Hmm, they're called Harsh Toke, they're on Tee Pee, huh, jammed out psychedelic stoner rock anyone? Yup you guessed it! Harsh Toke's music isn't itself a 'harsh toke', not if you dig stuff like Earthless. Harsh Toke are from San Diego too, and feature pro skater Figgy Figueroa on wailin' guitar. There's only four songs here, but except for the kickass 4:11 opener they're all pretty long, up to 14 and a half minutes for "Weight Of The Sun", which takes up the rest of side one. If you did that track you'll dig the whole record - it starts off with some hippie/kraut freeform flute flutter and drum circle percussion before taking off at about the 3 minute mark into stratospheric realms of distorted guitar. It's a real spaced out, riffed up jamdown.
The heaviness and Hawkwindiness continue on side two's two lengthy groovers, "Light Up And Live" and "Plug In To The Moon". Yes indeedy, the mostly-instrumental Harsh Toke sure do crank the amps and bash it out, their cosmic jams having a bit of jazziness to 'em, and a LOT of long haired feedback/FX abuse. Surefire stuff we think for fans of Acid Mothers Temple, Comets On Fire, Fuzz, the aforementioned Earthless.
Limited edition reissue of a rare Swedish psych rarity from the very late sixties (or very early seventies). Perhaps you read about or bought the Terry Riley-influenced Parson Sound double cd we raved about not long ago? Well, Harvester (after releasing
We love doom sludge dirgelords Harvey Milk. That should be painfully self evident by now. So you can imagine how thrilled we've been with the recent spate of HM action. A brand new record!! (reviewed elsewhere on this list) A mind blowing DVD documentary (last week's record of the week) and this, a deluxe reissue of perhaps Harvey Milk's finest moment, an all time doom dirge slowcore sludge classic, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men. Until recently, Courtesy was available on our very own Andee's tUMULt label, in a super swank, hand assembled, die cut, letter pressed sleeve, designed to replicate the original vinyl release. But as the supply of those dwindled, and interest in the Milk began to soar, Relapse leapt into the fray and offered to re-issue it with a bonus disc! So here we have it. The packaging, while maybe not as cool as the handmade version, is still quite striking, but the real attraction here is the addition of a bonus disc, Live At TT The Bears, a previously cd-r only release, long out of print, that features HM at their Courtesy prime, completely laying waste, proving they could create the same malevolent beauty live, in front of a crowd that sounds like it couldn't number more than 20 people. But oh how we envy those lucky souls. So basically, if you're new to Harvey Milk, but are a fan of any sort of slow, heaviness, that for the love of all that is unholy, pick this up, it is your new favorite record. And if you already have a copy, well, if you're as obsessed with HM as we are, you'll just have to buy it again. The bonus disc is SO worth it. Here's us gushing about Courtesy way back when the tUMULt version first came out:
Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering downtuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that is Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.
Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk are unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and fucking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.
Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.
And although we do get carried away now and again, and declare certain records best ever, and weirdest ever, without any trace of hyperbole or irony, we can unequivocally proclaim that Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men is quite possibly, the greatest, heaviest, weirdest, saddest, most beautiful record ever made. Seriously.
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like�"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I",�"The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if�the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound�of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land.�
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this:�My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be /�Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A�frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes�"Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song� around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is�"The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel,�when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really�fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage,�before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like...�and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
Got a few more copies of this final Harvey Milk album from '97. It's very different from their tUMULt release (the cd reissue of the '95 "Goodwill And Courtesy..." LP) which was super-heavy dronemetal to outdo the Melvins, but "The Pleaser" is still a great
Who would've though this would ever come to pass?! Those of you who love things slow and sludgy and heavy, should be on your knees, thanking whatever god you pray to, for allowing this divine musical covenant to be placed in your dirty, filthy unworthy hands!
Harvey Milk were Atlanta's answer to the Melvins, but slowed waaaaaaaay down and spaced waaaaaay out. Songs so spare but somehow so impossibly heavy, riffs so thick that they threaten to clog your speakers and rhythms so stretched out that they can barely be called rhythms. Add in a serious free jazz + ZZ Top obsession and you've got the recipe for one of the greatest, heaviest bands EVER. They recorded two brilliant full lengths (with their original lineup), one of which was re-issued on Andee's tUMULt label a couple years ago. And we thought then, sadly that we had heard the end of HM forever. But along comes Relapse to save the day, collecting all of Harvey Milk's impossibly rare 7"s and compilation tracks onto one black-hole-heavy chunk of aluminum. Most singles collections allow you to trace the development of a band, watching them slowly turn into the band you already know and love, but this collection proves that HM spontaneously combusted, emerging from their tarpit womb a fully formed, lumbering, molten, sludge rock colossus. From plodding, 3 mph sludgy, dirgy Melvins's worship, to chaotic noisy caveman thud, to Codeine-ish slow motion mood rock, to spare, rhythmic bass and drums space-scapes with demonic, anguished howls and Hendrix like riffs dipped in tar and sprinkled with wild peals of head-shearing feedback, to semi-acoustic tear jerkers, with warbly barely-in-key vocals, I mean, they even do a fucking Peter Criss solo song! How brilliant is that! Harvey Milk confounds as much as they just flat out destroy. How the fuck does a three piece rock band actually sound like they're playing on the wrong speed?! It's as if the entire band had a pitch control knob, and they keep turning it down and down and dooooown. And playing drums for this band must be utter hell. Massive expanses of space, demarcated by pounding beats, spread so far apart they just barely make up a rhythm, with enough space between beats for the drummer to get up, go to the bar, have a cigarette, and make it back in plenty of time for the next beat. So minimal and hypnotic and difficult and heavy, it just blows all other sludge rock hopefuls back to the stoneage. And even in the context of a 'singles collection', songs that were never meant to be together on a record, this stuff falls so perfectlyinto place, you would never know this wasn't conceived as a proper record. Yet another testimony to the under-appreciated genius of the mighty Harvey Milk. Liner notes from AQ pal and Chunklet head honcho Henry Owings. Essential for those of you who love Boris, Corrupted, Earth, Sunn 0))) and the like, as well as their massively head crushing opus Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men!
Reissued and remastered for the first time on vinyl since its initial 1980 release, and previously long out of print on cd too, this beautiful collaboration between minimalist composer / experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno has never sounded better! Such a gorgeous classic. Made between Eno's production work on Larajji's Ambient 3: Days of Radiance and the David Byrne collaboration, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Possible Musics was an early investigation into world music influences tempered through modern, Western studio techniques (synth treatments, tape delay, echo effects) resulting in a music of a borderless hybrid world of geographical intrigue. It greatly influenced the future-primitive recordings of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts made only ten days after the Fourth World sessions finished, though really they are different sides of the same coin.
Hassell, studied under Pandit Pran Nath and learned to transcribe Indian classical vocal techniques to the sound of the trumpet. Through various effects, he is able to conjure a vast array of sounds and textures, animalistic and mystical, sometimes flute-ish and even didgeridoo-ish. It never once sounds like a trumpet. There are definitely influences of Aboriginal, African, island and tribal music, but the aim feels more topographical than ethnological. The slow and deep attention to detail like the timbre of strings, the deep pulse of water drums and the loping liquid rhythms suggest big expanses of weather and terrain, movement and landscape. Hassell's trumpet treatments processed through Frippertronic-like tape loops and reverse echo effects are like deep rain clouds slowly moving across sparse tundra but seen and heard at a far distance. And indeed the whole album has this remote field recording quality like one is witness to something far-off, slightly foreboding, perhaps mystical, but also magnetic and alien, especially felt on the final side-long track "Charm (Over 'Burundi Cloud')". One of our favorites of the whole Eno/Ambient catalog!! Vinyl version comes with a copy of the cd.
Pentagram man in sleaze metal shocker! Big hair, bullet belt, snakeskin boots. Sometimes (all the time) you just can't beat good ol' skool heavy metal, '80s style! This reissue is just that, authentic underground '80s metal, recorded circa '84 and '86, capturing the party time sleazy rock vibe of the big hair era, but with an extra doom twist, so while arena Ozzy is one influence, Witchfinder General is another. And Pentagram, definitely Pentagram. That's 'cause this Joe Hasselvander fella is best known as the longtime drummer for those American doom metal legends. (His other claim to fame: since the late '80s, he's also been the drummer for NWOBHM stalwarts Raven.) He was a member of Pentagram for years and years (until recently), in particular a crucial member of the band when they were but a duo, he and wizened vocalist Bobby Liebling together creating Pentagram's comeback classics Review Your Choices (1999) and Sub-Basement (2000), Hasselvander playing not only drums but guitar and bass as well on those albums, as well as penning a good portion of the material! (Reissues of which are back in stock this list by the way.)
So, anyone into Pentagram should be curious about the solo material Hasselvander recorded back in the '80s, and your curiosity will be rewarded if you pick up this disc... it rocks! And demonstrates again that he's a talented multi-instrumentalist, metal songwriter, and a pretty decent singer as well.
It's basic, heavy, fun stuff that's stick-in-your-head catchy. Track 4, "Loud Enough", was echoing 'round my brain for days after first spinning this - you know when you start thinking of a song, your humming it without knowing it, but can't figure out what it is? Listening to as much music as we do here at AQ, that happens now and then, and it took a while before I was able to identify the chorus occupying my mind as being from that song, and this disc.
There's 16 tracks total on this disc, consisting of the Lady Killer lp from 1984 and the Roadkill sessions from '86. Plus, there's two bonus tracks. One's a live recording circa 1979 from another Hasselvander band, Overlord. And then another a live track, "The Ghoul", performed by Death Row (aka Pentagram) from 1982, with Bobby L. on vox of course, another reason for Penta-fans to get this.
The Roadkill material comes first on the disc, probably a good thing 'cause it sounds much better - though all of this has raw sound quality, the budget production of Ladykiller material is especially fuzzed and frazzed with distortion, sounding more like a demo than Roadkill does, even though Roadkill was a demo (later issued on vinyl in the late '90s), while Ladykiller was an actual release in '84.
Apparently Lady Killer was originally intended as an exploito-metal project, supposedly to be an all-girl band a la Girlschool. But when the female singer hired for the session failed to show up, Joe had to sing instead, with no prior vocal experience. He also played all instruments except lead guitar. Universally panned upon release, it's got a bit of a cult status now... but the Road Kill material is stronger, Joe's vocals much improved (since he had a chance to practice 'em) consisting of 8 demo tracks, six by Joe and two by former Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin. Songs from Road Kill like "Back Door Man" and "Under The Gun" seem like they could have been hits... in the '80s anyway. Kinda like early Twisted Sister, early Motley Crue, or early W.A.S.P (with that extra doomy vibe already mentioned). Heavy and hooky, meat and potatoes American metal, nothing too high falutin', but with tons of underground '80s metal atmosphere.
This is packaged with a thick cd booklet full of lyrics, liner notes from Joe, and vintage photos (including an unbelievably wasted lookin' pic of the now-deceased guy who played guitar on Roadkill, Jay Smith). Recommended to all heshers and headbangers!!
