I feel like we here in NY have it pretty fucking good. There's a show 7 nights a week, the chinese food is cheap and tasty, you can get just about anywhere you need without burning gas, the people are good lookin, and places to get beer are plentiful. We really only lose out on just about one fucking thing. Electric Wizard shows. GODDAMNIT MOTHERFUCKERS! IT'S THE LAST PIECE OF THE FUCKING PUZZLE!
Yes, so Electric Wizard hasn't played New York, or anywhere in the states since like 2001 or something like that, and we all live release to release to get our fucking fix while gnawing like haggard jackals at the remains of our needleworn copies of Dopethrone. It's still filling after all these years.
Anyways, when I heard that EW was putting out a new album I was pretty fucking stoked. Frankly, I wasn't super into all of Witchcult Today compared to some of the more classic albums but, as a holdover it was pretty good. When Venus in Furs off the new album Black Masses leaked, I was blown away. The Wizard has grown.
If you're looking for the next Supercoven/Return Trip put this down. If you want a rehash of Dopethrone, forget about it. Not even close. If you're looking to hear EW in the middle of a 72 hour speedfreakout then you have found your Mecca. I mean, don't get me wrong, Wizard's idea of "speed" is still about 40bpm slower than everyone else but this shit rocks. Like actually fucking drives. It's awesome. Confusing at first but once you drop your expectation of another full side of space jams, it's pretty fucking dead on.
The songs are still long, the riffs still immovably massive, the vocals spaced out and painful, and the songs never fucking boring/always heavy. Electric Wizard is still the heaviest band in the universe.
I've been trying to figure out a way to get this fucking thing posted for like 2 goddamn weeks. Itunes is the digital equivalent of friggin AIDS man. Anyways, HERE IT IS KIDS! THE FIRST EDTION OF THE NGNV COLLECTIVE HIVE MIND MIX TAPE EXTRAORDINAIRE!
That's right, this right here contains what we all think is a pretty decent representation of our (the current authors) musical tastes/stylings/loves/etc. Since the intro and a few posts last week, you've been getting an idea of what's to come. Well, here's another building block. It's all over the damn place but it's a fun one.
Anyways, the premise was, each contributor gets 3-5 songs to introduce their tastes. This is what we all came up with. Click the filed called NGNV.m3u to get it in the right order.
The crowd did the masters no justice. How people can stand still in the face of that kind of fury is fucking beyond me. We are unworthy of the gifts we were given.
Just got another email today from Eddie of Seven Sisters of Sleep letting me know that they have new videos up. Some of these are reposts but fuck me if they're not worth listening to over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Man, somebody sign these fuckers so I can get the fucking album already, they're the best unreleased band on earth right now and fuck me if they don't put together a hell of a video on top of that.
Just for good measure I threw in some newly posted live Tafkata vids in there too.
Warning: Do not listen to these bands at work, they'll make you want to punch your boss in the neck, piss in the water cooler and peace the fuck out to shred some amps and beers. Jus' sayin'. Support good sludge fuckers.
In the world of sludge there are technically a ton of bands, but when it comes to SLUDGE and it's foundation, there are only two. Eyehategod... and Buzzov*en.
Sludge can sort of be defined as the disgusting, even more anti-social, down-syndromey bastardbaby of hardcore and doom metal. For anyone who listens to hardcore, the thought of crossing a genre that values speed with a genre that values plodding slowness should raise an eyebrow. Well, if you're on as much fucking smack as the guys in Buzzov*en were, this cross doesn't really raise shit much less an eyebrow. In fact, it's probably the only kind of speed you can muster besides the crank you just bought off that biker.
Buzzov*en basically sounds like all the drug-addicted, shit-filled, depressed, violent hate in the world bottled up and slowed to an irrepressible crawl. There's no stopping it, just submit. After over a decade, their first three full lengths are still some of the most, brutal, depressing, heavy music ever committed to tape. Feedback, a layer of creeped out movie samples about violence, and distorted riffs under screamgrowled vocals pretty much sum up the sound that defined a movement.
Start with To A Frown, move to Sore, and end with ...At a Loss. Then buy your tickets. Thanks to Dozer at the Acheron/Crust Massacre Gig for the tip off on this one. It's going to be messy.
NOTE: MY TO A FROWN IS ALL FUCKED UP AND NOT RIGHT, IF ANYONE HAS A COMPLETE VERSION THAT'S NOT SCRATCHED AS HELL PLEASE SEND IT? OH YEAH ALSO ALBUM ART IN A DECENT DIGITAL SIZE WOULD BE RAD...
