texas is, as we have said, on a roll, digging up the awesome likes of Jerusalem and Iron Claw for our proto-metal listening pleasure. The both of them were early '70s bands from the UK, but Rockadrome, and related label that preceded it, Monster Records, have actually concentrated more on reissuing records by late '70s/early '80s American hard rock acts, private press obscurities that in a perfect world maybe woulda made it big, but had the misfortune of coming out right when new wave and/or disco was what the record companies wanted.
Here's a great example, something previously reissued by Monster, now at last made available again in the Rockadrome catalog. The mighty POOBAH! A power trio from Ohio, featuring in particular the talents of guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Gustafson, the most kick ass guitar whizz you probably have never heard. This one's their 1979 album Steamroller, and aside from the unexpected, lovely piano intro to the instrumental "Atom Bomb", it pretty much IS a steamroller of rockin' and rollin', wailing guitars, bashing drums, psychedelic effects, and screamin' vocals. Although '79 might be a late date for "proto-metal" that's what we'd say this is, 'cause of the weird psych and prog elements, it's just a little too weird and wild and wacky to fit in with the straight-up metal scene, maybe that's why they stayed underground. The overload of raw, chunky riffage and squiggly, slashing guitar leads (along with campy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics) here wasn't exactly radio-friendly either, though great for a party. Basically the appeal of Poobah can be summed up by image found this disc's back cover of the band's curly-haired drummer wearing a homemade t-shirt that reads "Poobah Jams" in iron-on letters. Damn right, jam they did!
So if you dig lotsa guitar, from a band influenced both by '70s heavies like Led Zeppelin (they do a cover of "Rock And Roll") and '60s surf music too, then you oughta ignore the budget cover art (both old and new, the one you see here is the new version Rockadrome came up with but the original is also fairly hideous) and check 'em out. You'll know if Poobah's for you after the seven minutes and thirty eight seconds of their track "Jump Through The Golden Ring" that opens the album! Oh, and like the previous edition on Monster, this includes some extra unreleased/live tracks also from '79.
We'd like to hear more by these forgotten Midwestern hard rock heroes. Hopefully Rockadrome will also re-reissue the other Poobah album Monster did, 1976's U.S. Rock. And, eventually, all the other cool out of print Monster titles, like Cain's Pound Of Flesh. We'll keep you posted.
Wooha, Poobah! We've previously reviewed reissues of this kickass if undeservedly obscure Ohio outfit's 1972 proto-metal debut Let Me In, and also their third album, the aptly titled Steamroller, from 1979. Now at last we've got the missing link, their 2nd album, U.S. Rock, originally released in the bicentennial year of 1976 - hence the title, and the band's patriotic pose on the cover, dressed in Revolutionary-era costume.
Lead by guitar whiz Jim Gustafson, Poobah here deliver another potent dose of their gonzo acid hard rock action. There's a song here called "Let's Rock", and another one called "Keep On Rollin'", so you get the idea, yeah, they're all about the rock n' roll good times! The former is a total '50s style rave up with boogie-woogie piano; the latter a heavier, glammier Alice Cooper-ish number. But the thing with Poobah is that they've got a crazed psychedelic side to 'em, we've written before about 'em being "weird and wild and wacky" - and we're not just talking about the song here called "Crazy", definitely one for the Dr. Demento hit parade.
On a bunch of the tracks they pull off some maniacal falsetto screamin', and speaking of that, get a load of the almost-kecak-like "Chicky Chicky Cha, Chicky Chicky Cha" chant featured in the song "Watch Me", that had us staring at the stereo the first time we heard it. WTF? That's entertainment!
For this reissue they've added 4 bonus tracks to U.S. Rock's original ten, and really across the album there's a lot of varied moods, including some nice melodic stuff - like the dreamy and majestic "Your Way, My Way" (one of the bonus tracks, which also include a 9+ minute live version of "Steamroller").
The MC5 and Ted Nugent and Grand Funk could be common reference points, to cite some big names; also Poobah are in the same realm as other underground American seventies rockers reissued by Rockadrome like Cain and Hooker - but with more unhinged hippie humor we think!
(Note: Ripple also did this reissue on cd, unfortunately we were sent the wrong title this week, so we'll have to list the cd version next time... and it's the cd that has the 4 bonus tracks mentioned above, they're not included on the vinyl.)
