2012 Chronicle (Year in review) part 8 - Best of August

August 2 - Pitch Black Forecast (Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame)

August 3 - Lemonparty (The All-Seeing)

August 3 - RED DESERT (Damned By Fate) - Melodic downtuned and fuzzed out rock and roll riffs with excellent hooks.  What you're looking at here is a Top 10 album of the year, so it is revealed.  I've lived with this album for months and its many terrific tracks have become staples of the daily hour long commute to work mix.  Very few albums grabbed me for as long or as hard as this one has.  And it has one of the best album covers of the year.  It's a winner all the way around.  What's not to like?  See my previous write-up of Red Desert.  Get it here on Bandcamp.  Highlight include "Devils Curse" and "Lust Queen".  Rating 4.5/5

August 5 - Atragon (Vol. I)

August 8 - Hyne (3000)

August 11 - Salem's Pot (Sweeden)

August 12 - DOPETHRONE (III) - It is something to behold listening to this Montreal based three piece run through riff after riff of the grooviest, doomiest shit you will ever smoke ... er, hear.  The death metal vocals may be a turn off for some, but the riffs will bring one and all back, every time.  This band is something special.  Get it here.  Highlight include "Hooked" and "Devil's Dandruff".  Rating 4/5

August 14 - Slow Mover (ST)

August 18 - Tsepesch (Demo)

August 19 - MARA (Demo) - This Swedish four piece released one of the year's best demos.  They play Doom / Stoner / Sludge, in that order.  They can haul ass and play slow all at the same time (it has to do with vocals and crash symbol).  They could use a little love (or at least 'like') on Facebook.  Get the demo for free here.  Highlight include "Greed" and "Possessed".  Rating 4.5/5

August 24 - MEXICOMA (Supervoid) - Swedish six-piece stoner rockers Mexicoma brought their triple guitar attack out of hiding and returned with their second release.  This 4 song EP unleashed one of the catchiest songs of the year in "Mortified".  No joke, that song gets caught in my head at least once a week.  Get it here, if you dare.  Highlight include "Mortified" and "Room 101".  Rating 4/5

August 24 - VINUM SABBATUM (Bacchanale Premiere) - This Finnish quintet dropped the vintage rock and roll album that no one was expecting after establishing their sound as traditional doom.  Well, the album is more along the lines of proto doom.  There's still plenty of doom and thunder, but filtered through a Deep Purple lens so to speak.  Indeed that DP sounding organ is a big part of this album's sound and one of the main reasons I found it so addictive.  The album is extremely hook heavy as well and the A5 digipack CD packaging is just great, it comes with lyrics printed in the booklet to boot.  Any way you look at it, it's a killer package.  Get it here.  Highlight include "Earthrise" and "Tombstone Rider".  Rating 4.5/5

August 28 - ADMIRAL SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVELL (Don't Hear It ... Fear It!) - The Shovell's impressive debut proves that the UK hard rockers don't make cooped-up compositions.  They let their children wander free, to laugh and spread their wings, to explore inner and outer space while ever remaining tethered to a late 60s early 70s framework.  Get it here.  Highlight include "Killer Kane" and "Red Admiral, Black Sunrise".  Rating 4.5/5

August 28 - NIGHTSTALKER (Dead Rock Commandos) - Greek stoner rock legends Nightstalker made their Small Stone record label debut with 'Dead Rock Commandos' and aced it.  10 good songs full of memorable riffs and lasting hooks.  Just a solid, solid album.  If you like rock, you'll like this.  Get it here.  Highlight include "Dead Rock Commandos" and "Go Get Some".  Rating 4/5

August 29  - CAPTAIN CRIMSON (Dancing Madly Backwards) - Seems my fingers are stuck typing about this band the way the songs are stuck in my head.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: one of the catchiest albums of the year.  Solid, steady driving hard rock that veers off into controlled chaos.  Wonderful stuff.  Get it here.  Highlight include "Dancing Madly Backwards" and "Lonely Devils Club".  Rating 4.5/5

August 30 - BISON, BISON (ST) - This was one of the first reviews I did and the band were very supportive.  Great guys.  Their 6 song EP challenged me and re-taught me the value of embracing the unexpected.  Terrific 3-piece stoner rock from Portland with traces of indie rock and many other styles on display.  Hunt them here.  Highlight include "Sweetish" and "Rivertown".  Rating 4/5

August 30 - Black Magician (Nature Is The Devil's Church)


August 31 - AT DEVIL DIRT (Chapter II "Vulgo gratissimus auctor") - Chilean duo At Devil Dirt have one of the best guitar sounds on the market today (rivaled only perhaps by Conan).  It's deep and mossy.  It will tear your skull apart.  The drums shake mountains and crash lightning.  The multi-tracked vocals smell sweet but spit poison.  At Devil Dirt have found an identity and exploit it for all its worth, 11 equally good songs of heavy fuzz and catchy harmonized melodies.  Read my original review of this terrific album here.  Get it here, and read the press clippings on the page while you're at it ;-).  Highlight include "I Am An Ugly Skin" and "Let It Flow".  Rating 5/5

Best Album From August 2012:
'Chapter II "Vulgo gratissimus auctor"' by AT DEVIL DIRT

Best Song From August 2012:
"Mortified" by MEXICOMA

Weekly Mailbag for 12/10/12 - 12/14/12

A look at what came in the mail this week with quickie reviews ...