A few years ago I saw a band made up of dudes probably not even in their 20s yet from Lousiana in some tiny venue that's escaping my name somewhere in the city or Brooklyn. The venue wasn't completely packed but there was definitely a crowd. The dude at the merch table before the show was a wiry not too tall, not too short friendly guy with a Lousiana accent. Seemed nice/normal enough. Then the band started and that guy walked to the ground in front of the stage and grabbed the microphone. He announced that they were Thou from Baton Rouge and the shit hit the fan. The singer turned around, hunched over into this bizarre fucking Smeagol contortion facing the stage and the band dropped a fucking nuclear note. About an hour later I had one of my new favorite bands.
Thou's brand of completely fucked, crawling punk bayou sludge, drenched in raw crude oil and growing from the destruction of a world slammed by the most brutal storms on earth multiple times every year is definitely one of the most interesting, heavy, relentless flavors of doom around. In a genre plagued by repetition (not just of the same chord over and over again) and me-too bands, Thou is a glowing fucking beacon of rad. They're one of the few that manages to not just incorporate, but expand upon their many and varied influences (Can you say Minor Threat, Mayhem, and Sabbath) as opposed to so many other bands that just re-hash, the result being something that's never boring and always heavy.
This new album shows a constantly maturing Thou with fucking blastbeats, acoustic breakdowns (not cheesedick lame shit, promise) and even a "tasteful" (if that's fucking possible) incorporation of some of the less annoying traits of Black Metal. Frankly, this ain't yer average Vitus coverband wannabes.
Thou is so fucking good that even the dudes at NPR got soggytrowed when they heard their new album "Summit". This band is definitely one of the best doom/sludge bands currently performing.
If you've never seen this band live, stop what you're fucking doing and go find a show.
Music can have the incredible ability to influence the emotions of the listener. It can induce joy, sadness, fear, courage, and just about any other feeling you can think of. Take Slayer for instance. Nothing on earth will get you fucking lifted to skate or surf or get in to a fight with a cop like Slayer. Or perhaps you're more of a lover and less of a fighter and throwing on some R.Kelly is more your steez. That's cool, it'll get gnob greased.
Knowing this about music. Some states have passed laws saying that providing already depressed people with the music of Dystopia can get you charged with criminally negligent homicide. It's true. I read it somewhere.
Seriously. This is possibly the heaviest, most depressing, truly fucking grimmest sludge band in the history of the genre. For fucks sake, just look at the fucking title. HUMAN=GARBAGE. Never has there been a more apt title for an album, because at about 2:43 into this album you already feel like true breathing, walking shit. It's fucking awesome.
God I love this fucking band. Talk about some fuckers who need to get back together.
When I worked at Sirius, Bobby Black from High Times magazine had an all Stoner Metal show called Contact High. Sadly, they shitcanned his ass shortly before the extended the same courtesy to me and the world lost a great hour of radio every week. Oh well, their stock price is in the shitter for a reason (and it ain't their coordinators or DJ's who are some of the best people I've ever worked with...). Anyways, at the time one of my pet peeves with the show was that homeboy played too much damn Kyuss for my liking and it got me all cranky and what not. I just couldn't get in to it. I listened to a lot of Queens of the Stone Age in high school and college (thanks to my soph. year roomate leaving Songs for the Dead on repeat for something like 3 months. No, seriously. I'm not fucking with you and I have witnesses. Ian literally only listened to QOTSA, every day, from like January through April or something like that. Ian, back me up here.) but for some reason Kyuss just wouldn't click with me. My friend tried to turn me on to it in like 11th grade too but back then if it wasn't Black Flag I probably didn't give a fuck.
Anyways, a couple of months ago the Mishka Bloglin did this "choice is yours" thingy where they asked people which was better, Dopethrone or Welcome to Sky Valley. At first (and kinda now) I scoffed at the idea of these two things even being in the same fucking sport much less the same league. Dopethrone is possibly the heaviest album in the universe by the heaviest band in the universe. Kyuss (or so I thought) was basically a glorified stoner rock desert dwelling hawkwind ripoff. Either way, I figured if some motherfucker had the cojones to compare these two, I'd better at least give another listen.
So, after going back and giving these two albums a spin, I can officially say I'm a convert to the Kyuss way (although they still can't hold a fucking candle to Dopethrone. Sorry, ain't never gonna happen.) I guess it really hooked me with the first riff in Thumb on "Blues for the Red Sun." That kinda uberstoned "Hole in the Sky" jam thing definitely got caught in my head for like 2 weeks and from there it was downhill.
