Micro-review Fest, 2012: 5 doom/stoner bands, including Badr Vogu, Pelican, 16, Elder and Low Gravity!
Self-described as Blues/ Death Metal/ Ghettotech, from Oakland, CA, Bädr Vogu and their long player, Exitium, are a second generation Cough (who, it could be argued, are a second-generation Electric Wizard); now, while I love me some Cough and EW, Bädr Vogu don’t quite hit those standards: the drums are a bit stiff, the death-growl vocals seem a bit forced… but overall, at jet engine volume, this is a pretty rocking collection of tunes, particularly “Slumlord Blues,” with its lurching, evil blues….
Next: having written previously about Pelican’s riffs here, their vinyl (more…)
Review: Lomera – Self-titled EP
Adapted from Sludge Factory
Starting with an earth shattering bass line reminiscent of Electric Wizard in their Dopethrone days, Lomera will instantly grab you by the balls and throw you into a brick wall of sound. The opening track from their self-titled EP is called Hail The Storm which wastes no time in getting to the point. Most bands under the tag of ‘stoner rock’ will base their song writing structure around their ability to provide the listener with lengthy extended jams which recycle the same guitar riffs over and over but not this 5-peice from Sydney, Australia.
No Way But The River might not have as much brutal riffage but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in quality. This is definitely the track which earns this band their ‘stoner’ tag. The groove laden bass lines and powerhouse drumming from the rhythm section of Rick Swain and Brad Kimber respectively, are clearly the driving force behind this song as they lay down a solid foundation for the soothing solos copious amounts of phasing effects from guitarists Reggie Barber and Jason Higson. To top it of Matt Power delivers a raspy vocal performance which teeters the band on the (more…)
Review – High on Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis
There’s some serious convergence, confluence, coincidence, coalescence… connection– hell, conjuration, this week… for one Matt Pike:
First, the announcement of the upcoming reissue of Dopesmoker, and today one De Vermis Mysteriis….
Here’s the review slurry, everything in one paragraph:
“Serums of Laio,” starts things off: bombast, staccato drum hits with riffs down in C and the faintest hint of a melody in the chorus, “Bloody Knuckles,” again with the tribal drums over a palm-muted, Sleep-on-amphetamines riff which becomes a “Dazed and Confused”-esque riff and then back to Mötorhead tunage… “Fertile Green” says fuck you, you’re not tribal enough to all the drums up to this point in its intro, before becoming Discharge-meets-Bad Religion in its furious downbeating riffage… “Madness of an Architect,” now with the tribal riff added to said drums to begin to succinctly suggest the dominant musical themes herein, baby… “Samsara” the Sabbathian instrumental… (more…)
Mares of Thrace, The Pilgrimage
Based out of Calgary, Alberta, Mares of Thrace is guitarist/vocalist Thérèse Lanz and drummer Stefani MacKichan. They play largely-improvised alterna-doom metal. The Pilgrimage tends to sound like a combination of Kylesa and Black Cobra.
Lyrically, there’s three acts, with subordinate tunes under them– we open with “Act I: David Glimpses Bathsheba,” and its lurching doom riffs, and there’s three tunes during that act; next we hit “Act II: Bathsheba’s Reply to David,” two more items of tunage, and then “Act III: A Curse Falls on the House of David,” which then finishes out with two more.
They’re pretty patently doom, which means (if you’re new to this site), (more…)
Bandcamp Recommendations 3/8/2012
“Temples is a musical journey to the edges of the world, the dreamworld, the subconscious, life, existence, oblivion, sensitory control, concentration, reflection, enlightenment of the conscious and the realization of self.”
Temples are a heavy psych band with some pretty wicked tripped out tunes.
Micro: Slabdragger, Regress
Slabdragger is a great band name, one;
Two, any band that describes themselves as “blues/ jam band/ metal” is worth at least checking out;
Three, their lyrical themes are classified as “epic journeys, weed, sea monsters…”;
Lastly, all this positive foreshadowing actually pays off: this is cool shit. Doomy, screamed sludge metal. “Bab el-Mandeb” is a great sludge tune, “Erroneous Maximus” rocks a vaguely-funky California stoner riff, “Trichome Oddyssey” is a wildly-heavy Pink Floyd, and “Iron Vulture” is the lost Sabbath tune they wish they wrote.
As near as I can ascertain, they’re a three-piece from London. Hopefully they’ll explode over the next few years. They should.
amazon.com link ($6!)
Torche Streaming New Songs From “Decibel” Magazine’s Flexi Disc Series
via PRP
Torche‘s forthcoming Flexi Disc release for “Decibel” magazine has arrived online. You can stream both of the bands previously unreleased tracks “Pow Wow” and “80s Prom Song” over at Soundcloud. (more…)
Review – Uncle Acid & The Dead Beats – Blood Lust
Don’t let the hipster-ish, vaguely Zodiac Mindwarp-ish band name mislead/ dissuade you: these guys write songs, actual complete songs, worth listening to.
After closely studying Bill’s “Best of 2011” list I got a bit hooked on this one.