'Bout time we had a cd reissue of this obscure slab of heavy, hard rockin' high weirdness, the only album released by this late '60s/early '70s band, who if nothing else, should get an award for having one of the best names ever. Haystacks Balboa, just what were they on? Also, one guy in the band is a dead ringer for the MC5's Rob Tyner (big dude with honky Afro).
Originally released back in 1970, produced by Shadow Morton (The Shangri-Las, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, New York Dolls), this is a crazy little record, part acid rock, part blues, part prog. There's lots of heavy groovin', proto-metal riffing mixing it up with proggy keyboard action a la ELP's self-titled debut from the same year. More cogently, we'd recommend this to fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, The Good Rats, The James Gang, Mountain (whom they were buddies with) and Billy Joel's Attila (don't laugh - we love that record and really wish it would get reissued too!). Or, for a more recent reference, sometimes SF's own Hot Lunch sound a bit like Haystacks Balboa, actually!
The album starts off in full-on fuzz guitar & jammin' organ mode, with "The Spoiler", the rough-edged vocals hollerin' hard. The next track, "The Children Of Heaven" is even heavier at first, with ultra-gruff deep voiced vocals and lumbering riffage, but then veers into twee thespianism and ornate keyboard melodies, the track teetering back and forth between light and heavy extremes, with some maniacal laughter thrown in as well. Next up, "Bruce's Twist" (aka "Gasbag") is rollicking number with sleazy lyrics, blues guitar licks and carnivalesque organ, hardcore honky-tonkin'. Following that, the mostly melodic epic "Auburn Queen" takes center stage for nearly nine minutes, and many moods - one of which sounds a bit like ELP doing the theme music to The Simpsons, and another of which is kind of in the mode of spooky, atmospheric Alice Cooper, like "The Ballad Of Dwight Frye", but with a dash of Tom Waits due to the especially gruff singing.
Haystacks Balboa give us the "Sticky Finger" next, a great garage-prog headbang, and then offer up another ambitious psychedelic epic, the two-part "Ode To The Silken Men", before winding things up with the mellow "Riverland", a sweet song about a place "where life is grand and wars are fought with loud rock bands". Yeah!
Recently, we reviewed Brazil's Modulo 1000... Before that, Thai Beat A Go Go volume 2. And the Lemmy-goes-to-India sounds of Sam Gopal. And the Juan dela Cruz Band from the Phillipines. And Turkish music galore. And all those incredible Cambodian Rocks comps. Et cetera, et cetera. Yup, we've had a lot of vintage heavy rock and psych reissues from all over the world now, but this is maybe the first time we've gotten our hands on something from Korea (and hopefully not the last -- we'd love to get Sanullim discs too, someday).
Recorded in, yay, 1971, pressed in a ridiculously limited (promotion only) quantity of 300 copies each, and subsequently all but forgotten, these two records by Korean psychedelic groovesters the HE 6 are some gems indeed! With the exception of the closing side-long seventeen minute cover of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (which faithfully does indeed include the obligatory drum solo as per the original version, along with what sounds like a police siren and also an added *flute* solo!) all the tracks on the two albums Go Go Sound '71 vol. 1 and Go Go Sound '71 vol. 2 included here are instrumental jams -- numbered themes with titles like "Theme 2. 4/4 for Guitar" and "Theme 3. Running Human". And even "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is mostly instrumental of course.
Listening to the other tracks on this disc it makes sense that they would choose Iron Butterfly's opus as the sole tune to cover. Like that tune, all of their originals are extended jams led by fuzzed-out electric guitar and Hammond organ. In addition, the aforementioned flute gets a workout too. (Yet another victory for the flute, so often mistakenly perceived as diminutive instrument! But the flute can certainly hold its own in this heavy, groovy, acid-rock band.) And it's crucial to mention that HE 6's rhythm section is darn tight! Indeed, this stuff's funky enough that we're sure they were probably just as much influenced by James Brown's band The JB's as they were by the likes of the Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly. If not so obscure, we're sure this would have been plundered by DJs looking for the swank breaks... who knows, maybe hip hop producers in Korea have done so? So, very much recommended to all you folks into these sorta swinging '60s/'70s sounds -- especially if you dig the Cambodian Rocks and Thai Beat comps!
'Tis an expensive import, but the packaging helps justify the price: a gorgeous heavy-duty mini-LP styled gatefold sleeve, complete with a booklet featuring extensive liner notes (in English!) and photos, plus you even get two colorful HE 6 stickers! Nice.
UK garage psych space rockers The Heads have a little cottage industry going, a series of ultra limited cd-r's, usually limited to 100 copies or less, in super elaborate packaging, often, the music inside are studio experiments, outakes and the like, and thus are sometimes the freakiest, wildest psychedelic blowouts these guys have ever committed to tape. We're doing our best to get the scoop on the next disc in the series, but in the meantime, the friendly folks at Invada have decided to reissue one of the best discs as a massive double lp set.
With killer Jaws ripoff artwork on one side, this gatefold lp is massive, thick, and gorgeous, the vinyl too is ultra thick, red, white and black splatter wax! In fact the whole package is so striking it almost doesn't matter what's inside. Lucky for us, it just so happens to be some of the most ferocious, druggy, freaked out space psych we've heard in ages.�
From the second the needle touches the vinyl, it's a speaker punishing super blown out ultra aggro wall of druggy psychedelic space garage stomp. Guitars soar and wail, emitting impossible dense clouds of notes and chords, it sounds like the best parts of every Monster Magnet song, the sort of post-song-proper section where the band just freaks out and heads skyward, so think ALL of those parts woven together into seriously EPIC JAMS, everything wreathed in swirling space FX, the drums pounding and guitars EVERYWHERE. Or imagine the relentless psych jams of Earthless, only seriously supercharged and acid fried. So great.��
In a world of way too many bands, it seems as if every other group just wants to just plug in, turn on, and turn it up, and somehow sound like some impossible hybrid of Hawkwind, Spacemen 3, the Stooges, Monster Magnet and Loop, the result unfortunately but not surprisingly is a lot of pointless psychedelic noise. Sure there are a handful of bands who do manage to pull it off, like White Hills, Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, Burnt Hills, Gnod, Bardo Pond, Eternal Tapestry, and Heavy Winged, and as much as we do love ALL of those bands, it's safe to say, the Heads still reign supreme. These long running UK spaced out psychedelic riff rockers effortlessly transform a dingy basement packed with amps and a beat up old drum kit, a floor littered with distortion pedals and empty beer bottles into some sort of interdimensional sonic starship, a crushing, blown out, distortion drenched, riff heavy, psychedelic space rock TRIP. And while all the various elements are present, it's what they do with them that counts, and listening to the Heads, and this record again, even years and years later, it really does sound like maybe they're still the only ones who know what do with them.
Relaxing is the band's debut album, originally released in 1996, and even then the band sounded like the heaviest, druggiest, most psychedelic, freaked out band in the land. From the first the very track, now going on 15 years old, this still sounds more fresh, and more heavy than practically any modern psychedelic space rock record we can think of. After a brief sample, and a swirling squall of feedback and distorted effects, the band explode into one of THEE most bad ass riffs ever, and it doesn't let up for the next 70 minutes. Strange distorted processed vocals, layer upon layer of wild psychedelic leads and churning riffage, like an amphetamine fueled Loop jam, or Spacemen 3 if they were into speed instead of acid, the song just spirals into the stratosphere, heavy and hypnotic and totally trancelike, it's somehow totally groove, utterly headbangable, and absolutely transcendent. The band pack more pure heavy space rock energy into the first 4 minutes of their first record, than most bands can hope for over entire careers. But then what to say about what they cram into the next hour, more roiling riffage, wild distorted harmonica (has a harmonica ever sounded so bad ass?), pounding motorik drumming, thick clouds of tangled freaked out psych guitar, thick swaths of effects drenched heaving crush, twisted vocals, the first three songs are like 12 minutes of staring straight into the sun, blinding and incendiary and so intense, it's not until track four that the band dials it down, locking into a sort of Velvets meets Loop groove over the next few songs, but even then, the guitars smoke, the tracks bursting into some dense downtuned chugging throughout, but always returning to a lowslung lumber, "U33" splintering into some heaven born heaviness, which leads into the second batch of relentless space psych howl, the garagey stomp of "Television", the swings from woozy jangle to super mathy almost proggy freak out, while "Woke Up" is another drugged out post Stooges, Monster Magnetized chunk of churn and chug, with a slow build to a heart-of-the-sun climax, "Widowmaker" is more of the same, before "Taken Too Much" gets all slinky and bluesy, a stripped down psychblues creep, which builds to another amp melting lysergic space psych freakout, which leads right into the dizzying, sprawling "Coogan's Bluff", a 45 minute multi part psychedelic garage space rock epic trip, which would be a whole record for any other band, but for the Heads, it's just another song. A fucking insane song, but still. Swinging from droned out fuzz drenched psychedelic krautdirge, with a super intense supernova outro, to echo drenched tribal drummed ambient drift, to woozy midtempo post space rock lope, to almost jangly drug pop, to a furious chugging, effects drenched final freak out, that sounds like all the best parts of Loop and Spacemen 3 piled on top of one another.
As if that weren't enough, the reissue of Relaxing includes a whole BONUS disc which includes their 1991 demo, a mess of singles and B sides, as well as some radio performances, culminating in their very first Peel Session. And if you though the record proper sounded heavy and freaked out, wait til you get a load of the old stuff. Even more raw and damaged and distorted, the 9 minute "Spliff Riff" starts things off with some tweaked clipped effected guitar crunch, some swirling in-the-red FX fug, before finally kicking in, a weird mix of clean guitar jangle, super blown out distortion and almost mechanical sounding drummage, the lo-fi vibe making the Spacemen 3 comparison even more apt, but even in '91, the Heads were a meaner heavier louder take on that same drugged out sound. Totally relentlessly repetitive and hypnotic and trancelike, the nine minutes feeling like forever, but still forever is not nearly long enough. And from there on out, it's another whole disc of head tripping heaviness, lots of raw early versions of tracks from the album proper, but a handful of unreleased jams as well.
All in all, a totally head spinning collection of chaotic lysergic psychedelia and crushing droned out space riff raw power rock, that remains pretty untouchable. This new version, besides including that bad ass bonus disc, is also remastered, cranked way up, with a huge booklet packed with tons of new artwork, loads of photos, old flyers and record covers, as well as extensive new liner notes. Record Of The Week, easy.