Since pretty much everybody and their mom has written fucking volumes on this band already, and I'm fairly new to Kyuss fandom, I'm gonna leave it with this. It's fucking awesome music to bike/drive/train/travel to. Get some.
I haven't posted in a long time. Basically because all I listen to is Weedeater. When that's all I listen to, I don't feel like it's necessary to repeat myself every day. Having just seen Weedeater, Black Tusk, Gates of Slumber, and Struck By Lightning at Webster Hall last weekend, I was forcefully reminded of the fact that yeah, maybe I do need to repeat myself.
WEEDEATER IS THE FUCKING SHIT. PERIOD. END OF STORY.
I am proud to report, yet again, that Dave, Keko, and Shep are still, entirely unfuckwittable. They are, undeniably, one of the heaviest, most reliably fucking awesome doom bands in the history of the Earth and nobody praise them enough.
Anyways, now that the WE cocksuck sesh is over, let's get down to the real biz.
The night opened up with this band "Struck By Lightning" who I'd never heard of but was totally blown away by. I showed up half way through the set to a lead singer in a his hero is gone shirt, blasting crusty doom, and good times already underway. Apparently one of the dudes in that band is formerly of Mouth of the Architect, all well and good, but SbL fucking destroys. Expect big things from these guys. I'm fucking stoked that Metal is getting more and more punk every day. Also, their drummer fucking kills it. Check out THEIR MYSPACE. Their live recorded shit is a lot more tech than it sounds like live but it's still awesome. I can taste notes of Disfear, HHIG, old school Baroness, classic Swedish Death Metal, and a buncha other good shit in here.
After SbL, Gates of Slumber, looking more than a little like a marauding viking hoard, took to the stage with their vengeful old school doom sounds. Like St. Vitus? Go buy a GoS album. Now. These large, hirsuit barbarians from the midwest play a brand of Doom rarely seen or heard done properly these days. Classic, Sabbath worshipping, Wino copping, old school no bullshit slow ass, riff driven heavy metal. I just recently got into these guys but I feel like they'll be around for a while to come. They're headed to Europe for the upcoming festival season over there and you can bet your ass that they're gonna fit right in with the bekutted, longhaired Hessians over there. I still have massive fucking neck pain from when they busted out "Blood and Thunder." Hesh on.
Finally, Black Tusk was the last "opener." I use quotation marks around the word opener because I feel like that term is slightly less than fitting for a band that the entire audience is going ballistic for. I'd heard some BT before and always though they were pretty good. I never really paid too much attention (probably because I was listening to Bongzilla or something) before, but after this show, my eyes (and ears) are wide fucking open to the greatness of this band. Black Tusk did something that I haven't seen a doom band do in ages. The put the goofy fucking rock star shit back into metal, and it totally rules. These dudes are possibly one of the most fun shows I've seen in ages. Fucking awesome. Jumping around, ripping shit up, headbanging, crossing the fucking guitars, wailing, all of it. No shame, no mercy, all metal. If you get a chance to see these guys, especially in a kinda small venue, be there. It's totally worth it.
Which brings us to Weedeater. Yeah, there's just nothing you can say about their set besides:
1) It fucking rules. 2) It's fucking mindblowing that these dudes are still alive.
The thing about a lot of sludgier bands is that live they tend to speed shit up. WE does the opposite. The slowly strangle the last drops of life out of every fucking note they hit. They crank the fucking volume to earsplitting levels, the bash drums harder than anyone else out there, and you could pave a fucking highway with Dave's voice. Just watch the videos and try to ignore the fact that I gave more of a shit about going nuts than holding the camera steady. Sorry bout that, it's fucking Weedeater.
CLICK THE PIC OF DIXIE FOR A LINK TO THE FLICKR PAGE.
A couple of days ago I got a comment on an old post about Tafkata - Worker & Parasite from a dude named Eddie. Turns out he's in a new band called Seven Sisters of Sleep with some former members of Tafkata. If you know me (or Bones or just about anyone else who knows Tafkata), you know that as soon as I discovered that band I sunk into a bottomless pit of not listening to anything else but W&P. SSOS is about to do the same fucking thing to me. I can feel it...
Here's a bunch of shots from the Harvey Milk/Coalesce/Atlas Moth show put on by the folks at Blackened last night at Le Poisson Rouge. All the bands put on a killer show despite the Monday night crowd. It's tough as shit fighting a slack audience but somehow all the bands managed to rip shit up. I've got movies coming in the near future, stay tuned.