Blue Oyster Cult - Secret Treaties - BOC's third album is like the best parts of their first two combined, creating a more fully developed and mature overall sound to the record.  There are more boogie and funk elements than the proto metal / biker rock of their first album but there are still some fine wisps of the heavy stuff that typically manifests itself in punkier moments.  The band's slower, more whimsical side also gets a good workout in "Astronomy", a precursor to "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" from their next album. Highlights include "Career of Evil" and "Flaming Telepaths". Rating - 4.5/5

Captain Crimson - Dancing Madly Backwards - This is one of my favorites of the year, as evidenced by my raving review of the album.  "Lonely Devils Club" and the title track are two of the catchiest songs of the year.  The whole album is replete with monster riffs and balls out performances from front to back.  There was a ton of 70s inspired music this year and a lot of it was great, but few could match the energy of Captain Crimson. Highlights include "Wizard's Bonnet" and "True Color". Rating - 4.5/5

Hawkwind - Space Ritual - I normally don't like live albums and steer clear of them, but I mean, come on, this is 'Space Ritual'.  I had to give it a go.  First thing I was struck by was the high quality of the recording, it sounds better than most live recordings, probably from some studio touch ups.  Each song gets the Hawkwind treatment and beyond, extended jamming and some of the improvised tracks are really killer.  Listen to this, you'll wish you'd have been there.  The album title doesn't lie.  Highlights include "Born To Go" and "Upside Down". Rating - 4.5/5

Them - Now and Them - This is the first of two excellent psychedelic albums by the post-Van Morrison incarnation of Them.  There were a lot of former hitmaking bands and artists that were making the switch to psychedelia at the time, Them's pair of efforts are probably among the most obscure or, dare I say, overlooked.  Most of this album is very bluesy with a small handful that would qualify as pop psych, such as the Alice in Wonderland inspired "Walking in the Queen's Garden".  "Square Room" is a wonderful sitar freakout.  Great stuff.  Highlights include "Walking in the Queen's Garden" and "Square Room". Rating - 4/5

Vanilla Fudge - Renaissance - Vanilla Fudge's third album is their most accessible.  7 tracks (+3 bonus tracks on the CD), most of them self-penned, the songs are shorter, while still revealing a high level of thoughtfulness and artistry, but let's just say the band doesn't go overboard as in their first two albums.  At least not until the closing track, which just happens to be the longest song and the sole cover version, Donovan's "Season of the Witch".  It's a good recording, very much of its era and if I was Donovan, I would have loved the rendition. Highlights include "All In Your Mind [bonus track]" and "Faceless People". Rating - 4.5/5

And ...

Not music, I know, but a book that helped inspire some great artists who made some great music. The 8th Pan Book of Horror Stories selected by Herbert Van Thal (1967) features a story called "Sad Road To The Sea", which was almost certainly the inspiration for the title of the Leaf Hound song of the same name.  Peter French, singer of Leaf Hound has often mentioned in interviews how the titles of the stories in some of these books inspired him to write his own lyrics (that had little to nothing to do with the actual story itself).  Being a gigantic nerd I had to check these out for myself.  I can't wait to read it.  I also picked up The 3rd Pan Book of Horror Stories selected by Herbert Van Thal (1962), which features less contemporary fiction and more classic tales by the all-time greats like Poe, Blackwood, Faulkner, Wells and others.  Great stuff.  I plan on filling out a complete collection of these anthologies.  Pan always had the best looking covers too.

Hour of Power

Highlights from the week of 10/14/12 - 10/20/12

1). Mark of the Beast (Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell / Don't Hear It ... Fear It)
2). Lonely Devils Club (Captain Crimson / Dancing Madly Backwards)
3). An Alternative to Freedom (Witchcraft / Legend)
4). Rivertown (Bison, Bison / ST)
5). Damn the Sky (Beastwars / ST)
6). The Lost Art of Bong Rips (Goat Bong / Goat Worship and Sodomy)
7). Hell's Heroes (Venomous Maximus (Beg Upon the Light)
8). Earthrise (Vinum Sabbatum / Bacchanale Premiere)
9). Levitation (Down / Down IV)
10). Lord of Desolation (Bedemon / Symphony of Shadows)

Captain Crimson - Dancing Madly Backwards

Now, (again) from Sweden, one of the catchiest albums of the year.


Lines like "I'm telling you bro/you've got a demon inside of you", and "Satan as our witness, man you got no soul" just stick with you and have been carefully added to the personal repertoire of one-liners.


I fear this band will be over-looked though for the simple fact that they are Swedish because of the now long-held cynicism about anything that even begins to resemble a "scene" such as the Seattle grunge thing you've heard so much about.  The good Captain follows in the wake of already firmly established Retro Rock superstars and fellow countrymen as Graveyard, Witchcraft, Skanska Mord, etc. but make no mistake Crimson is his own man.

This is an uptempo album, confidently played, three sheets to the wind with infectious riffs and ... is there a healthy representation of cowbells present? ... you bet! "Lonely Devil's Club" is a scorching opener and has already been a No. 1 hit in my household, "Dancing Madly Backwards" and "Wizard's Bonnet" are also both killers with Bonnet especially showcasing the band's tightness and progressive tendencies, which are reminiscent of Leaf Hound among other classics.

One of the best Heavy Rock albums of the year so far.  Highly recommended

Reminds me of: Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Black Widow, Cream, Graveyard, Jimi Hendrix, Leaf Hound, Witchcraft

My Rating: 4.5/5

Genre: Retro Rock, Hard Rock, Psychedelic


Tracklist:
1). Lonely Devil's Club (5:38)
2). Mountain of Sleep (5:57)
3). River (4:42)
4). Don't Take Me For a Fool (4:48)
5). Autumn (5:05)
6). Wizard's Bonnet (4:47)
7). Silver Moon (4:52)
8). True Color (3:15)
9). Dancing Madly Backwards (6:23)
Total run time: 45:22

Release Date: August 29, 2012

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Driving through farmers fields with the windows rolled down, dust be damned / making crop circles.

Better reviews:
Heavy Planet
Fast n Bulbous
Cosmic Lava

GET IT HERE