The Alchemical Mixutre - Dirt Wizard & Wizard Union (album reviews)

These days it seems like everything is beards, witches and wizards.  Well, those things are undoubtedly cool and far be it from me not to hop all over the latest trends, so I wanted to take the opportunity to bring back an old institution, the Alchemical Mixture, and I ask you, what’s more wizard than that?

Dirt Wizard - 'No Son of Mine'

From: Peoria, Illinois.  Highlights Include: "Season of the Sun"

and "Ged of Earthsea".  Rating: 4/5.  Released: Dec. 14, 2013.

Well, maybe these guys.  Dirt Wizard makes their home in Peoria, Illinois, but uh, you know, they could live anywhere they wanted.  Even on the moon, or even Alaska.  But Peoria will do.  An unassuming kind of place, where none would suspect wizards dwell.  But that’s the beauty of the world, that there are secret wizards and witches all over the place.  As you walk or drive down the sleepy roads of suburbia and you happen to glance or even stare into a living room window on your way past, you truly don’t know who or what you’re looking at.  I for one assume everybody is some form of deviant or other, Dirt Wizard is the magical kind.

Their five song E.P., ‘No Son of Mine’ stays on an even keel, keeping the listener under a consistent spell of stoned wizardry in the vein of Seattle’s Ancient Warlocks or their Northern neighbors Black Wizard.  It’s a crash heavy linear fuzz ride with killer harmonies which gives the music a sense of speed and motion.  Opener “Amis Tabu”, “Ged of Earthsea” and “Season of the Sun” are all jacketed in the warmth of close harmony, which edges tantalizingly close to the edge of dischord by sliding Alice in Chains-style into minor chords.  It’s still a great trick to pull off.  Uh, I mean … illusion! 

Without a doubt, the band’s crowning achievement is the last song of the collection.  "Season of the Sun" is an apocalypse in the sun.  Cacophonic guitars and crashing drums mingle with a top down cruising down the empty highway feel brought about by the bright vocal harmonies, feet up, nuclear wind blowing through your hair.  Feel-wise, it’s like the inverse of Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral”.

‘No Son of Mine’ is a solid listen, though at 22 minutes I hesitate to call it truly satisfying.  But, it’s an incredibly promising debut and you get the sense that Dirt Wizard has an amazing album or two up their giant, billowy sleeve.

Wizard Union - 'Smoking Coffins'

From: Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Highlights Include: "Thoth Amon" and 

"Into the Wizard's Sleeve".  Rating: 4.5/5.  Released: Jan. 8, 2013.

Ann Arbor, Michigan’s three-piece Wizard Union has a fuzz-first mentality with chunky riffs which choke off any attempt for melody to flower and grow into anything other than a quick turnaround.  This band reminds me of a stateside cousin of Brighton, UK’s March the Desert.  Wizard Union will flood your mind with fuzz and for my money have instantly established themselves as one of America’s heaviest bands.

It’s a label they don’t shy away from.  The song “Thoth Amon” showcases the band’s Conan-literate side.  It’s a fair association to mix themselves up with.  Wizard Union won’t dazzle you with glittering steel and rippling, oiled muscles.  Instead it’s the dull-edged stone axe which does more damage with the impact of its blade, rather than its cutting edge.

Wizard Union will leave you knock you into next week, concussed, groggy and confused.  The fuzz is thick and meaty, the vocals are gristly and weighing in at a lean 6 songs and 23 minutes, there’s very little fat here, but there’s just enough to add a little flavor.  Wizard Union are a mixture of all the good things in life, Black Sabbath, Howard’s Conan (as depicted by Frank Frazetta of course, or possibly Boris Vallejo and best seen on the side of a rockin’ van) and plus-sized heaviness.  I’ll be back for me, whenever local #420 re-convenes, I’ll be proud to say I support this union.  You can support both these bands by clicking the links on the players below.

Seems like, these days, it would be a rather large union.  At one time, it was a sandbox that the pixie-like Marc Bolan basically had all to himself.  Now, you just can’t get away from wizard rock.  Just to give you an idea of how many witch and wizard themed/named bands there are out there I present this dry list.  Try to imagine it as a wizard’s spell scroll.