Every once in a while someone passes me a band that just gets it fucking right. Last week Blake from Rats in the Walls told me to check out this Sardonis EP from a while back. Knowing that basically whatever Blake is listening to is probably better than whatever I'm listening to at the moment, I grabbed it and put it on the shelf all weekend. Man was that shit the right choice. Starting your week on this album is so the right decision.
I've said it a million fucking times before and I'll say it a million times more. Not everything needs to be new, complex, progressive, difficult, or whatever the fuck adjective describing wankery you wanna use. Sometimes, just going down the path of the simple, the easy, or the plain works fucking wonders. Fortunately for all of us, it seems like Sardonis understands this intrinsically and doesn't fuck with it.
This 4 song EP is nothing but an awesome chunk of fucking doom. Just guitars, drums, bass, and supreme heavyness. No vocals, just riffs. No stupid, drawn out, overly psychedelic spacey delay parts. No overly referential copping from one specific band. Just thick, meaty guitar tone, crushing drums, slow tempos, and endless bass grit.
Best of all, the next band in my itunes is Sarke...
This review is identical to the one I did for the Mishka Bloglin. I reposted it here because this album is so fucking good it deserves to be posted twice.
I've only seen Harvey Milk live in concert once. It was during All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead, England in May of 2009. They sucked. Granted this was back to back to back to back with Sleep, Electric Wizard, the Jesus Lizard, and Devo and shit so the caliber of rockin' was pretty fucking high. But Harvey Milk totally let me down that one gig. I'd been listening to a lot of "My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be" at the time and that album was blowing my fucking mind, but for that one hour or so they were on stage all I could think was "What the fuck? Who put this Skynrd 45 on 33? Bogus."
This album, has not a fucking thing in common with that live performance. Apparently, this album was meant to be their debut, recorded in '94 and pieced together from old bootleg copies, this shit will blow your weak fucking mind out of your gaping, newly bored out eardrums. If you're familiar with HM's catalogue, think "My Love" 'cept way more sludgy rock. Frankly it's just evil, menacing, grinding, plodding shit that you can't help but nod along to. Creston Spiers sounds like he's either being strangled or strangling someone the entire album. I heard someone describe them as "Swans covering the Melvins... or maybe the Melvins covering Swans...?" once. That is way fucking accurate in this case. The songs are long, evil, and constantly shifting. Production is significantly thinner than their later albums, you know, prolly cause it was pieced together from cassette tapes and shit. For some reason, where most thin production on doom stuff comes across as shitty and unbefitting of the music, it really adds a great punkish vibe to a pretty metal album.
This shit is definitely on my repeat listening list for many moons to come.
As a huge fan of vinyl, doom, and well made shit, my tolerance for paying a lot of money for an album is fairly high. I encourage people to not only support bands by buying their records (well, you know when you're not stealing them from here) but also to buy the best quality vinyl they can get their hands on. 120g audiophile vinyl is the best way I've found to listen to shit. It sounds fucking awesome.
That being said, Floor is releasing a box set of all their shit. For $250...
Anyone else feel like this might be a little overkill? Would you buy this for $250?
If you read the last post, you'll noticed I mentioned that I had TWO heavy hitters to put up today as tribute for my lack of posting albums recently (Kinda like the Yom Kippur of metal or something). Thus, I now follow through with my most awaited album of the year. By far.
Shrinebuilder, as every metal website in the world has said, is a supergroup made up of Scott Michael Kelly (of Neurosis) Al Cisneros (of AsbestosDeath, Sleep, and OM), Scott "Wino" Weinrich (of basically every classic doom band ever including The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, and most recently Wino), and Dale Crover (Drummer of the Melvins). Basically, a legendary doom gathering of the tribes/minds/spirits/whatever.
When it comes to supergroups, I will almost always be the first one to set my expectations super, super fucking low. Hype through the roof + the reality of them being side-projects of other already amazing bands + my usual completely over the top ridiculous hyperbolic tendencies = total fucking let down with the end product most of the time. Shrinebuilder completely blows that shit away.
If I were to sum up my first couple of listens in middle school science terms, Shrinebuilder is a beautiful heterogeneous compound. In other words, when you put sugar in water it becomes the homogenous "sugar water," but when you put sand in water, it's still water and still sand. You can see both of the component parts. In Shrinebuilder, you can definitely pull out each player's contribution to the group. Not just like, "Hmmm... this song sounds a lot like Neurosis..." or whatever, but even parts of songs. I guess the most visible example of this is in "Pyramid of the Moon." You can definitely feel the Wino and SMK lead in the beginning of the song and as it progresses, the whole song pulls a slow shift towards Al Cisneros's lead until he kicks it full gear in to a Sleep/OM style drone for the 2nd half of the song. Each riff shows the fingerprint of the person who wrote it. Most riffs gotta lotta fucking fingerprints though.