In keeping with the duality within this band's name, there's probably two sorts of people reading this review. There are those who are dedicated fans, familiar with the latter-day Black Sabbath saga, awaiting this album with eager anticipation. And then there's those who need to be told that Heaven & Hell IS Black Sabbath, in all but name - hence this album's title, The Devil You Know. For the latter folks, we'll help 'em get with the program by explaining that this so-called Heaven And Hell band is the Black Sabbath lineup - Ronnie James Dio on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Geezer Butler on bass, and Vinnie Appice on drums - that last appeared on a studio album seventeen (!) years ago: 1992's Dehumanizer, which in hindsight was a pretty good record. Dio of course was original Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne's replacement in the band, joining up in 1980 for the Heaven and Hell album (natch), followed by Mob Rules and Live Evil. He then quit for a solo career, and Sabbath's fortunes soon declined... a decade later, Dehumanizer was a short lived reunion, scuttled when Sabbath sans Dio agreed to open for Ozzy's so-called "retirement" show... Ozzy obviously didn't ever retire, and eventually rejoined Sabbath himself, for several successful tours - but no new studio album. And it seemed that there never would be another Sabbath album... until now, though it's not called Sabbath! Getting restless just going around doing "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" with a doddering Ozzy, recently Tony and Geezer were lucky to persuade Dio to let bygones be bygones and get back together with his old Sabbath mates for a tour and live album under this new name (Black Sabbath with Ozzy remaining on some sort of official hiatus we suppose).
We saw 'em play in San Jose and good grief, for a 66 year old frontman, Dio was AMAZING. Full of energy and as impressive/expressive/excessive vocally as ever. It's no wonder that inspired by their touring, these senior citizens (well perhaps Vinnie isn't quite so old) answered the prayers of Dio/Sabbath fans everywhere and recorded a brand new album! (Now the first batch of people referred to at the top of this review can tune back in.)
The truth is, we sorta had low expectations for this. As good as they were live doing old classic tracks, could they really write a worthy new record? The 3 new Dio-fronted studio tunes that were included as a bonus on Sabbath's The Dio Years anthology in 2007 were kind of weak, though they sounded better in concert, we must admit. And many a venerable band has stumbled when a long-awaited reunion album has finally happened (The Stooges being a good, or rather bad, example).
So we were pleasantly surprised to find, when we finally heard it, that The Devil You Know was actually pretty darn good! Great, even. Apparently they took their time and did this right, with serious intent. They didn't try to modernize their sound, nor is it a half-assed cash-in, they simply did what they know best how to do - heck, what they invented. EPIC DOOM METAL. No, it's not the equal of Heaven and Hell or Mob Rules, but who could expect that? It IS at least as good or maybe better than Dehumanizer, and certainly blows any other attempt at epic doom you're gonna hear this year out of the castle moat. How could it not? It's Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler and Ronnie James effin' Dio!! (Too bad for Candlemass that they just put out a new album, too... but they'd probably even agree.)
From the very first song, the lumbering "Atom And Evil", you'll hear this is firmly in their own grand tradition. Dio era Sabbath lives! The wizardly elfin one's vocals are mighty and majestic, Tony's guitar tone sounds straight from the '70s, he and Geezer offering up surging heaviosity o'er which Dio weaves his vocal spell, with portentous lyrics to match the dark doominess of much of the music. Not that it's all a dirge, they rock out plenty too, maybe too much so on "Rock N' Roll Angel", though you gotta love it that there's still a band who'd write a song with a (non-ironic) title like that. Tony gets in some choice solos, and his regal riffage leaves his "riffmaster" reputation unblemished, although what may be more memorable are the melodies of Dio's vocal lines. Possessed by the phantoms of past glories, this is, wonderfully so.
While the debate among Sabbath fans over the relative merits of the band's various vocalists will forever rage (similar to the debate over who's the best James Bond), what's certain is that in the here and now, the ancient yet ageless one known as Dio is clearly the superior, only choice for Sabbath frontman. Can't imagine them making anything as remotely as solid as this if they'd tried it with Ozzy! Celebrity/corporate crapola would ruin it... plus Ozzy's voice these days seems almost entirely computerized. Also, for these guys, it'll never be 1971 again. But 1981, via 1992, is a lot easier to conjure. Dio's still got it, and with him, they truly "click". He'll tell you himself, that despite his many years solo and with other groups, Rainbow, Elf, going back to Ronnie And The Redcaps in 1959, Black Sabbath is THE best band for him.
Who knows if Heaven & Hell aka Black Sabbath will ever make another album (did we mention Dio is pushing 70 years old?), but if they don't, this one is a proud ending to an illustrious career, a classy comeback and/or grand finale, upholding (reinstating?) their legacy indeed.
What do you get when you take members of Gong, William Burroughs, Robert Wyatt's 5 year old son Sam and probably some pretty amazing drugs and mix 'em all up? The answer is THIS, Obsolete, a lost psych/prog masterpiece from 1971. Dashiell Hedayat's second record found him recruiting Daevid Allen and Gillie Smith from Gong to round out the lineup of his band, and began work on what would turn out to be a crazy twisty and turny cosmic psych/prog epic, from start to finish. There are moments of structure and actual fleshed out songs and melodies but there are also of course a non stop litany of amazing outbursts, squeaks, rantings, yells, and cutups. But what makes the record so great is how it can go from manic acid soaked freakout to stunning beauty in the blink of an eye. There are guest appearances from William S. Burroughs, the the cooing of Sam Wyatt (Robert's son who was 5 years old at the time), but ultimately this record is fueled by the great pairing of Gong and Hedayat, whose vocals run the spectrum from beautifully sung, to subtly spoken to wild and deranged.
The LP was originally released on the legendary avant-garde label Shandar, an amazing label out of France in the '70s who put out records by folks like Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Sunny Murray, Pandit Pran Nath, Cecil Taylor, and more. Obsolete is such a perfect snapshot of early 70's free rock exploration. There are moments that are confusing, moments that are absurd, moments that are HEAVY and moments that are utterly profound. Hedayat sums it up perfectly in the original liner notes: "This record must be played as loud as possible, must be heard as stoned as impossible..." And whether or not you are actually taking his words to heart, when you listen to Obsolete, it's pretty impossible not to feel like you're on some kind of wonderful and deranged trip. Recommended!
Great group name, and an album title that really says it all! This mysterious 1968 exploito-psych album of disputed provenance, newly reissued on cd, lives up to its Supreme Psychedelic Underground billing, all right. It's really doesn't even matter if it's the pseudonymic work of a young Deep Purple, as some Purple fans are convinced. Others will tell you that while maybe the guitar neck wringing sounds a lot like Blackmore, and the bombastic organ pounding sounds a lot like Lord, it's not them - instead, it's dudes from krautrock proto-metallers Lucifers Friend! Which as far as we're concerned is an equally appealing theory. We don't know what to believe, are they or aren't they? You decide, we'll just groove to these crazy sounds, man. With wild organ and wah wah guitar up the wazoo, the tracks here range from instrumental freakouts ("Time Race") to novelty tribal weirdness ("We Like The White Man") to baroque prog hoedowns ("Courante") to, well, there's all sorts of swingin' acid rock action here folks! A few faves to mention would be the Eastern-tinged "Shalom", which is infused with all kinds of weird noises and sound FX as well, the super groovy shake-and-shimmy "Let Me Shoot You", and definitely the awesomely Bo Diddley-ish "Turn Turn", probably what would be this record's hit, if it had one.
It's interesting that these days, actually, we've kinda gotten to the point where it almost makes more sense to say that a '60s psych artifact like this one was "ahead of its time" and compare it to today's crop of psychedelic freeks, instead of the other way around. Certainly there's moments here, when the pulsating, wailing sounds get really far out, that we could think for a second we were listening to, say, a Sun Araw album. At other times, of course, it's VERY "of its times", and that's rad (in a kitschy way) too. The jarringly tripped out "Spy In Space" could only have been made in the '60s we're pretty sure, woah.
Certainly fans of MK1 Deep Purple ought to check this out, even though the theory that it's a German studio project, featuring ex-members of beat groups The Rattles and The German Bonds (who would eventually form Lucifer's Friend) seems fairly likely to be the correct one, since those very same folks cut another similar exploito-psych album under the "band" name Bokaj Retsiem around the very same time. That album was simply titled Psychedelic Underground, so maybe they thought they did an even better job as Hell Preachers, Inc.!
We could easily fill several paragraphs talking about the historical significance of Hellhammer (speaking of metal history, not world history, of course, though for some of us the two are of equal importance). But if you're reading this, and possibly already considering buying a deluxe double cd (or triple vinyl!) set of the band's early demo recordings, you probably already know something about the seminal significance of Swiss primal metal trio Hellhammer, the precursors to Celtic Frost. If you do want to know more, we'd point you to the liner notes to this release, written by HH/CF mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer (aka Tom G. Warrior, aka Satanic Slaughter), which were adapted from his forthcoming book Only Death Is Real, all about the early '80s origins of those two bands.
As you probably know, Hellhammer started off as an amateur but enthusiastic exercise in teenage worship of NWOBHM black metal originators Venom, but took Venom's defining sound to further extremes, becoming a pioneering band not only in the black metal genre, but also for death metal and sludgy doom metal as well. And all this without much of a recorded legacy, just the 1984 Apocalyptic Raids ep and some compilation tracks and these demos, the band's initial recording sessions at long last presented officially on cd and vinyl, remastered from the original master tapes.
These three demo cassettes -- Satanic Rites, Death Fiend, and Triumph Of Death -- were released in mere handmade handfuls back in 1983. Including raw(er) versions of such later classics as "The Third Of The Storms", "Triumph Of Death", and "Revelations Of Doom", as well as many otherwise unheard Hellhammer hammerings, such morbid morsels as "Dark Warriors", "Crucifixion", "Decapitator", "Ready For Slaughter", and, er, "Bloody Pussies", it's 29 tracks, 102 minutes of truly ancient evil that any self respecting black/death/doom metaller should revel in. With a twanging low-end of rubbery bass, lurching riffs, pogoing rhythms, echoed vocals, these decidedly lo-fi recordings sound almost like a no-wave take on metal. Accidentally avant-garde (unlike Celtic Frost's later efforts to intentionally be so), Hellhammer were so wretched and fucked up that they've defined "necro" for all time. Hear here how they began.
The limited edition double cd version is packaged in a handsome, slipcased hardback digibook, 5.5" x 7.5", with a 36 page booklet bound inside, plus a small poster. Within the booklet, you'll find hella vintage black and white necro photography, xeroxed flier artwork, the original cassette covers, lyrics and liner notes from the band. Along with occult artwork, including a previously unpublished demonic pencil sketch by bassist Martin Eric Ain that, since it's rendered on graph paper, has us speculating that these guys probably were playing D&D in their bunker as well as recording the metal of death.
Meanwhile, the vinyl edition (also quite LIMITED, the eight we have are probably all we'll ever have) is a truly weighty proposition, 180 gram vinyl in a thick gatefold package with the aforementioned booklet, etc. as well.
Once the deluxe cd edition is gone, we'll have the regular, less-deluxe (but also less expensive) version.