Strangely enough (or not?) for someone who spends a lot of their time writing music reviews, I just LOVE to read music reviews. And if it's reviews of old heavy metal records, even better! And there's few reviewers whose reviews I get as much of a kick out of as those of Canadian heavy metal opinionmeister Martin Popoff. Back in 1997 he wrote a book -- a tome, in truth, with 3,740 reviews -- entitled The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal, itself an update of Popoff's previously published opus Riff Kills Man: 25 Years Of Hard Rock & Heavy Metal (a mere 1,942 reviews in that one). And that wasn't enough. So now he's back, revising and expanding the his ultimate heavy metal review resource into not one but three volumes, one per decade of metal, starting with this one, devoted to pretty much anything that rocked out and exhibited some degree of heaviosity in the '70s! And some relevant late '60s albums sneak in too. Hundreds upon hundreds of albums are covered here, each getting a paragraph-or-two review and ratings on not one but two 10-point scales: first for heaviness (which in Martin's world seems more akin to "metalness") and a second for simply just how much Martin likes the album in question. These two scores often correlate but not always. And of course it's not clear that these faux-scientific numerical rankings are a good idea, since it leads to silly comparisons... Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum gets a "6" for heaviness (I woulda gone higher!) while he gives the same rating to Jo Jo Gunne's Jumpin' The Gunne. And they actually both get the same quality rating too, both 6's. Huh? But that is part of the charming eccentricity of this book and its author. Agree with him or not, he'll still get you stoked on some great music.
That's the best thing about this -- that despite the title, it's not really a "collector's" guide. That is, it's not at all about what's rare and valuable and hard to find and that sort of thing. Sure, the occasional ridiculous eBay price gets mentioned, and Martin will bring up some peculiarity of a reissue or whatever if he thinks it's interesting. But what this book is REALLY about is the music, something that most "collector's guides" barely ever even seem concerned with amidst concerns about rarity and monetary value. Sure, Martin's a collector, i.e., he's got lots of records. And so am I. But the motivation for the collecting -- and review-writing -- is an abiding love for the "Greatest Music In The World" (as Martin puts it, and I won't argue) and a desire to share that excitement. So don't come to this book expecting to read a lot about different vinyl pressings and suchlike, thank god. And indeed, part of Martin's mission here is to dispel some collector's myths. He wants to examine some so-called "collector's holy grails" and see if they really stand up against the more popular, better-known bands in the heaviness stakes. Some do, but the point he's making is that just 'cause something costs $500 for an original pressing doesn't mean it's in the same league musically as, say, the Scorpions LP you can still pick up for relatively cheap at a flea market. Kind of a record-collector reality check. And that's good...although of course I'm still drooling over some of these hard-to-find obscurities regardless! And that's what this is for too... covering as it does everything from the obvious (Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen...) to the obscure (Buffalo, I Teoremi, Leafhound, Bang, Jerusalem...). And Martin devotes a bit of space at the beginning of the book explaining how the definition of heavy metal in the '70s is a bit broader than in later decades, as he includes in lots of stuff that the average headbanger today wouldn't consider metal, from hard rock (Foreigner, Aerosmith, Foghat...) to punk acts (The Stooges, DMZ, The Damned, The Saints, Sex Pistols...) to some harder prog and krautrock. But "heavy metal" meant something a little different back in the '70s anyway (as any reader of Black To Comm 'zine will confirm).
There's very few omissions I could think of (and lots of stuff in here I'd never even heard of before!). He even includes an appendix listing bands that you might think (from the name or album cover) are heavy that aren't! And after hours of reading I've only come across one factual mistake. Opinion-wise, there's more to argue with -- as I said, I don't always agree with his reviews, but they're enthused and amusing and even if he trashes an album I personally love I still read it with a chuckle. For a music (and heavy '70s rock) junkie like me, this is a real can't put down page turner like some people find the latest Stephen King or John Grisham. His style is sportswriterly colourful, sometimes just a little crazed, and real conversational. I shouldn't make this review any longer than it is already by quoting from Popoff's prose, but here's a sample from his (10/10) review of Black Sabbath's Sabotage: "...a tour de force from a quartet improbably tormented by the demons of genius and more probably towel-whipped by the gnomes of stupidity." Nice.