Usually when a band sounds so strongly like it's components, it almost always fails at sounding like a comprehensive whole. Somehow, probably because every person involved in this project is a fucking genius when it comes to doom, Shrinebuilder feels whole. No song feels out of place, no section feels jarring or confused, no tone or note doesn't belong. That's what really makes this album interesting to me. How unbelievable the balance between the parts and the whole is from start to finish. Just listen and tell me I'm wrong.
All of this being said, Shrinebuilder is surprisingly different than what I expected, but not different than what I hoped for. I was kind of expecting Dale's tribal, crushing, war drums to be driving a Dopesmoker bassline with Neurosis uber delayed guitars and Wino singing. What I got was a whole shit ton of Wino/SMK guitars and atmosphere mixed with some OM droning and driving, Dale acting as an anchor for the band to swirl around, and everyone takes turns on the mic. It's fucking cool.
Fuck this, I've said too much. Listen to the album and tell me I'm wrong. I could talk about this band for another fucking decade man. I am so stoked to see them next month at Poisson rouge with Rwake.
A few weeks ago I reviewed OM's new album, "God Is Good." As you might have figured out, I wasn't overly stoked with it as a follow up to Pilgrimage/Innerant Rays of the Sun. As a follow up to Gebel Berkel it was definitely an improvement but on a whole, I like the earlier shit better. Despite the lukewarm reception to the new album, I still love that band live so I got tix to see them at Europa with Brooklyn favorites Naam. Lichens and 6 Organs of Admittance also opened for them. Naam, as always fucking killed it and are sounding tighter and tighter every day. Robert, aka: Lichens played the delay pedals in a chair. Probably cool on album, definitely good for high people live. Somewhat boring as he just sat still with a microphone and a loop box throat singing into feedback loops for 30minutes. Pass the pipe please.
As for 6 Organs of Admittance... wrong bill. Stick to coffeehouses. If members of the audience are shushing other members so they can hear the band, you're at the wrong club, with the wrong crowd, and definitely on the wrong lineup. Go elsewhere. Probably would have been good if they were playing through a shit load of amps at a crushing volume with some sort of a rhythm section. On two acoustic guitars it sounded like the shit I used to hear the less retarded hippies try (significantly less well) to play at college. No thanks.
OM on the other hand. On fucking point from minute one. Started with To the Shrinebuilder and crushed songs from each one of their albums. Could have used a little more volume on Al's bass but other than that I'd say it was pretty fucking spot on.
Om with Emil is definitely a different beast all together. I meant to ask Al and Emil about this and the new album but never really got around to it. Busy times man. Anyways, for lack of a better term, I'd say Emil is a way more extroverted drummer than Chris Hakius. Where Chris really focuses on relentlessly hammering down the groove with no regard for fills or frills, Emil is all over the kit. Fills, rolls, beat changes, whatever. Unfortunately, it tends to be really distracting from the overall vibe that Chris was so heavy on setting up and holding down. Also, hombre really needs to remember the value of a change in dynamics.
Long and short: Dude kinda drums like an adorable yet overenthusiastic puppy. You know man, you like him, it makes you happy, he's a friendly little guy with a good heart that's in the right place but too noisy for the hunt. But, for this job, old yeller kicking around on the porch just chilling is the mutt for the job in this case.
Oh yeah, almost forgot one minor detail. OM now has three members. Robert of Lichens was doing all sorts of crazy shit like PLAYING FUCKING GUITAR! Yes, OM now has a guitar, a keyboard, some tambourine percussiony stuff, and a shit ton of delay effects. It's cool I guess. Again, somewhat distracting but really not too bad. I'm more of a minimalist though when it comes to my post-Sleep stoner drone doom.
Ok, now that I've gotten all the nitpicky annoying shit out of the way, this show layed it the fuck on. Thick. In the best way possible. It fucking ruled.
Al and Emil and Rob fucking barreled into the set and did what they do best. Play music to headbang slowly to. The audience and the band were totally on the same page, Al didn't miss a note, the new effects dude added some interesting new sections on to old songs that I wasn't expecting and definitely wasn't disappointed with. At one point between the last 2 songs of the set before the encore I actually heard Emil say to Al, "Man let's play more, the vibe is perfect in here." or something to that effect. All the songs were a little heavier and just barely faster than I remember them and it felt fucking good. Yesssss.
Next time though, Emil, dude, leave your pants on and stay behind the drumkit, you're harshing my mellow brah.