A few weeks back, we highlighted Acid Witch. Now, Hellwitch! What (or which, or witch) will they think of next? Although, Hellwitch aren't really new. This is a reissue of an obscure Florida death metal album from 1990, done up deluxe with hella-witch bonus tracks. Wait, wait, make that a TOTALLY BATSHIT INSANE Florida death metal album, i.e. the sort of thing that we think AQ customers who aren't necessarily big death metal fans but who DO like really weird fucked up music would dig. Sound intriguing? Heck, they had us at "syzgial miscreancy" whatever that might mean. We had to look it up. (In astronomy, "syzygy" is when the sun, moon, and earth are aligned in a straight line, apparently... now make that villainous, somehow.)
So we gave Hellwitch a listen, and it turned out to be some freakin' gonzo stuff. Experimental death/thrash music, we guess, super chaotic and complex. The vocals are more thrash/HC punk sounding that cookie monster DM, often electronically treated especially on the bonus demo tracks. Or at least, we hope they're electronically treated... otherwise how on earth to explain the truly disturbing shrieks in the track "Mordirvial Dissemination" that sound like Judson Fountain singing black metal??! Electronic effects about elsewhere as well, there's tons of flange on the guitar solos ferinstance. The music itself is spastic and technical, songs crammed with angular non-repeating riffs, soloing that sounds like swarms of insects, aggro-octopoidal drumming, and plenty of WTF? extras, like the when in the midst of a particularly brutal passage Hellwitch will switch into an acoustic folky jig. Makes the likes of Melt-Banana not seem so strange.
Recorded, like all good Florida death metal, by Scott Burns at the infamous Morrisound studios, this is an unearthing of an immediately forgotten gem that anyone into the cult avant-edges of weirdass tech-death-grind should check out, fans of the likes of Obliveon, Kataklysm, Nocturnus, Atheist, Gorguts, Pestilence, Exit-13...
According to this reissue's detailed liner notes, written by lead guitarist/vocalist and founding member Pat Ranieri, the band started off, in the context of smoking lots of pot and listening to old '70s prog rock and then-current '80s crossover thrashpunk, with a mission to be as original as possible, to quote: "Each riff was to sound like no other. Each lyric/title was to be completely fresh and never before read." Well, he goes on to admit that the band didn't always succeed at these quixotic goals, specifically and humorously citing the obvious, their name, as not quite living up to the concept: "With originality as key, we chose the most generic name possible to define something never heard before." Whoops! But heck, they tried, how they tried, and the results we think are pretty special, and we're damn glad this got reissued 'cause somehow we missed out on 'em back in 1990...
The cd booklet, in addition to Ranieri's notes, includes full lyrics, photos, lots of full-color graphics (demo tape covers, and old show fliers - they played with Morbid Angel and Die Kruezen, among others), and even a Hellwitch comic strip. Also it sports the album's original, kinda goofy cover painting that makes a bit more sense when you know what syzygy means.
This remastered cd reissue includes not only the band's sole album but also a dozen crucial bonus tracks, taken from demo and rehearsal tapes recorded between 1984 and 1989. It doesn't get any more syzygial than this, miscreants!!
Jussi from Circle recommended this Swedish band to us (we've found out about a lot of cool bands thanks to our friend Jussi), and after we tracked down some copies of their cd, we realized we needed to recommend 'em to you, too! Helvetets Port (which means Gate of Hell or something like that) are a current band playing a very deliberately retro, almost tongue-in-cheek style of '80s heavy metal. Not a joke though. They're totally for real, yet revel in the most ridiculous aspects of the music they love so much and strive to emulate. You can immediately see how this would appeal to Jussi (and us), since the next better thing than Circle's "NWOFHM" is of course the actual NWOBHM, which this band is obviously especially inspired by. Helvetets Port are four metal-lovin' Swedes playing dress up in color-coordinated spandex and scarves, but going beyond that to deliver the goods with galloping guitars, piercing falsetto shrieks, wonderful lyrics about diamond claws, Japanese warlords, and the threat of being killed by a reaper. That's what's most charming about this band, their (inadvertently?) silly, seemingly earnest songwriting in the best "story-telling" Iron Maiden-esque tradition. Their songs, though none of 'em long (2-3 minutes, most of 'em), are all mini-prog epics, utterly over the top, the band pushing to the limit of their ability and beyond, always totally catchy but also a bit awkward, their ambitious arrangements quite quirky. The accent-laden vocals, too, sometimes seem a bit strained, but these factors are overruled by their enthusiasm and just add to this band's "real people" feel, making their retro NWOBHM worship (and not just NWOBHM, as we suspect they like other, over the top old schoolers like Manowar and Thor too) seem all the more authentic, bound for cult fandom if they can keep it up.
They remind us a bit of the USA's Harbinger, another young band who like to pretend it's 1983, in real life as well as on record, in fact, if you watch the impressive/hilarious video that's supposed to be included as a bonus on this disc (we couldn't actually find it, but it's on YouTube anyway) for their song "Lightning Rod Avenger" you'll see these kids doing things the old fashioned way...
This was produced by the singer from Enforcer, another spandex-clad Swedish metal band of retro persuasion whom we've recommended previously, though Helvetets Port way outdoes Enforcer with their sheer, sincere, imaginative eccentricity (if not in other ways too). Hail Helvetets Port!!
Wow! The wonderful, wonderful music of organist Merit Hemmingson combines a bunch of stuff we just simply LOVE but never heard quite like this before. The title of this "best of" collection boldly suggests as much to you too, right? Swedish Hammond Folk Groove, yeah!! We hadn't heard of her before we came across this, but now we know she made a handful of records in the '70s that brought together ancestral Swedish folk melodies, jazzy Hammond organ grooving, and some colorful psychedelic moves. Merit's Hammond is at the fore, playing her own swingin', riffin' take on these traditional tunes, but the arrangements also variously incorporate '70s funky wah-wah psych guitars, her lovely, wordless vocals, flutes and bongos and more... It's all so sunshiney and delightful, reminding us of everything from Hansson & Karlsson to Turid to The Free Design to a calmer, mellower version of Aavikko! And of course modern-day Swedish folk organ duo Sagor & Swing.
Merit's music is gentle, soulful, rhythmic -- so nice! It's total "grooving with trolls and flowers in the forest funk". Not your everyday organ jazz that's for sure, though Merit got her start in the '60s playing jazz -- she came over to the New York City to study, taking piano lessons from both Joe Zawinul and Lalo Schifrin and even getting to sit in with Miles Davis's band! But soon she went in a more pop/funk direction, and then became inspired by Scandinavia's rich history of olden folk music to create the sounds heard here.
The twenty tracks on this collection are all from albums originally released between 1971-1977 (Huvva, Trollskog, Bergtagen, Balsam, and Hoven Droven) except for a couple of recently-recorded tracks at the disc's end done in a similar style, featuring as sidemen members of currently happenin' Swedish retro-leaning rock bands (and big Merit fans) Dungen and The Ark! That's right, while obscure for years even in Sweden, she's undergone a bit of a hipster rediscovery lately and in fact this disc (the first time on cd for most of this music) is the prelude to a new album due out this year.
Queen Of Swedish Hammond Folk Groove is a nicely deluxe package, in a slipcovered jewelcase with a thick booklet full of photos, liner notes in both English and Swedish, and Merit's own track-by-track commentary. We had to go to a bit of trouble to import these from Sweden, but it was worth it!
Here's another set of moody abstract electro-acoustic soundscapes from Supersilent trumpeter Arve Henriksen, his third solo outing on the Rune Grammophon label, as lovely as the other two. In addition to his calm, melodic, breathy "glacial Miles Davis" horn playing, he also utilizes electronics and keyboards and wordless singing. Plus Supersilent bandmates Stale Storlokeen Helge "Deathprod" Sten (on production duties as well) contribute on keys and guitars respectively, adding to the overall mysterious drone-factor of this music, some of it very Supersilent-sounding (as you might expect with this lineup), some parts particularly reminiscent of the austere Arctic tranquility of Henriksen's solo debut on Rune G, Sakuteiki. Overall, there's an air of olden mystic ceremony, with tracks like "Glacier Descent" building to white-light shining bliss. Ominous relaxation... definitely for fans of Supersilent and Deathprod.
What's the last "nature sounds" disc we reviewed on our list? There was the cd-r of bat sounds we listed last time. But we'd had bats before. However, we can safely say that this is the first, and probably only recording we've ever heard... of dinosaurs!! Ok, obviously this isn't a "real" field recording. No time machines were involved. Or experimental genetic science out of a Michael Crichton novel. Nor are we being told any stories about how, through some improbable process, sound waves were frozen in amber millions of years ago, waiting to be decoded and heard by us today through the miracle of modern technology. Nope, this is fake fake fake. But it has the imprimatur of a real field recording, being brought to us by Jean-Luc Herelle, the recordist/naturalist responsible for the AQ fave Pastoral Bells, and others on the illustrious and Sittelle label, and the cover proclaims it a "scientific interpretation" (to the extent of relying on audio experiments done with fossils).
Knowing that AQ customers go gaga for environmental sounds, the weirder the better, it probably won't take much to convince you all that a disc of Jurassic Soundscapes belongs in your collection. So here it is, the grunts and growls and splashings about of the DINOSAURS! Or, they could simply be scary monsters... or, birds with a pitch shifter. That's right, since we all know that modern day birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, Herelle has constructed these imagined dinosaur calls out of genuine field recordings of birds, digitally altered to sound like what he thinks (based on the best current scientific theory) these dinosaurs would have in fact sounded like. (Is there a commercially available "Dinosaur effect"? If so, death metal bands should investigate.) Herelle also made good use of recordings of various amphibians, who also have their dinosaur connections, insects and mammals too...
The first of the four tracks on this disc is a 21+ minute number entitled "Moving Back To The Trias Period, To The Marine Environment Of Early Jurassic", between 230 and 200 million years BC. It starts of with watery drippings and what sound like backwards tape effects (!), soon joined by rumbling cries of eight meter long Plateosaurus, which is then scared off by the equally even more terrifying carnivorous Coelophysis!
Apparently, there was tons of reverb in the Jurassic period. It's a bizarre listen, for sure. The electronic effects are obvious, but one soon suspends one's disbelief, and becomes absorbed in the rather eerie world that Herelle has cleverly conjured.
The second track finds Herelle exploring a "Forest Of Giant Sequoyas Of The Later Jurassic", 170 million years BC. In the distance, *something* cries for a mate. And at one point, some sort of leathery winged flying reptile flaps by. Track three takes us to a "Swamp Forest Of The Cretaceous" (144 million years BC) for about half an hour. Scaly beasts moan and coo and moo and bellow. Our friends the Rutting Red Deers would possibly feel right at home conversing with the denizens of the Jurassic. And then as a finale, Herelle presents a "Time Slide Into Prehistory"...
In the liner notes, Herelle explains his procedures for this project, and helps to detail for the mind's eye the scenes he has set, these aural dioramas if you will. Each track is provided with a narrative, of what creature is plodding, swimming or flying about, and why, making for this imaginative, varied "natural" symphony. While the label admits that some might find it hard to take this disc seriously, it does have solid educational basis, paleontologist-approved. This is definitely the closest you're gonna get to hearing the sounds of prehistory, the cries of the baby Iguanadon and of the mighty Tyrannosaurus, the growls of the Stegosaurus and the twitterings of the Archaeopteryx... who could pass that up? Recommended of course!