Getting into this guy's music n' metal-mad mind, with all his rankings and charts and appendices and personal reminicences is amazing. And as a fellow-review writer, can I just say how freaking impressed I am with his accomplishment here? Pretty much essential for any historical-minded metalhead or retro-rocker who likes to read! Oh yeah, plus there's a bonus cd comp with tracks from the Monster records reissue roster.
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...
It may be difficult to believe at this point, but we don't actually love everything from Finland. Nor do we love everything from Japan. And what might be equally hard to believe, is that we don't love every band with a crazy name, a monicker equal parts ridiculousness and ultraviolence, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars, medieval and futuristic. Nor does the presence of flute supersede all other sonic considerations. And being chaotic and damaged and heavy and downright baffling is not, on its own, enough (although it's very very close).
But, and this is the very big BUT we must concern ourselves with here, we do love EVERY SINGLE band we've heard who hail from Japan, via Finland, with an awesomely over the top super metal name, who are heavy and noisy and mathy and fucked up and sort of black metal, and have tons and tons of FLUTE. But then again, there's only one band that fits that description. Japan's Quest For Blood. Released on Jussi from Circle's Ektro label, championed by Reverend Bizarre's Albert Witchfinder (who also did the artwork and wrote the band's bio on the Ektro website), who create a dizzying complex bombast of proggy heaviness, of complex arrangements, of blackened metallic majesty, all gnarled riffing, furious drumming, riffy and groovy and buzzy, and flute everywhere, and it's the flute that defines the sound of Quest For Blood, whose sound is both metal and some sort of jazz, equally composed and abstract, black and buzzy, epic and deliriously dense, heavy yet folky and free. Quest For Blood began life as a slightly more traditional black metal band called Magane, but after a chance meeting with Yukihiro Isso, who had in the past played with Tatsuya Yoshida and Keiji Haino, the band changed direction, and blossomed into something else entirely, creating a sound never really heard before, and a sound that we now realize is one we had been fantasizing about for ages, black metal, Japanese folk, wild free flute, blast beats, weird chanted vocals, well, okay, we -would- have fantasized about it, had we ever imagined a band like that could actually exist. Well...
If you're anything like us, you'll be hooked after the first track, which begins with what sounds like Jew's harp and marimba, before launching into some blackened post metal riffing, over which a flute flutters and soars over the top, at once intense and melodic, but also airy and ethereal, it's like super dense metallic math rock meets black metal meets jazzprog, until suddenly the band drops out, leaving just solo flute, for 2 plus minutes, wild free jazz fluttery, folky, freaky, the melodies chaotic and complex one second, gentle and lilting the next, squeaks, skronks, wheezes, whistles, the sound falling somewhere between traditional Shakuhachi folk music and manic free jazz. Until finally, the band return, with some Japanese chanting, and epic Viking style riffery, the flute flitting right along, in its own way as aggressive and intense as the riffing beneath it. The second song follows suit, a roiling churning melee of riffs and blast beats, of serpentine riffing, of buzz and crunch, the flute again weaving dense tangled webs of melody draped over everything, a constant fluttering flitting sonic presence, relentless and breathless and truly dizzying.
The whole record is truly relentless, the flute in full on wild solo jam mode continuously, as the band wind and weave various metallic frameworks underneath. And while the sound is dynamic in its own way, it's also utterly ferocious and unrelenting, occasionally allowed some space, when the song unwinds and the flute is left to drift in long stretches of abstract shimmer, or the band slips into something slightly less manic, but for the most part, this is a gloriously mind blowing progjazzmathmetal onslaught.
As if the record wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder, and more varied, near the end, as the songs become more dynamic, the arrangements more stop / start, the various woodwinds offering up underwater gurgles and squiggly manic melodies, than more traditional flute sounds. "Yayema" sounds almost gospel-y, very melodic and dramatic, a little over the top, the melodies major key and majestic, but of course peppered with bursts of furious blasts and wild squall of flute freakout. "Uchina" begins like many of the other tracks, a jazz metal blow out, this time with raspy creature-like vocals, and some pounding piano, until the band drops out, leaving just drums and flute and vocals, reminding us a bit of a more freaked out version of that Dave Lombardo plays Vivaldi record, but with far out chanting, distant raspy vocalizations, all very tribal and weird, with a definite Ruins vibe, before launching back into full on metal mode, now with wailing guitar leads all tangled up with the wild flute.