“I’ll cut you down” sounds a bit like The Devil’s Blood, and “Over and Over Again” like something that would rock out the car speakers in your ’78 LTD– Kansas, or UFO even (anachronistically)… there’s a great main riff.
“Curse in the Trees” is a Satanic lysergic high, not unlike “Cornucopea” with Paul McCartney singing.
Melodically-speaking, this a bit like the White Album, actually– though what with the riffs and the Satantic content, it’s almost like The Dark Gray Album. (more…)
Heavy Pink, 7″ Vinyl
I can feel doom like Something under the sheets with bristles That stinks and moves Toward me…. “A Nice Day,” Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
From that Maple Forum label… home of those monsters Roareth, we get, bien sûr, this band… this band called Heavy Pink. Which, in all seriousness… well… I can’t go into it here. (more…)
Top 20 of 2011– Henry’s Picks
Honorable Mention:
Indian, Guiltless
Top 20:
20: Skeletonwitch, Forever Abomination
Genre-less pure metal: 1982 Metallica, covering Iron Maiden, with Cronos singing.
19: Hour of 13, The Ritualist
Totally generic but awesome satanic Sabbath riff-worship. (more…)
Review – Warhorse – As Heaven Turns to Ash
The sludgiest doom. The most doomed sludge. The archetypal Southern Lord act.
Warhorse came and went with nary a sound– I only happened upon them via a $2 cd in a vinyl store. Shame they’re that hard to find: this is Electric Wizard if they were even further detuned and less stoned and more about Flag (aka super soldier serum) and Peyote than weed.
What the fuck? How did these guys come and go without anyone really noticing?
It’s chilling, in its implications… that you can be made of awesome and still not succeed.
I tried to find somewhere to buy or download it, but the cheapest price I could find online for the CD (as of this writing) was like 24 bucks. Fuckers. (Unless you’re British, then you’re Golden.)
They’re all great tunes. If you must cherry-pick, get “Doom’s Bride” [a strangely non-Asian sound-a-like to Eternal Elysium and/or Church of Misery] or “Black Acid Prophecy.”
The Soda Shop Podcast This Saturday!
Oh come on now. You had to have seen this one coming!
Anyways, The Soda Shop’s Podcast is this Saturday on Grip of Delusion Radio. Tune in at 3-5pm EST to hear some “smoking” good songs!
Setlist:
01 Asteroid – “Dr. Smoke” from Asteroid (2007)
02 Marijuana Johnson – “Slowburn” from Green Hit (2010)
03 Honky – “Love To Smoke Your Weed” from Balls Out In (2005)
04 Acrimony – “The Bud Song” from Bong On – Live Long! (2007)
05 Mighty High – “I Live To Get High” from In Drug City (2008)
06 Clutch – “Willie Nelson” from Slow Hole to China: Rare and Unreleased (2009)
07 Cannabis Corpse – “Shit of Pot Seeds” from The Weeding EP
08 Drunk Horse – “Weed Elf” from Unearthed Gems 7″
09 Groan – “Throne of Weed” from Groan/Vinum Sabbatum Split EP
10 House of Aquarius – “Cosmic Weed” from The World Through Bloodred Eyes (more…)
Acid Witch, Stoned
Well, they’re waaaaay detuned: a fifth down, to the Most Satanic of Keys, B standard– and in addition…?
They’re ugly, and they’re as close to blackened stoner metal as we can get without a Total Protonic Reversal…!
Satan with a spliff!
Kursed one with Kief!
“Live Forever” is a great riff over a Hammond B-3 organ, and the riff in “Witchfynder Finder” is even better. The whole thing is worth getting, but these two are sterling.
Cough and The Wounded Kings: An Introduction to the Black Arts
Having finally caught Cough’s live show last weekend, and in preparing the write-up, I realized I had never reviewed this one (even though I spooged all over Ritual Abuse last year); please consider this my amends.
Two versions of this review–
1) What the guy behind you at the show might say: (more…)
Review – The Atlas Moth – An Ache For the Distance
I love the Atlas Moth– be forewarned. Previously reviewed here, here’s the newest wave of reasons why they’re awesome, and why their newest album, An Ache For The Distance, is balls awesome.
Music like this should give you a good feeling about life in the 21st century, specifically about its tolerance about merging art forms: even 20 years ago, you would never have been able to produce something as genre-mixed as this: best description is emo psychedelic minimalist doom metal.
It’s Pelican, if they got Mortuus (Marduk) and Morrissey (Smiths) to alternate as signers– and then only covered tunes by The Church.
It’s weird as hell and I dig it. And make sure you listen to it on headphones– to hear how the two guitars are at the extreme left and right of the sound field, and how they nearly always play different parts. Their guitar tones are somewhat unique: they use very little gain, but are detuned all the way to B (a fifth below standard).
You get melody (clean vocals alternate with shrieked metal ones), and weight– one guitar usually slogs out a dirgy riff while the other plays a melancholy or angry melody over top it. It’s a fascinating, complex aural experience.