London's heaviest, most hypnotic head-cavers, Hey Colossus, have found a home for their third album on the Riot Season label, who have previously brought us noize from the likes of Mainliner, Shit and Shine, and Aufgehoben. Heck, the label's logo features a trio of tanks, so of course Hey Colossus is a good match for their aesthetic. Being so brutally heavy and all, tank-like basically.
Happy Birthday (ironic title we guess, this is about as far from "Happy Birthday" the song as you can get) sees Hey Colossus doing what they do best: throbbing, distorted, kill 'em all action. Uber heavy, totally bad trip psychedelic. From the feedback intro of opening track "War Crows" and the rasping, ranting throat abuse that follows amidst pulsating, amped up electric murk, this Hey Colossus album destroys like a more rockin' version of Khanate... the Khanate comparison even more apropos on the next track, the more slowly thudding "Tight Collar". Part metal, part punk, part psych... what to call it? Ugly rawk doom drone maybe? With wailing Hawkwindy ampfriedification n' FX, heading into tortured dead zones of sheer nihilistic sludge, Hey Colossus fits in with such faves as Indian, Brainbombs, Unsane, Cadaver In Drag, godheadSilo, Pissed Jeans, Vincent Black Shadow, Cavity, Rusted Shut... and those other Riot Season acts mentioned at the beginning of this review. In other words, glorious stuff for those so inclined (like us!), pulling the listener who dares inexorably into its extreme vortex.
There's eight tracks here, 46+ minutes of the Hey Colossus experience, which threatens to run itself (and you) off the rails into total insanity as it rocks and rumbles on. Can't pick fave tracks really, they're all pretty badass, but the driving uptempo umph of the waveringly blown-out "Fire Up The Tambourine" is certainly quite wicked. Even more out there, "Permanent Vacation" parts 1 and 2 is full of bottom-of-the-abyss, buried alive vocals in a shitstorm of droning distortion... And how can we not like a track, especially a pounding, noisy, rhythmic near-13 minute epic, that's called "Overlord Rapture In Vines Part 2"?? It's the psycho-delic explosion that ends this album appropriately apocalyptically. Happy fuckin' birthday indeed.
Earlier this year when we reviewed School Of The Flower, the latest from modern day acid folk hero Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance, we mentioned that Ben had become obsessed with the music of one Gary Higgins, an obscure '70s hippie singer/songwriter whose lone LP from 1973, Red Hash, had developed something of a cult following over the decades, not that all that many people had even ever heard OF it, let alone actually heard it. But those who had all spoke highly of its mystic beauty, mysterious aura, and so forth. Ben covered a Higgins song on School Of The Flower, and asked that if anyone knew of his whereabouts to let Drag City know. Apparently that paid off, 'cause now Drag City *has* managed to track down Mr. Higgins and properly reissue Red Hash on cd to enlighten all of us to its wonders. And we bet Ben is excited to now be labelmates with one of his heroes! (They've even performed together in recent months!)
Kicking off with the song that Six Organs' covered, "Thicker Than A Smokey", Red Hash immediately lives up to its reputation as a hidden treasure of psychedelic folk music, oft slow and sad and melancholically melodic. There's a lost and lonely vibe to a lot of this, with Gary's gentle singing and acoustic guitar backed by friends playing piano, cello, mandolin, flute and more. Together they weave eleven tracks of entrancing dope smoking folk music, drifting, sometimes dreary, but always oh so lovely. The freakiness is mainly in the lyrics, which can be quite interestingly cryptic and weird, often regarding the worried wandering and woes of a young man, while the music remains alluringly melodic and inwardly calm. Though, with a deeper voice and more urgent tone, the Beefheartian "Down On The Farm" stands out as more menacing (and humorous) than the rest.
This remastered Drag City reish is really nicely done, with a full-colour booklet of photos and lyrics. Two (lesser) bonus tracks are also included, "Last Great Sperm Whale" from 1975 and "Don't Ya Know" from sometime in the early '80s. But the album alone is a gem and shines just a bright now as it did briefly back in '73. By the way, one reason for its obscurity is that shortly after the LP's original release, Higgins was sent away to prison to do a two-year stretch on a pot bust... so it must be really nice for him to gain some belated recognition nowadays.
Daniel Higgs, of Lungfish and the Pupils, is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. A musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. A legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of Leviathan's Tentacles Of Whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band Lungfish, to an entire record of solo Jew's harp. But in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the Jew's harp, Higgs is also a seriously mean guitar player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. A gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. Lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed Appalachia to John Cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. Raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. We've been listening to this non stop since we got it and it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a boombox, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this tape and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. In other words, WAY RECOMMENDED!
SUPER LIMITED of course. In spiffy, ultra cryptic packaging.
We'd be happy if Daniel Higgs would put out a new album every month. Every week, even. His songs can be long (up to 14 minutes on this disc's "Love Abides") but eventually they do end and we always want more more more. Because they are totally entrancing, his raw "Appalachian raga" folk guitar picking style wending and winding while he chants his mystic lyrics repetitively, warbling with the outsider intensity of a Charles Manson... a dramatic delivery that eccentrically enhances the weird wisdom of his words, worth absorbing for their imagery even when their import is not immediately understandable. Well though he's not THAT prolific we're happy to have this new disc on Holy Mountain already, following Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot on Thrill Jockey earlier this year.
Metempsychotic Melodies (whatever that means, it seems like a good title for this!!) starts off with a stark and skillful instrumental, "Universal Salutation", which we're told was "recorded aboard the Starship Weep-For-Lucifer". Again, we believe it, that somehow makes sense. That leads into the aforementioned "Love Abides", an extended mantra for voice and guitar, wherein Higgs sings lines like "Love is the secret seam between waking and dream / love is a breath that bears a boundless scream" and offers up further thoughts from his personal gnosis of love, notions guaranteed to never be repeated in any other "love song" ever!! Such as: "Love, like a basilisk hatched in the nest of a dove / love's got a bible it hides in the folds of a cloud" and "Love is your name when your name has fallen away / love tends the last dawning of the last day"...
As if allowing an interlude to let all that sink in, the third track "Leontocephaline Rhapsody" is a loping, psychedelic instrumental, a gentle jam densely droning and alive with electricity. Then comes the fourth and final song, "All Cherished Things", another display of Higgs' druggy, fascinating poetry. "There's a pearl in your head / the head between your double-head / it's flashing blue and red - hear it sing". He goes on to touch upon some favored themes, Christ, Krishna, coitus, his own dead body, love... Lyrics like "The skull at the foot of the cross is my own" could be creepy, or pretentious, as could be Higgs' unique vocal stylings, but no, not as far as we're concerned. Ok, maybe it is a bit creepy. He's on a wavelength that works (for him -- maybe no one else could pull this off). If Higgs had a cult, we'd seriously consider joining it...truly a treasure of the US indie rock scene, and one of the realest deals in the "acid folk" underground. We'll be spinning this highly recommended album with ceremonial regularity as it takes its honored place in our collection of his music, and of course our anticipation of his next set of shamanic sermons remains high.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The domestic Squealer reissue of this classic PSF album of psychguitar overload from this Japanese combo is out of print, so here's the PSF one, again - at a better price than we used to have it for, yay! One of the essential High Rise documents.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another one of the essential High Rise documents.
Where does the esteemed Professor Chris Black find the time?? Surely the most prolific man in heavy metal, with one of the best track records out there too, fronting Dawnbringer and Superchrist, drumming in cult epic power metal faves Pharaoh, doing that Aktor project with Jussi from Circle - oh yeah, and now ALSO fronting a Metalucifer tribute act called... wait for it... MetalUSAfer! (featured elsewhere on this list!), and while basically everything the man lays his hands on turns to heavy metal gold, if we had to pick a favorite here at aQ it just might be the motivational montage heavy metal High Spirits. They're just too fun, too catchy, too rock & roll.
2013 is more of a stop-gap release, made up of demos from the last couple of years, but we'll take whatever we can get when it comes to this band. And since these are demos there's an added rawness which is not at all unwelcome, giving these songs even more of an added sense of urgency than usual. For those not in the know, High Spirits play driving, fist pumping NWOBHM style metal perfect for speeding down a desert highway in the dead of night, hands clutched on the wheel in a pair of fingerless leather gloves. Opener "One Last Chance" is the perfect example - the kind of song you'd listen to when you've only got one more shot to make the grade, before the moment is lost forever... You know, that kind of thing! "Be My Shelter", with its harmonized leads over a fragmented rock & roll groove, is a bit reminiscent of early Devil's Blood - perfect for galloping down a dusty trail en route to an old West duel. "If I'm Gone" is a midpaced heartbreak rocker that wouldn't sound out of place on that recent Falcon album we raved about - the kind of track that might be playing while you flip up the collar on your leather jacket and turn away from your lady for the last time, in slow motion, a single tear only concealed by a tasty pair of aviator sunglasses. And while there's definitely a sense of genuine fun in High Spirits music like we mentioned before, the vocals and lyrics are delivered with such earnestness that the songs never devolve into homage, pastiche or parody. It's just street level, night time rock & roll - either you get it or you don't, and we are fully on board.
Like we said, these are demos, and we're looking forward to High Spirits' new full-length album, You Are Here, coming out in April on Hells Headbangers and High Roller.
Yay, You Are Here is here! Man, we love this band - or man, since the band is just one fella, Chris "Professor" Black, one of metal's most prolific and prodigious talents at the moment. He's guy behind Dawnbringer, for one thing. Just a little while ago, we listed High Spirits' latest demo disc, as well as another brainchild of Chris', the MetalUSAfer 7" (a brilliantly conceptual tribute of sorts to cult Japanese true metal stalwarts, Metalucifer). Not long before those, we had that unique Aktor single, featuring Chris in cahoots with Jussi from Circle.
So we, and hopefully you too, are pretty well primed for this brand new full-length album from Chris' purest (purist?) metal project, High Spirits, full of more of the NWOBHM-inspired, 'motivational montage metal' (our phrase) we love about them, er, him. (High Spirits do have a live formation, by the way, with Chris joined by guys from Zuul, but in the studio, it's all Chris.)
The prime paradox of High Spirits' songs are that they're seemingly deliberately calculated to be the soundtrack for rainslick city streets at night, illuminated in neon light (kinda cheesy and cinematic, on the poppier side of '80s heavy metal stylings, right?), but they're also, in part due to Chris' earnest voice, very sincere and heartfelt sounding too, not ironic or anything. On this album, High Spirits pulls it off again. Great stuff, super catchy as always, from the uptempo opener "When The Lights Go Down" (the only track here to also appear on that demo disc), to anthemic rocker "I Need Your Love", to moody but also rockin' breakup track "Reminding You Of Me", to their fantastic theme-song closer "High Spirits" (reprised from their debut demo of 2009), heck all nine cuts are great. There's tons of fuzz on the guitar, tasty solos abound, and lyrically it's all about loves won and lost, mostly the latter. Simple, fun stuff in a way, but who does this anymore? And does it so well? And with such gravitas and aplomb? Gotta love it. Also gotta love the cover art, High Spirits' ditching the usual metal graphic conventions for a celebration of public mass transit.