The final track begins with solo flute, before the band joins in, all rough and raw and lo-fi, pounding out a simple mesmerizing riff, almost Circle style, the drums a murky thud, the flute ethereal and transcendent, eventually, the drums sputtering into some wide open space, before getting all wound up with streaks of scrabbly off kilter guitar in some sort of Ginn-ish guitar drum duel, laced with atonal piano pound, fiery flute and crumbling noisy chaos, finally finishing off in a blaze of metallic murk and abstract black jazz whatthefuck.
So awesome. And confusionally genius. Some seemingly impossible mix of black metal, free jazz, Italian prog, traditional Japanese folk, math rock and noise rock; a mind bending, ear melting mash up of Osanna, the Ruins, Absu, Solar Anus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Comus, Cromagnon, Ghost, Finntroll, Jethro Tull, Circle, Xynfonica, and who the fuck knows what else.
Needless to say, or perhaps worth saying over and over and over. WAY RECOMMENDED. And another contender for metal (or whatever) record of the year.
Not sure why we never listed the first record from these guys, but we figured record number two was the perfect opportunity to right that wrong. Quest For Fire are a band of psychedelic space rockers from Canada, who craft gorgeously brooding and occasionally explosive psychrock epics, slow burning string laden drifts that gradually build into explosive psychedelic squalls, or swirling shoegazey folk pop blowouts, equal parts Godspeed You Black Emperor, Spacemen 3, and Kyuss, or maybe Queens Of The Stoneage, since there is definitely a distinct pop element here. Unlike some of our other favorite psychedelic jammers, Quest For Fire seem first and foremost concerned with songs, sure the songs do often unfurl into extended spaced out megajams, but most of the tracks here barely crack the 5 minute mark, and a few hover around the 3 minute pop song mark. Those are definitely the most succinct and hookiest. "Set Out Alone" is a fuzz drenched stomper, the vocals weary and laid back, but the guitars crunchy and crumbly, the drums wild and propulsive, the song peppered with killer psych leads. "Strange Vacation" is strummy washed out psychedelic pop drift, sounding very sixties, while "In The Place Of A Storm" sounds a bit like some Monster Magnet / Spacemen 3 hybrid. We also hear plenty of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun and other modern psychedelic sonic explorers throughout.
Then there are the longer songs, that manage to be the perfect mix of QfF's folky psych pop, and seriously in-the-red space rock psychedelia, like on the 9+ minute close "Sessions Of Light", which spends most of its time brooding and drifting and smoldering, driven by a stripped down loping rhythm, and gorgeous world weary Pink Floyd-ish vocals, but when the band finally let loose, it's epic, and heavy and intense and explosive! Definitely one of those times you wish the song went on for another 10 minutes, just so you these guys could go wild, and we could luxuriate in the epic spaced out shredding.
Seriously great stuff. Definitely recommended for fans of Wooden Shjips, Sleepy Sun, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Comets On Fire and any of the current crop of like minded sonic explorers...
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".
Got a whole bunch of new releases from the Universal Consciousness label, a new lp of twisted experimental black noise from Kilt, the final release from shoegaze black metal one man band Wrath Of The Weak, and the latest slab of twisted blackened weirdness from Lord Time. And then there's this, some seriously fucked up outsider bedroom blackened doom folk from the Pacific Northwest, which is even more twisted than that sounds. Imagine intensely strummed acoustic guitars, fluttering flutes, cardboard box blast beats (or maybe it's someone slapping their palms on a table), add some raga like drones, and some seriously harsh blown out vokills, some weird samples, and holy shit, you've got the unpronounceable Quloelfi, whose sound is a seriously demented strain of blackened bedroom weirdness, the sound slipping from furious ACOUSTIC black buzz, to droned out ritualistic psychedelia, to distortion drenched 4 track folk, apocalyptic and menacing, the vocals are sick, a hellish monstrous shriek, that when draped over even the dreamiest folkiness, transforms the sound into something abject and demonic, but even with that shrieking, the band sometimes add a second clean vocal, a twisted counterpoint that only makes it all that much weirder and cooler. Some tracks the drums do sound real, and the guitar does sound electric, but even then, it's got this weird, stumbling low fidelity home brewed bedroom vibe, that makes it super twisted and super unique, especially when the band whip up some seriously majestic black buzz heaviness, using elements that are obviously not typical. We can honestly say we've never heard anything like this, and thus we're sort of obsessed, and think anyone into twisted outsider heaviness, and warped experimental weirdness, will likely be as smitten as we are.