I’m not suggesting anything to you, my impressionable viewers, but I would imagine, hypothetically, that one would do well to listen to this work while chemically-augmented.
Songs? The whole thing is great and works as whole album, rather than a collection of tunes. But if you make me, I’ll cherry-pick you these three: “Perpetual Generations” “Holes in the desert,” and closer “Horse Thieves.”
Go listen, then get it.
[An Ache For the Distance is released Sept. 20.]
Review– Orchid — Capricorn
As original gangsta Paula Abdul would say: Straight Up–
Orchid, and their long-player Capricorn, are Sabbath and Sleep worshipers– and they ain’t care who know. They describe themselves as dark psych-sonic blues. That nails it.
For you stoner/doom connoisseurs, however, you appreciators of the finer differences between acts– the fine difference here involves George Clinton. There’s the tiniest bit of funk on the riffs here (imported from 1971)– they swagger and shake that shit like they’re dying to get in your pants. There’s stank on it.
Album highlight: “He Who Walks Alone,” the most Sleep-inspired track, but with a backend backbeat that’ll rival the snare-strut at the end of The Gap Band’s “You Dropped A Bomb On Me.” [Refresher here.]
It’s generic, vaguely-Satanic, doom-influenced stoner rock– that’s having a really, really good time.
You want it.
Bongripper, Satan Worshipping Doom
Bongripper are so utterly dedicated to doom metal conventions, so resistant to changing them, so insistent that they always be played the same way, that they end up being unique. Satan Worshipping Doom is utterly no-nonsense– not even as far as words go. And you’d think, diabolus in musica aside, there’s really very few forms of music that, without their lyrical content, are Satanic in and of themselves– these guys couldn’t even be bothered to produce something as untr00 as lyrics.
It’s hypnotic doom-cum-sludge, à la Sloath. It’s every generic riff you’ve ever heard in doom/stoner/sludge metal: i.e., the low to high octave (E to high E over and over), and the open chord to flatted fifth and back (like say, “Symptom of the Universe,” and literally every third metal riff)– (more…)
Review– Premonition 13, 13
Aka “Wino’s four-thousanth project.”
OR: Wino’s fond reminiscences of radio-ready 70s cock rock.
First, wicked cool covers: check those boys out. Wino and Co. clearly have some Native American/ Aztec fetish (and is it me, or does the font of the logo on the cover look like the same one from “Scooby Doo, Where Are You”?)….
I hope that was intentional. If so it makes the cover even cooler. Norville Rogers, aka Shaggy, would DIG this. (more…)
Review — Church of Misery — Master of Brutality
Often regaled as their best album, this homage to Sab’s third album (witness the alternate cover), is actually more bluesy than one would expect: the coolest Tom Waits-esque singing metal voice (I love a good, raspy distinct voice that can actually sing), sounding utterly non-Japanese stereotyped, and featuring songs featuring solos that sound like slightly-distorted acoustic guitars, all the way to including solos from distorted-to-shit basses that sound like Cliff Burton resurrected….
all while describing serial killers.
Go on. Listen–
Microreview: Ethereal Riffian, Shaman’s Visions
Black Sabbath, covered by a Sioux tribe in the early 19th century.
How…?
Wormholes, man… fucking wormholes….
Ethereal Riffian, chanunpa in hand, apparently beseeched wakan tanka around several–
Dig “Part II: Beyond (The Search)”:
Micro: Mainliner, Mellow Out
[Originally seen here.]
Here’s my theory about how Mainliner came into existence: Japanese heavy psych band, on LSD, in the middle of playing this lick from Hendrix’ “Purple Haze” [starting at 0:23]…
…were suddenly and violently killed, and Mellow Out is the EVP (electronic voice psychedelia) that results: a spectral, unexplainable, ceaseless repetition from somewhere, possibly beyond the grave, that collected on tape– the sound of a residual haunting over and over and over, like a poltergeist trying to wrest itself free of its mortal mooring… Poltergeist Rock.
Sloath hipped me to Mainliner during my interview with them.
CD: Riot Season records (the vinyl’s sold out), or
MP3s: Amazon
Microreview – The Cosmic Dead – Psychonaut
They should be on Riot Season records: Phased-out, flanged-in riffing jam band detuned to C: Mainliner or Sloath mixed with Phish.
A rock version of Dopesmoker.
Delve– gouge your ears into this.
[Fun fact: the cover looks just like the Space Kook from Scooby Doo.]
Vinyl Review: Pelican’s “What We All Come To Need” on Southern Lord
So, a bit about me:
I love vinyl, I love the way it sounds– but— in all honesty I can’t tell much of a difference between vinyl and any digital medium unless I really know the album in question. I might buy 1 out of 50 albums on record, because, frankly, the others aren’t worth it. The difference is too slight. (more…)
Slomatics/ Selaah Split
So, sometimes I review tracks by putting into a list on my iPod/Zune titled “new stuff,” and put it on random. My thinking is that if I don’t know to whom I’m listening, I’ll get the “most honest” impression. (more…)
The Soda Shop 