Ok, we could go on and on, but we already told ya how much we love High Spirits, just listen to the sound samples if you're still undecided; if the songs don't tug on your heartstrings and/or get your head to banging, then you're no friend of ours (not really, but it always sounds cool to say that).
We have cds, and colored vinyl while they last.
When we were making our top tens for 2010, Allan realized that one of the discs he loved and listened to the most this year was something we hadn't even reviewed yet - and actually came out in 2009. Finally, we just got it in, though, direct from the band. It's this, High Spirits' self-titled debut, which consists mostly of material from two demo cd-rs, but they're the sort of demos with songs that some bands with a career's worth of proper albums could never better. So, some background on the Chicago-based High Spirits... Maybe you recall, in our review of Profound Lore's recent release by Dawnbringer a few lists back, we mentioned that the mastermind behind that outfit, Chris "Professor" Black, was also in a NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) worshipping band called High Spirits. What with the critical acclaim that Dawnbringer has received, we expect some folks will be interested in this too - especially since as far as we're concerned, High Spirits is even better. Rather than trying to synthesize a variety of metal methodologies the way Dawnbringer does, High Spirits does one thing and does it so well... catchy, classic, honest to gosh pop songs in retro-metal guise, sounding so authentically NWOBHM that it's uncanny. Seriously, if someone told us that lead-off track "Torture" was a long lost single recorded by a band from London or Liverpool in 1980, we'd believe it.
Dunno how he does it, the Professor surely is talented a talented fella, with this, like Dawnbringer, being a one-man operation (though he's got accomplices for live performances, including two dudes from like minded retro metallers Zuul). The lo-fi demo budget production only adds to the atmosphere of awesomeness, as far as we're concerned. High Spirits simply rules, with warm, wonderfully FUZZED guitars, relentless riffing, tasteful solos, and Professor Black's slightly strained, ever so vulnerable, melodic vocals... and let's give it up for his lyrics, not something that we usually notice on most metal albums... they're pretty well-written for what they are, rock n' roll boy meets (or loses) girl cliche. Lyrics about loving and dreaming and yearning and running away, coming across as quite heartfelt, done with subtle cleverness. One line that stood out was: "Everything is what it seems / Just like in your dreams". Another we liked: "You left me crying on the day you said goodbye / But we both know you were so good at telling lies".
Memorable, melancholic, majestic, rockin'... Oooh. So good, can't wait for a new full-length. But even if this was all they ever did (and they have put out a 7" since), High Spirits should get some recognition, for conjuring such a classic sound - and songs - in this day and age. It's indeed about the songs, and the spirit - which is high indeed. Of all the new school of old school metal bands we've come across, High Spirits is one of the most worthy, please don't miss this. Heck, if NWOBHM means nothing to you but a jumble of letters, give this a shot, even folks into the current crop of indie garage pop with fuzzy guitars might just have a new favorite metal band!!
Available in either compact disc or vinyl formats, the cd in a digipack, the lp in a gatefold sleeve, both with minimal, black text on plain white graphic design that's simple but striking, lets the music speak for itself, and contributes to the super old school and underground vibe too.
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
An obscure early '70s American power trio that we'd never heard of until a bootleg cd recently crossed our path. Intrigued by the cover photo of three long-haired stoner dudes, we checked it out (hoping for something akin to Sabbath or Budgie but perfectly aware that we were more likely to discover something more like unsuccessful ... wannabes). Lo! Highway Robbery turned out to be bonafide heavy-hitters, playing proto-metal in the Led Zep vein, with moments recalling Sabbath and the Who. Huzzah! Double huzzah, 'cause we then discovered that this, their only album (originally released by Capitol in 1973) had serendipitously just been reissued by Collectables, and we could share our discovery with the lucky patrons of Aquarius. It's almost all super heavy and rockin, despite the obligatory misguided pop efforts made by all not-metal-yet hard rockers of the era, it's got a singing drummer, they've got the look, what more do you want! Fans of current or vintage "stoner rock" should jump on this. Wow, it's always nice to find that there's stuff out there remaining to surprise us.
We imagine the master sleeps soundly, if THIS is the music loudly vibrating in his dreams! He may never wish to wake up. Here's the 2nd album from (to be sibilantly alliterative) this spacey Swedish psych band, the first we've listed - though if this proves as popular as we think it really should, we'll try to get more of their self-titled 2009 debut to review as well. Plain old Hills are not to be confused with WHITE Hills, though they almost could be - their brand of mantric, mesmeric, FX laden, krautrocking groove is definitely in the same druggy realm as White Hills, and that of other AQ faves like Circle, Salvatore, and especially Wooden Shjips. No doubt they all share many of the same influences, from Can and other krautrock to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3. So if that sort of stuff is your bag, Hills comes highly recommended!
While mainly instrumental, there's more singing here than on the debut, but the echo-effected vocals are just another part of the throbbing wash of sound, riding waves of heavily phased guitar, motorik drums, and insistent organ (that specifically reminds us a bit of Circle relatives Itavayla). While we KNOW we're always saying stuff is repetitively hypnotic, Hills really do it to perfection, locking into to inescapable, all-encompassing grooves you never want to end. They also delve into instrumental electric, folky passages with melodies that perhaps draw upon their native Nordic traditional tunes, a la Kebnekajse back in the '70s, though they can sound somewhat Eastern-inflected as well. And final track "Death Shall Come" is a spaced out droning ritual, getting into OM territory there...
We'd love to see these guys (and gal) play live, do a US tour soon please please please! In the meantime, this disc will be in heavy rotation 'round here, and should be required listening for anyone into SF's Wooden Shjips for sure...
RennFaire gone Rock In Opposition? Italian prog meets medieval madrigals?? We're still puzzling about how to describe this wonderful, wonderful disc, a remastered cd reissue of a rare LP (long awaited by some, totally new to us but very welcome -- thanks Robot!) which was recorded by composer Kay Hoffman in Florence, Italy in 1977, though not released until 1985, on vinyl in Japan only! On Floret Silva, Hoffman and her collaborators, including members of the very excellent and arty Italian prog band Pierrot Lunaire, took a trove of medieval Latin poetry known as the Carmina Burana -- poems written by anonymous authors around 1200AD that are both religious in nature as well as very earthy and real, about such subjects as love and money -- and set them to music. The settings are diverse (as befits the variety of these texts), and the results are often eerie and pretty and even a little bit groovy, with quirky chamber ensemble/prog rock backing and even the use of field recordings. Utterly magical for the most part, most especially due to the delicate vocals of Jacquline Darby. One song reminds us strongly of Stereolab, others call to mind (rather more obscurely) that Flamen Dialis album we've raved about before. This should appeal to experimental psych-folk fans for sure, even if this unique treasure is really something outside almost any genre designation you'd care to come up with!
This disc (Hollenthon's debut) actually came out last year, but we thought we ought to list it since it was an unfairly overlooked "sleeper" deserving of your attention, and also now we're excited by the prospect of an upcoming second Hollenton album and should
Who'd have thought we'd be so taken with an album that opens with a song about "Six Space Shuttles and 144,000 Elephants"? For that matter, who the heck would MAKE an album with a song called "Six Space Shuttles and 144,000 Elephants"?? Well, a 63 year old 'outsider' artist, Alabama's one of a kind Lonnie Holley, would, and did. This is it, and it's pretty special.
We highlighted Holley's Dust-To-Digital debut last year, Just Before Music, which was not only Holley's first released recording but also Dust-To-Digital's first 'contemporary' release (as opposed to all their well-researched vintage reissues), and this is the equally fantastic follow-up.
Apparently Just Before Music garnered him some fans, as two of the seven tracks here, including the lengthy & hypnotic 13+ minute "Other Side Of The Pulpit", find him collaborating on the music with Bradford Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound) and Cole Alexander (The Black Lips). At first, we were like, oh no, he doesn't need hipster indie rockers messing with his sound - but actually the music on those songs fits in perfectly with all the other tracks that he did all by himself, so no harm done, and probably a great experience for those guys.
Holley's music, if you've heard the debut, you know is sparse and minimalist, with some thumb piano, some synth wash and warble (making us think of Tennessee's improv hillbillies the Shaking Ray Levis at times), and a bit of simple drum machine and other percussion. Reminds us a bit of some of the tracks on that Personal Space comp of electronic '70s soul. Often hypnotic and lovely, and an important part of Holley's unique sound, the electronics and instrumentation still take a back seat to his singing, the main event here, which we'd have to compare to an "outsider" Louis Armstrong when Holley belts it out, with lots of rough garrrrrrgle in his voice. His more gentle, mumbling moments are more akin to Arthur Russell, as we mentioned in our review of Just Before Music ("Holley's vocals, which come across as a shamanistic Arthur Russell as he sings a primitive-futuristic brew of blues mantras that twist into strange abstracted vocalization").
That's for sure true, and those vocalizations - sometimes multitracked, as on the very much mantric "Sun & Water" - when not utterly abstract, convey some wonderful lyrics, poetic and sometimes quite strange. That "Six Space Shuttles" song, one of the hardest to grok here, has something to do with the Queen's birthday (Queen Elizabeth II?) and how Holley wants to celebrate it by sending "expandable, transformable, solar adaptable" space shuttles the size of "the Hindenburg and the Titanic both put together" off into the universe, and when they come back "they can heal the air and fix the water", and wouldn't that be nice? Not sure if we quite get what he's sayin', but we're digging it a lot anyway. Other songs, however, are much more straightforward, like the aforementioned "Sun & Water", its title the main portion of its lyrics.
What all his lyrics have in common is that Holley is "testifying", as he describes it in his brief liner notes. All his life, he says, he's been testifying, in both is visual art and now his music, testifying about his life, a life that almost ended before it really began, when he was dragged under a car as a small child and left in a coma for three months. His life and thoughts since, both happy and sad, is what he's Keeping A Record Of, in his art and music - that's where the title of this cd comes from. And we're so glad Holley has chosen to share his testimony with us, especially since so much of it is such a "joyful noise", as one short piece here, a conversation with members of his church, makes reference to.
Perfect paisley pop from these British Invaders, whose gorgeous harmony vocals and expert songsmithery garnered 'em many a hit from the mid sixties through the early seventies, including "Bus Stop", "Carrie-Anne", "King Midas In Reverse", and ten others
We have to say, anything that we could mistake for Pink Floyd one moment, and Freedom Hawk the next, is pretty darn cool. And thus, this is! The vinyl-only debut release from a local San Francisco groop whose hypnotic, propulsive neo-kraut rhythms are wedded with muscular rock riffery in a kind of stoner rock meets retro prog blend that should appeal big time to folks into the likes of Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo, White Hills, Lumerians, 3 Leafs, and Circle.