We made the debut lp No Visitors from these Texas drugged out psych/doom/noise/kraut/sludge weirdos a Record Of The Week back June, and well, since these tracks were culled from the very same recording session that produced that record, you could very well consider this a sort of Record Of The Week part two, and really if you dug No Visitors, this is more of the same, blown out psychedelic heaviness, that sounds like a mashup up of the Butthole Surfers, Hawkwind and Shit And Shine, all filtered though AmRep nineties noiserock and Texas knuckle draggers Rusted Shut. Which if you're anything like us, is about all you need to know. But if you're new to Quttinirpaaq, or just need a reminder, give a listen to the first couple samples below. The brief sort-of intro, the sweetly titled "Diary Of A Pig Keeper's Wife", is all detuned trudge, crumbling slo-mo riffage, death march drums, weird, slowed down chant like vocals, this is some sort of wasted, psychedelic ultra doom, but it's on "Chinese Hercules" that Quttinirpaaq really get to flex their musical muscles, locking almost immediately into some seriously tranced out, heavy hypno-rock riffage, that weds super distorted drum pound to churning looped riffage, garbled vox and swirls of noise and effects into some heavy, space, psychedelic noise rock that takes everything we love about White Hills, The Heads and all the rest, cranks it WAY up, and drags it through the filth, resulting in some seriously next level kraut-sludge space-psych heaviness that KILLS.
And while it doesn't necessarily get better from there (not sure how it could really), it stays pretty epic and psychedelic, heavy and warped, tripped our and trancey, most of the tracks some weird sort of hybridized psychedelic krautrock and noise rock crush, the band locked into endless grooves that roil and churn mesmerically, while all around sounds swoop and swirl, streaks of feedback, blasts of FX, constantly shifting textures, buried melodies, all blurred and smeared into heaving, noisy, heavy psych weirdness.
Some of the tracks here get downright out there, some surprisingly beautiful, still noisy, but infused with surprising melodies, and crafted with a delicate touch, while others are just pure skull caving crush, and still others are almost electronic sounding, seemingly dabbling in the same warped outsider electronics as Shit And Shine.
Needless to say this RULES. Everyone who bought and loved No Visitors, is gonna want this too. And if you've yet to check these guys out, Let's Hang Out might just be your new favorite heavy / noise / psych / space jam. You have been warned.
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, clear with 'blood red spray'. Comes with a full color insert, and it's LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
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.
We reviewed a split 7" from these Colorado noise rockers a while back, where we described them as sounding like "some sort of modern version of big ol' post punk sludge groove, hard not to hear some Scratch Acid in there. Ultra grimy downtuned guitars, super dense and mathy arrangements, woozy basslines, blown out fuzz guitar, growled/shouted vocals. Almost like a way darker, way more punk Pelican in a way." Apparently they liked that enough to put it on the cover (!), and some of that definitely still applies (not the Pelican thing so much here), this is some seriously heavy, crusty, noisy, pigfuck, distorto filth, raw and nasty, think classic AmRep, think Karp, a sort of post metal heaviness wrapped around dirgey punk rock pummel, dense distorted knuckle dragging caveman crush, the vocals a throat shredding howl, somewhere between death metal growl, Killdozer Yowl and Muppety howl, the music buzzy and blown out, super rhythmic, downtuned, heavy and hypnotic. Kinda weird to think Rabbits are from Portland and is made up of guys from Angel Hair / The VSS / Pleasure Forever, cuz damn if this don't sound pretty Midwest to us. Regardless, this is some thick as molasses, punked out sludgy noise rock that KILLS. Total doom sludge metal punk bliss. Fuck yeah. We've got compact disc and colored vinyl.