Stoned Witch & Wizard roll-call:

Acid Witch

Ancient Warlocks

Arkham Witch

Bell Witch

Black Magician

Black Wizard

Blackwitch Pudding

Dirt Wizard

Earth Witch

Electric Wizard

Glitter Wizard

Lizzard Wizzard

Mage

Magister Templi

Mountain Witch

Old Man Wizard

Red Wizard

Space Witch

Spelljammer

Ten Foot Wizard

Witch

Witch Charmer

Witch Mountain

Witch Rider

Witchcraft

Witches of God

Witching Altar

Witchsorrow

Witchstone

Wizard Smoke

Wizard Union

And these are just the good bands (the ones that I know of that is), there’s a whole world out there of mediocre bands all dying to bring down the wizard name.

Dirt Wizard on facebook
Wizard Union on facebook

The Alchemical Mixture - llord & Lord Summerisle (album reviews)

Lord Summerisle - Demo

From: Barcelona, Spain.  Highlights include: "Pare Huarg" and

"Ocellót".  Rating: 4.5/5.  Release Date: January 7, 2013.

A couple months ago I wrote a review for an amazing multi-media project by the band Midnight Zombie Alligator called 'Nova Sico' (go ahead and check it out).  It's an incredible mix of stoner doom and sludge with film soundtrack elements about a zombie apocalypse and one man's journey to find a cure.  The band combined audio with visual and written elements to create an overwhelmingly successful project.  A short while later I wrote a review of a three song demo by progressive trio Lord Summerisle for Stoner Hive (read it here).  It turns David Trillo who provides guitar and vocals for MZA does the same for Lord Summerisle as well.  I had no idea!  But that's not even the end of it, not content to freak the world out in those two bands alone, he and Mike Kelly, drummer for Lord Summerisle, form a third, decidedly more brutal combo with Aris on bass called llord!  These three bands couldn't possibly be more different from each other and I'm proud to feature the two lords here on Paranoid Hitsophrenic!

Lord Summerisle (named after a Christopher "Sabbath fan extraordinaire" Lee character from one of my personal favorite movies of all time, the original Wicker Man [1973]), thy middle name is Prog (an awkward and perhaps pretentious middle name, I know, but the musical genre itself is known for nothing if not pushing the boundaries of good taste).  Kudos to this band for not only delivering an authentic slice of pure seventies progressive rock, both in terms of structure and rhythmic sensibilities, but also crafting one of the catchiest songs of the year while doing so.  "Pare Huarg" is certainly the catchiest instrumental of the year to date.  As a matter of fact, 'pure seventies' doesn't even cut it as this thing can go twelve rounds with anything by King Crimson, Gabriel-led Genesis and oh, let's say E.L.P. et al. in terms of rhythmic complexity.  Lord Summerisle hops right over the top and stalks confidently into the rhythmic minefield of Zappa territory, joined perhaps on the front lines by burly Captain Beefheart.  Got it!?!  This thing is crazy!

We don't hear vocals until a few minutes into track two "1864" which throws a wet blanket on the prog fire the band started in the instrumental opener.  But such a wet blanket of normalcy can only serve to dampen relatively little of the fire damaged areas, this being a raging inferno of prog after all.  Guitar effects, continued rhythmic explorations / experimentations and a damn hell ass crazy structure keep this hard driving number strictly in the wheelhouse of latter day prog.  However, concessions to a more typical song must be made when dealing with vocals.  "Ocellót" gets this spaceship off the ground and zipping across the universe with its warp drive space rock tempo and octave shifts during the verse.  All together, Lord Summerisle's three song demo is sure to please anybody with a hankering for classic hard rock, specifically of the prog / space rock strains.

I mean that, really.

It is sure to.

Hopefully, this is no flash in the pan, but a project which will deliver on the promise of this rather musically accomplished demo.  A full-length album of this kind of material may draw the attention of Ming the Merciless and have these three musicians hunted down and killed for threatening the tyrant's galactic empire.  That's the kind of high powered Space Rockin' Prog I'm talking about.  And of course, if that were to happen, the world would be without two thirds of our next group, llord ...