The guitars sprawl psychedelically, the drums (played by the former drummer of trance-inducing Bay Area black metal legends Weakling, also ex-Saros) lock into endless grooves, and upon occasion cleanly-sung melodic vocals soar up and over those mesmeric beats and churning, chiming guitars... There's also heck of analog synths put to traditional good use here, especially on the album's big finale, the nearly quarter hour "Fading Twilight", an epic track, both gorgeous and powerful, that you could play alongside your favorite, most spaced-out, pot-perfumed '70s album sides for sure. Hollow Mirrors really display their authentic love for real old school prog (a la Atomic Rooster, Eloy, Far East Family Band, ELP, Steve Hillage, and anything Roger Dean ever painted an album cover for, probably) on that one! And elsewhere too, although overall Hollow Mirrors are a modern, original band, not a retro exercise to the extent of say, an outfit like Astra or BigElf (cool as they are).
If we had to make any (hopefully constructive) criticism at all about these killer spacegothkrautstonerjams from Hollow Mirrors, well, maybe we'd like to hear a bit more dirt and grit in the production next time, it's almost a bit too clean, and could possibly be heavier too, considering the metallic pedigree of some of the folks involved (like the aforementioned drummer!). But that's not really a criticism, just an observation. They can do their thing their way and we're happy to hear it. 'Tis fine stuff we think a lot of you will like. A lot.
We don't list a lot of death metal, really. But when it's on Profound Lore, comes from Finland, sounds more like doom metal, super slow and sludgy, is obsessed with cult horror cinema of the '70s, and features the dude (Lasse "Leper Messiah" Pyykko) from Acid Witch, we do!* And recommend it, too. This here's the second album from Hooded Menace, eagerly awaited by many ever since their 2008 debut on the Razorback label (who also released the amazing Acid Witch album Witchtantic Hellucinations, as well as a couple of the prolific Pyykko's other projects, Claws and Vacant Coffin), and it's a doomful, deathly doozy.
Never Cross The Dead plods forth with such wonderfully wretched heaviness, there's an immediate "this is for me" or "this isn't" reaction you'll have, needless to say, we're in the former camp. Pyykko's crushing guitar tone is massive yet morose, sounding quite Cathedral-like its despairing doomishness, also possessed by some of the buzzing bite of that old school Swedish death metal Sunlight studios sound. We're talking about early Cathedral (the UK doom metal band), circa Forest Of Equilibrium, yeah!!! Which is akin to Sabbath at their most molasses-like, guitar parts warped under their own weight, weeping and creeping, leaden and lachrymose, over which Pyykko's guttural crypt-breath exhalations (aka singing) put the ill in vokill.
Hooded Menace revel in riffs that trudge like the midnight procession of a coven, or hopelessly heave (metaphoric, musical) shovelfuls of earth like a victim compelled to dig their own grave... though they'll also often break into a gallop, or bust out some soloing, with melodic old school metal fervor, clawing forth like undead attackers from that very same grave! And as you can guess from our purple prose in this review, atmospherics are important, and indeed there's a palpable eeriness over it all, if not utter seriousness, horror fans having a sense of humor y'know (by the way, we noticed Pyykko happens to be wearing a hoodie in the band photo under the digi tray, wonder if that's intentional, ha).
Never Cross The Dead concludes with a cover of Anton Garcia Abril's "Theme From Return Of The Evil Dead", a lot more metal than the version that originally appeared in that 1973 film, for sure! Return Of The Evil Dead, aka Return Of The Blind Dead, aka El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos, being the second in the "Blind Dead" series of Spanish horror films directed by Amando de Ossorio, featuring evil, hooded, zombie-like Knights Templar risen from the dead to terrorize humanity, from which Hooded Menace take their name, and inspiration for more than a few songs, though they also celebrate the likes of Hammer Horror flicks ("The House Of Hammer"), Frankenstein ("Terror Castle"), and other good things. If you like horror, you like heaviness, you like metal, Hooded Menace is for you. And thus for fans of the following, too: Cathedral, Hellhammer, Incantation, Winter, Acid Witch, Skeletal Spectre, etc.
FYI, Profound Lore is doing a special sale deal with us on these, so they're $2 cheaper than normal (regular price would be $13.98) for the next two weeks!
*Heck even just two of those attributes will do, the doomy death of another Profound Lore act, Vasaeleth, also getting the nod from us a couple lists back as well, even though they're not Finnish and take a more serious, less cinematic approach to the occult than Hooded Menace and those other Razorback acts...
Here's our '70s proto-metal pick for this week's list. It's an archival release compiling the never-released album this Houston hard rock quartet put to tape in 1978, along with a bunch of bonus tracks from the same era, and holy heck it smokes!! It's aptly titled for sure.
If you're reading this on our website, you can see the thumbnail image of the front cover, with the band's name and album in the form of a young lady's 'tramp stamp' tattoo, but we wish we could show you this disc's back cover photo too. It pretty much says it all, four long haired musician dudes, in a cloud of fog-machine mist, striking an assortment of classic, exuberant rock n' roll poses. And one of the guitarists is brandishing a particularly cool, cruel & unusual instrument - the body of his guitar looks more like some strange four-bladed axe. Very metal. And Hooker definitely incorporate some metallic moves into their badass blend of high energy rippage and heavy Southern blues rock. It's practically like NWOBHM done Texas-style! Although, they have their melodic, sensitive side too, even throwing in a little balladry and Jesus-lovin' honky-tonk (though we don't know how that comports with the sexy and/or sexist nature of some of their other material). Also, we gotta mention one of the mellower tunes, "Beatle", is indeed about imagining being a Beatle, as in, one of the Beatles - a "what if?" scenario any rock n' roller must have considered at one point or another, right? We like the weirdness of that one quite a bit, but the main draw here are Hooker's guitars, the riffs and dueling leads and so forth, to which "Turn it up!!" can be the only proper reaction. Definitely for anyone who digs other obscure American '70s hard rock/early metal action, like previous Rockadrome/Vintage reissues we've recommended by Poobah, Cain, Hillary Blaze, etc.
There's 8 songs here originally recorded for Hooker's unreleased ('til now that is) album, plus 5 more bonus cuts circa '75-'79 or so, including their cover of "I Want Your Body", originally recorded by early '70s proto-metal outfit Tin House.
The fourth album already from Sweden's fabulous hard rocking Horisont, who are one of those bands (mostly Swedish) who just seem to beam in from a fantastical parallel dimension where it's still the '70s, but somehow way MORE the '70s than even the '70s ever were. So they play over the top, prog-tinged, ripping retro-proto-metal heavily inspired by Uli-era Scorpions, Rainbow, fellow countrymen November, and early Judas Priest (just check out the track "Bad News" on this new disc), and they do it freakin' well, mixing hot rockin' with more moody, emotive moments.
On Odyssey, Horisont come brandishing hectic fistfuls of rollicking riffs, alongside heroic, heartfelt vocals and dazzling drumming - total '70s style shred, if you will. If after the first track, which is also the title track, you're not, like, WOW!, then this ain't for you, but we were, like, WOW! within the first few minutes of said track, which by the way is the longest on the album, a 10+ minute pulp sci-fi opus (hence a bit of extra zappiness to the keyboards). Definitely recommended to fans of Danava, for sure.
While, sure, there were indeed heaps of exciting Record Store Day releases to freak out about this past weekend, but as you can tell from perusing this week's list, there are of course lots of other recently released things to get excited about as well. Like this - especially if you dig goddamn good ol' rock n' roll music. It's the new album from Swedish retro-proto-metallers Horisont, released Stateside by Rise Above licensees Metal Blade. It just came out this week, on Tuesday, and if we weren't so busy, we woulda been happy to spend Tuesday night with this cd and a six pack of an appropriate bubbly beverage as our only entertainment. As you might have already surmised from the title, this is Horisont's second album. We raved about their debut Tva Sidor Av Horisonten a few years back (the first word of our review was "Wow"), and Allan here was lucky enough to see 'em play at Roadburn in 2010 (they slayed!), so yeah we've been eagerly anticipating this new album, and it's a doozy, definitely for fans of Witchcraft, Graveyard, Burning Saviours, Gentleman's Pistols, Danava, and others who keep the spirit of '70s style heavy rockin' alive today. Meaning, also for fans of Sabbath, Judas Priest circa "Sad Wings", Uli-era Scorpions, UFO, Nazareth, Swedish gods November, Leaf Hound, and all the other (proto-)metal granddaddies that the Horisont boys are doubtless making very proud.
There's ten new, timeless sounding, tracks here, rollickin' with boogie rock action borne of both youthful exuberance and love of those classic influences. Horisont kick out the jams big time, veering from bluesy, bellbottomed lope to sheer speedy early-metal gallop, these songs replete with soaring vox and soaring melodies, lots of tasty guitar harmonies and catchy riffs. You've got your hard rockers, a few moodier, psychier moments, more hard rockers, and then wow when it seems that it can't get any better, the disc ends with a hell of a bang, Horisont creating their proggiest metallic construct yet with the stuttering, stunning "Thunderflight", a NWOBHM-ish triumph that fans of such diverse acts as La Otracina, Pharaoh Overlord and even Slough Feg will want to hear in heavy rotation. Along with the rest of the disc. Damn. We know that Swedes seemingly have access to a Rock n' Roll Way Back Machine, and Horisont have put it to good use here, again.
We just can't stop spinning this, the rockin' and rollin' new record from Sweden's wondrous Horisont, entitled Time Warriors. More like time trippers. It's another blast of their retro '70s proto-metal stylings, a la countryfolk Witchcraft, Graveyard, and Troubled Horse, but Horisont have a bit more of a "metally" sound to 'em, they're obviously big into the gallop of post-Sabbath '70s metal like early Judas Priest and Scorpions, when those bands were still sorta psychedelic though. We loved Horisont's previous two platters, and this one is hitting the spot just as much, or more!
Lotsa good riffs light things up left and right, plus the singer ain't afraid to really belt it out, letting loose with some high pitched screams as the need arises - reminding one aQ customer of the guy from Cirith Ungol! Singer and band both go at it with plenty of passion and power. You sure can tell they love what they do... and are damn good at doing it.
Most of the songs are sung in English, though a couple are in Swedish, including one called "Dodsdans" that lopes majestically in the vein of Thin Lizzy. Another one worth mentioning is epic (and aptly-titled) album-closer "All Must Come To An End, Part I & II", which gets super melodic and heartfelt, before a ripping and rollicking finale. Horisont can do emotive, and they can do ass-kicking. Yeah! In the running with Kadavar, Free Fall, and Hot Lunch for best heavy rock album of 2013 that sounds like it came out in, like, 1973. Well, this, maybe more like '76.