We only just discovered this bizarrely named outfit, this being the third release in almost as many lists, but they continue to kick our asses, and ruin our hearing, and send our minds a spinnin'! This is tripped out, stumbling jazz-flecked psychedelic skree. The drums are the thing. Huge and heavy, complex but not overplayed, relentlessly hard hitting but somehow at the same time sort of jazzy as well. They form the massive framework that supports wild wah guitars, sheets of corrosive acid riffing, swooshing synths, garbled vocals, wild squiggly tangles of distorted melodies, and thick washes of squealing feedback. This is Hawkwind unhinged, er... MORE unhinged. A totally psychedelic freakout, that only occasionally blisses out into weird stumbly lo-fi shimmer, usually only to lurch back into a doped up frenzy moments later.
Cool silkscreened orange and green sleeves with a photocopied insert. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
Jeepers it's been a while since we've reviewed an album by these heavynoisyspasticartpunkrock dudes from Nebraska, and we almost neglected to list this new one, but thought we should since there's bound to be a few AQ customers who groove to Racebannon's weird brand of manic, maybe-metallic mayhem, one part Melvins, one part Dillinger Escape Plan, one part anything on Skin Graft or Toyo (RIP).
Sounds like: screaming sneering vox, jagged guitar distortion, wiseass brutality... When you're in the mood for it, great! When yr not, well, the 22 separate, entirely silent 7 second tracks that come between track 10 and 33 will be among your faves here.
If on the other had you want even more of Racebannon's earhole abuse, keep an eye out for their next release, a 12" entitled Merzbannon, which is apparently one of their previous albums "remixed" by you-know-who.
This band is in sort of a tough postion. But they brought it on themselves. As with lots of genre-hopping bands, Radiation 4 hop nimbly and deftly between two specific genres, but it just so happens that the two genres in this case, are like cats and dogs. Radiation is heavy. And I mean HEAVY. Able to spew grim shrieking black metal, and pummelling chaotic metalcore like it was second nature. And it is second nature actually, because they also indulge their Faith No More / Mr. Bungle / Mushroomhead, goofy, crooning, proggy nu-metal side quite a bit. Now we all loved Faith No More back in the day, but that goofy over-eclecticism tends to grate a bit. That said, Radiation 4, do both amazingly well, and those facets fit better than you might think. And it helps that this record is so goddamn heavy at points. But it you're unable to handle any Slipknot or Bungle chocolate in your black metal / metalcore peanut butter, you better pass. Otherwise, give it a chance -- Andee ended up loving it.
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!!
Second full length blast of psychedelic stoner rock heaviness from these hippy heavies (we can only assume they're hippies with a name like that right?), and like their first, this is another batch of swaggery, Sabbath-y, pounding stoner psych riffery, with even more dramatic vocals that first time around. Give a listen to the awesomely titled "Speed God And The Rise Of The Motherfuckers From A Place Beyond Hell", which displays the band at their bad ass best. The main riff, a stone cold killer, with some seriously wailing leads over the top, the drums, bombastic and beefy, and when those vocals swoop in, totally over the top. Somewhere between the near operatic metallic howl of Mika from Finnish hypno rockers Circle, the classic metal vox of Judas Priest's Rob Halford, and the space lord motherfucker himself, Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet. And actually Monster Magnet is probably the best band to compare these guys too. While not quite as space-y, they have the same massive musical balls, every second here oozing major attitude, and maybe most importantly of all, they don't take themselves too seriously. It may be metal, and it may be heavy, but it sounds like these guys are having the times of their lives, and that sort of vibe is seriously infectious, and gives this a bit of a party rock vibe, which helps keep Rainbows from devolving into generic stoner rock, instead, the sound and the songs are loose and wild and wooly and fun as fuck, totally headbangable, groovy and crazy catchy too, there's also some Southern rock going on throughout, which of course reminds us of all time aQ faves Raging Slab, not to mention all the bands we mentioned in our review of the first Rainbows Are Free record (Kyuss, Reverend Bizarre, Skin Yard, Goatsnake, Freedom Hawk, etc.), and fuck, any band that lands somewhere between Monster Magnet and Raging Slab, gets a BIGtime aQ seal of approval!
The third album of ripping modern melodic thrash from these black-clad Swedish lads. Violent metal music with enough '80s derived cheesiness to be lots of fun. Wicked indeed. These kids probably still think about the Bay Area the way metalheads here think about Sweden now!
