"Welcome To Krell"
Greetings, Happy Holidays and all the rest to everyone. I’ll dispense with the formalities on LF/DF’s virgin post and bid farewell to 2009 by digging into a few of the year’s best albums. Kay? Here goes;
Wino - Punctuated Equilibrium (Southern Lord)
After making the as the perennial guest star, with everyone from Probot to Clutch, 2009 saw Wino finally released a proper solo record. It’s bluesy, heavy and proves once again why St. Virus would have been 100 times better if they let him play guitar.
Not discounting his charm as gnarly old metal dude, who cheated death from smack addiction million to be finally recognized as an icon so many in the underground/doom/dirtbag scene, it’s really all about the guitar solos.
He has been credited by many as the number one doom/sludge guitar hero not named Iommi as well as keeping the genre, along with himself, alive through the 80’s and 90’s.
You practically feel the heat from the tubes burning in his gorgeous Sunn Model T (original, yo). Peter Green could apparently bring a tear to BB King’s eye with the sweet tone of his Les Paul. Wino does the same for me with his.
Iron Age - The Sleeping Eye (Tee Pee)
Here's a band that wasn't on my radar last year, delivering easily one the standout records of year. Tight, crunchy, razor-sharp thrash riffs and harsh screamed vocals flowing seamlessly into atmospheric gloom and back again. Another band that's not afraid to keep things interesting, slowing things down to a trudge or creating eerie, hypnotic soundscapes and when you let your guard down ... bam! face-punch! Is this experimental hardcore? Prog thrash? Do genres really exist anymore? Who cares. For all it's epic scope, this is still an album to break your fucking neck to.
Sacrifice - The Ones I Condemn (Sonic Unyon)
The masters have returned to show the kids who’s boss. This is the first Sacrifice album in 16 long years and it’s on ... Sonic Unyon? I knew when Early Man’s album came out on Matador that some weird shit happening in the universe. In case you were expecting anything different, this is an absolutely sick blast of venomous old school thrash. Rejoice!
Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love (Jagjaguar)
On to a different end of the spectrum; Pink Mountaintops last album, Axis of Evol, wasn't, as they say, my bag of dicks. I found it tedious, monotonous and droning; a good record to nod out with a cigarette burning between your fingers to.
Deliberately minimalist in contrast with the scuzzy rock guitars and wailing vocals of Black Mountain, Pink Mountaintops are meant to showcase the softer side of Steve McBean, often without the aid of the Black Mountain Army. Well that idea was shot to hell when “Stay Free” a more or less solo acoustic number appeared on the Spiderman movie soundtrack a number of years ago, credited to Black Mountain.
Outside Love is something completely different from either. Angelic choirs, strings, swelling synths. There are tracks on this record that are making Phil Spector smile in jail cell somewhere.Know what? It’s great. Dramatic but unpretentious, uplifting but not sappy, whimsical but not nauseating. A great Sunday morning record. Bring it on a picnic.
Children - Hard Times Hanging At The End Of The World (Kemado)
Johnny from S.T.R.E.E.T.S.’ new band picks up where he left off, more swirling space-rock interludes. longer and more progressive song structure and more complex and delicious riffs. Children are definitely a guitar band - with no live bass player, this would make sense - and while it helps fill out the sound on the record, there isn’t much space in the dense riffage left for the bass to occupy. Anyone who complains about what a “fad” the resurgence of thrash is, citing the lack of originality of so-called “retro’ thrash bands like Municipal Waste or Fuelled by Fire should have a listen to this. This is space thrash for the new millennium. I did not hear a better album this year.
Doomriders - Darkness Come Alive (Deathwish Inc)
This is the eagerly awaited follow up to “Black Thunder”, which came out way back in 2005 as you obviously know. I’ve listened to that thing a lot of times in four years, so I had high hopes for this new disc.
The song “Crooked Path” came out on a split with Disfear as a bit of a preview and I dug it. Then when “Come Alive” was available on the web a few days before the album release,
I was a bit concerned that their sound had changed. There’s much thinner guitar sound and the vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Glenn Danzig.
No worries, as that song turned out to be this album’s answer to Black Thunder’s “Midnght Eye”; a more subdued, almost radio friendly track, featuring Nate’s “singy” voice and not his nasty “shouty” voice.
Whereas, “Midnight Eye”, always makes me automatically press skip when it comes on, “Come Alive” is probably this album’s best track. “Crooked Path” also makes a strong case for itself.
So what about the rest of it?
The album opener “Heavy Lies the Crown” is pretty classic, but after that I find the record gets a bit sameish sounding. Their rock meets metal sound is a bit more like metal meets hardcore this time. The delivery is almost the same but instead of anthems like “Ride or Die”,“The Chase, or “Death Box”, the tone is more dark and brooding. This works on the more melodic tunes “Come Alive” and “Crooked Path,” but the fast, fist-pumping stuff has a bit too much angst-ridden tough-guy posturing.
Some of the best music is pissed off music, but they sang “get off my fuckin’ back,” last time around it was the type of pissed off you get when the cops make you and your friends pour your beer out at the park, not the type of “no one understand me, man” pissed off that makes you want to go and lift weighs and then punch the first kid in the pit that bumps into you. More than worth a spin, though.
Saviours - Accelerated Living (Kemado)
Of course they rule, they're from Oakland. What do you expect from the town that allegedly coined the term “hella”. Saviours are becoming the band of choice for the modern hesher. It’s all you expect. Technical excellence but still loose enough to get drunk to. The production has a bit more punch and the vocals are up a bit in the mix. A bit more groove and less gallop than the last record. The riffs sound a bit greasier like The Priest before they started pumping out pop-metal crap that inspired “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”. You need all this.
Bloodhorse - Horizoner (Translation Loss)
These guys love to milk the slow build up. “A Good Son” kicks off the record and it’s more “intro” than song; a full 6 minutes of a 10 minute tune! These cats seem to base more riffs around the drums than any band since the Melvins. Dale Crover’s style of “pushing air” with mammoth kick and snare sounds, Alex Rivera-Garcia dances across the toms and hi-hats, tight snare rolls suggesting the melody rather than bludgeoning with power. Their debut (called EP) if anything suffered from too many extended and unnecessary drum intros. Don’t forget what Keith Moon himself said; “drum solos are fucking boring”.
For all their jazz leanings, there’s enough bludgeoning here to keep me happy. Especially once some fucking guitars (!!!!) come into the mix. Tunes flow together in tidal waves of sludge, changing rhythms and time signatures and never going for the obvious. They manage to turn out one of the most interesting (and heavy) records of the year.