It's not just us that thought Horseback's latest album was so awesome. A blurb taken from the following review of ours does appear on this Relapse-reissued and repackaged top obi, alongside similarly enthusiastic quotes from both The Wire magazine and Invisible Oranges blog.
Originally released by the amazing Utech label, this album garnered the attention of the corporate metal overlords (just kidding) at Relapse, who obviously thought it could, and should, find a wider audience. Good for Horseback! Definitely pick this one up if you missed the Utech edition. Here's what we said about it before:
Something very strange must have transpired since the last Horseback disc. Something traumatic maybe? Some spiritual crisis of sonic faith? Where that record was a glistening, glimmering, dreamy, drifty drone record, this one is, well, much heavier, and more rocking, and WAY more intense and EVIL sounding. So much so that it almost sounds like a different band. That said, we dig it. A LOT.
Super intense, and super heavy psychedelic twang flecked metallic post rock. The guitars buzz, and drone, and occasionally twang, the drums are powerful, tight, the instruments locked into slow burning build ups, some strange hybrid of newer Earth, Godspeed, Circle, the Necks and maybe a little Scenic. There's a sort of krautrock vibe going on too. Sun baked, a little lysergic, space-y hypnotic, repetitive, the tracks looooooong, with mostly a single part, that gradually builds and builds. The cool thing is it never explodes into a metal coda, a la Isis or Neurosis or a million other bands, it's all about the journey not the destination, and the journey is riveting enough without tacking on an explosive blow out.
But then there's the vocals, a harsh demonic rasp totally at odds with the music beneath, which in some ways makes the combination sound that much more intense and evil. Especially when the rasps are locked in a sort of call and response with the guitars, really strange but definitely compelling.
The first three tracks are variations on a theme, each an incredible slab of brooding, mesmerizing hypno-rock, lush and layered, with tons of cool little extra guitar flourishes, the drums busy enough to be interesting, but still locked tight into the groove, those vocals, adding menace for sure, but also a strange element that as mentioned above changes the whole feel. A track will be moody and woozy and will suddenly sound a bit evil, or at least a little ominous, before slipping back into the loping, pounding crush of the main riffs.
The strangest thing about this record is that the track with the most overtly evil title, the closer "Hatecloud Dissolving Into Nothing", is the least heavy or evil of the bunch, and the only track that sounds like the first Horseback record. A 16+ minute drift of soft focus new age-y ambience, of dreamy drift, sun dappled guitars draped over long stretches of gauzy whir, the sound delicate and crystalline, definitely dreamy and blissed out, the only remnant of the tracks that came before, are some barely audible harsh vokills, way way way down in the mix, that almost sound like a slow shifting layer of hiss or buzz, beneath the kaleidoscopic shimmer of blurred guitar hum and melancholic melody, another strange combination, but similar to the vocals on the first three tracks, they lend a very subtle hint of menace to the otherwise tranquil proceedings.
The new jewelcase packaging is still quite nice, though not as gorgeous as the original Utech sleeve.
The fog rolls in almost every night here in San Francisco, but only once in a very great while is it a HOT fog. Which is to say, we've been waiting for this second album from these local, retro heavy metallers for a while now, and at last it's here, on both cd and vinyl, resplendent in eye-catchingly colorful, phantastic Alan Forbes artwork.
Gotta love these guys - though they may be dad-aged dilettantes (previously in punkier bands), they rip it up mightily, paying homage to Iron Maiden and Metallica. The goods they deliver here range from galloping NWOBHM influenced stormers like "Priest Of The Hillpeople" to sleazy, quasi-ironic party time rockers like "Tonight! (In The Night)" to triumphant epics like the 9+ minute "Agamemnon's Gambit" to doomed-out thrashers like "Epoch Of The Tyrants". There's plenty of melody, even plenty-ier of riffs, lots of shredding leads, and some sweet acoustic intros. Amateur air guitarists, flex your fingers! Also, the vocalist wails away quite convincingly, even when his lyrics are ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek.
You can be a troo grim sourpuss and complain that these overgrown teenagers are having too much fun with their metal, but we'd rather have fun too and headbang along to Hot Fog's energetic & majestic old school tuneage. Seriously, this rules. Fans of certain other Bay Area 'bangers, like Hammers Of Misfortune and Space Vacation, should check Hot Fog out, if you haven't already.
FYI, there's also going to be a cd edition on Stormspell that we'll have in just a few days (and list next time), but right now we've got the band's own self-released limited vinyl version while they last, it's a 45rpm double lp 'cause they wanted a gatefold sleeve (and also for maximum fidelity).
The ranks of the Bay Area's true metallions continues to expand, kick ass band by kick ass band. Old timers like Brocas Helm and Stone Vengeance are finally seeing a whole new generation take up the '80s metal torch, like Saviours and Space Vacation. Locals HOT FOG now join the cause, making their debut with this limited edition, vinyl-only five-song 12" release - of which we've got the SUPER LIMITED (100 copies) red colored vinyl, while they last (there's 400 more on black vinyl). It's 180 gram, 45 rpm, with cover art by psychedelic San Francisco poster artist Alan Forbes. Nice. One side of the insert bears the lyrics, the other is decorated with a dungeon map appropriated from an old D&D module! (And there's a picture of an owlbear from D&D as well, gotta love that!)
We also can't help but love the punning title. As with any true metal band in this day and age, it may be that their tongues aren't entirely removed from their cheeks. Without being utterly ironic, you can still have a sense of humor about this brand of D&D metal (you maybe have to). Doesn't stop it from ruling though. And they're definitely SERIOUS about loving medieval metal and kicking ass. Having fun, drinking beer, all that, but not taking the piss to the extent of a band like Boyjazz (who, we gotta say, were pretty killer, silly though they were).
What it comes down to it though, all you need to know about Hot Fog is, do they rock? And more to the point, do they slay? We'd say yea, and verily. Like a fist in the air, the vocals scream and soar. The galloping guitars storm to attack. It's 1983 all over again, and in your face! The riffs are all instant headbangers, dished out with practically punk energy. It's hard for us to decide which song is the most catchy, maybe the Cat Scratch Feverish "Blood Wedding", which reminds us of another local act, Night After Night (RIP).
Their biggest influence is probably (or, should we say, obviously) Iron Maiden, a fact confirmed by their singer/guitarist, who also told us that early Metallica has been sneaking into their songwriting as well... but he's adamant that they shouldn't ever get too thrashy. As he says, you've got have choruses "for the ladies". He also gave us some insight into the band's creative, artistic process: they got drunk and made a long list of cool if nonsensical names for songs (like "Dwarf King Of The Sovereign", "To The Helm", "Blood Wedding", "Death Killers", and "Gloved Vengeance", which happen to be the tracks here). Then, later, whenever someone would come up with good riff, they'd get to pick which song title to use. And the singer then had to write lyrics to fit! Something of a challenge, but he managed to do it, and with flair. Hey if it works for them... maybe that's what 3 Inches Of Blood do too?
If you want to check 'em out in person (we haven't yet had the pleasure, but are looking forward to it), they're playing tomorrow night (that's Saturday, June 19th, 2010 as we write this) opening the "Parkerzalooza VI" at the Bottom Of The Hill, with Earthless, Carlton Melton, and Dirty Power. All those bands are cool, but Hot Fog will definitely be the most METAL of 'em!
Been meaning to list this for a while now, we knew we'd get to it "Sooner Or Later" (as one of the best tracks here is titled) and there was no rush since it's been so long already since the music found here was originally made. San Francisco '70s folk rockers and hash smokers Hot Knives put out a couple of 45s back in the day, but this, their complete full-length album, remained unreleased for like 35 years. As the extensive liner notes in the thick, fully illustrated cd booklet puts it: "Caught in between eras, the Hot Knives were a little too late for the '60s hippie trip and little bit too hippie for the crash 'n' burn punk-rock scene that followed..." But, thankfully, at long last their record has been rescued and released, and it's quite nice indeed, a treat for anyone into the likes of Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and Moby Grape (whose "Hey Grandma" Hot Knives cover here). Also fans of the Flaming Groovies may be interested, as ex-Groovies Tim Lynch and Danny Mihm were members of the Hot Knives, on guitar and drums, respectively, plus Groovies Cyril Jordan and Ron Loney were credited with production, or at least hanging out in the studio, for some of these songs. But the core of the band were lead vocalists Mike and Debbie Houpt, a brother-sister duo whose lovely harmonies hark back to the influence of Peter, Paul & Mary in their youth. But don't think this is all flowery '60s folkiness, the Hot Knives definitely rock out upon occasion. While definitely not new wave punk rockers, they could do the raucous garage thing all right, witness their killer cover of the Knickerbockers "Lies"...
And while we've mentioned a few covers, it's the originals that make this truly worthwhile. Great classic-sounding songs like "I Hear The Wind Blow" deserve to be heard. How was that one not a hit? In the cd booklet, there's a clipping from a vintage issue of the fanzine Bomp!, wondering the same thing, editor Greg Shaw saying the Hot Knives "are the best thing happening in San Francisco these days". Also reproduced in the cd booklet, we noticed a print ad for one of the Hot Knives singles that says it's available at Aquarius Records, and also Rather Ripped in Berkeley, "two of the finest independent record stores in the Bay Area". (The ad also features 7"s by Crime, Bryan Ferry, and The Nerves, among others.)
So, super nice to have this, and so nicely presented, definitely a good example of the seemingly endless supply of lost gems out there still awaiting (re)discovery.
On the same label that released the recent live White Hills tape as well as a post Brainbombs No Balls jam we were never able to get, comes this brand new 7" from these San Francisco psychedelic stompers, thick with blown out guitars, classic rock riffage, wild octopoidal drumming, Stooges-y stomp and wild manic almost Jello-like vocals, the sound a glorious tangle of sixties style psych, eighties punk rock, hairy fuzzy proto-metal and seriously shredding guitar mastery, the lyrics and unhinged vox remind us of some lost proto-punk classic, but then it's all set amidst some BIG riffs and killer melodic leads, which sound way more heavy seventies. Either way, killer stuff, and we're definitely hankering for a full length. Features some super scary green-goo'd space teeth cover art.
Record number two from Howlin' Magic, and it's all about more howlin', more magic too if you're as enchanted by this brand of blown-out blooze as we are. Lo-fi and lovin' it. Is this the first non-Finnish release on the Lal Lal Lal label? Well Howlin' Magic fits right in with the usual Finnish weirdness even though they're just from just down Santa Cruz way, and by they we mean he, 'cause Howlin' Magic is a one man band. Imagine ol' Hasil Adkins playing stuff that sounds more like old Comets On Fire. Such insane all-instrumental shambolic stomp, with a mystic sci-fi hippieish vibe reflected in such song titles as "Voltron", "Quantum", and "The Universe Is Love". As with the first album from Howlin' Magic (not to be confused with Howlin' Rain, by the way!), this is for those who love psychedelic geetar excess, a la everything from Acid Mothers Temple to Michael Yonkers... freakin' recommended!