After a long, hard day doing math at the prog factory, it must be kind of nice for David and Mike to open up their switchblades and just start cutting up swathes of heavy grooves.  That's not to say that llord doesn't feature some of the same progressive sentiments that define MZA and Lord Summerisle, it's just not nearly at such a titanic scale.  Where the rhythms rarely pause for a breath while herking and jerking throughout whole compositions on Lord Summerisle's debut, never giving poor Mike Kelly a moment to relax, llord play things relatively straight.  Trillo's hacksaw riffs are utilitarian and industrious.  In comparison to Summerisle, llord is sloping brow music that tosses the switchblade over the shoulder in confused frustration and simply cuts into a groove with a dull homemade shiv of mouth-breathing and ill-tempered riffs.  Trillo's throaty death metal screaming tells the listener that there is no bargaining here with this madman.

llord - Demo

From: Barcelona, Spain.  Highlights include: "Verro" and

"Iron Pescatore".  Rating: 4/5.  Release Date: January 31, 2013.

Interestingly (typically?), each of the three songs on llord's demo increases in compositional complexity, one after the other.  From the 4 minute opener "Iron Pescatore" which features a fairly orthodox metal song structure, even while the musical style borrows bits and pieces from various sources all at once, to the six minute follow up "Ordell" which begins to rely a bit more heavily on some syncopation to the 10 minute closer which opens like a spilled box near the middle of the track, unleashing a horde of tritone horrors, the complexity is increased before taking over the end of "Verro" entirely with a madcap finish.

David Trillo has a real knack for penning riffs that get caught in my head.  "Pare Huarg" and "Corpus Earthling" from MZA have been known to be on non-stop rotation in my noggin all night long, he's got riffs and bands for every mood.  Check them all out.  All three are up for "pay what you want" download on bandcamp!  Click the links on the players below to be swept along to the bandcamp pages.

The Alchemical Mixture - Church of Void & King Goat (album reviews)

Church of Void - Winter Is Coming EP

From: Jyväskylä, Finland.  Highlights include: "Winter Is Coming"
and "Summerland".  Rating: 5/5.  Release Date: August 24, 2012.

Finns always put a little bit of extra muscle and oomph into their doom metal.  It's because of this that my impression of Finns is of burly, bearded and stout men who fear nothing and charge into every place and/or situation head first, taking every step in life with the most vigorous stride possible if for no other reason than to stay warm.  I've never been to Finland.  I get the feeling very few people have really, for various reasons.  One of those reasons would have to be the harsh cold climate.  The northernmost part of the country lies within the arctic circle, which contains roughly a third of its land mass.  We're talking about a place where it's warm for about two or three months of the year.  Warm being a relative term here.  The average temperature in the Helsinki is below freezing a whopping four months of the year.  So it should come as no surprise that a relatively new doom metal band from that country should name their debut EP 'Winter is Coming'.  What the hell is doomier, gloomier and more frightening than that?  What could be worse?

The raging tempest this band puts forth in it's thunderous clamor does nothing to diminish Finland's reputation for birthing men of weather-battled burl and survivalist vigor.  Church of Void washes in from the New Wave of Traditional Doom, a genre built around powerful rhythms, heavyhanded performances, blinding leads and superlative vocals versed in epic themes and structures.  C of V addresses and attacks this criteria like a homeless man at a church sponsored buffet dinner.  I would direct listeners to the "Strongholds of Karak Varn" to see what I mean.  They have power in spades, structures and leads are in check while the vocals reach as far as they can.  Vocalist Magus Corvus isn't the typical tenor vocalist one might expect fronting a band of this stripe, instead he's a bass with an animal ferocity possessed in a wheeling dervish spin of sympathetic energy through track after track.  He may not be the next King Diamond, but he knows feel and he knows how to put that into the record.

Church of Void make a terrific first impression on their debut disc, taking four equally well-composed and distinctive tracks, each with their own feel and memorability factor.  "The Hour is Getting Late" features a gut wrenching sustained double kick frenzy during  the 'middle eight' which only hints of the greatness that is to come from drummer Byron Vortex's terrific performance on EP closer "Summerland".  This latter track is a  dominating showcase of quiet / loud dynamics perhaps in the vein / tone of early Metallica or "Cemetery Gates" by Pantera.  The band does, however, get out while the getting is good, never dragging on or overextending themselves or their stay, leaving the listener craving for more.  The yearning expressed in this last track is a poignant reminder of the frostbitten roots that this band grew out of.

King Goat - Atom (artwork by Freyja)

From: Brighton, England.  Highlights include: "Nuclear Messiah"

and "Cosmic Mastermind".  Rating: 4/5. Release Date: March 17 2013

But now we go from Finland's frost to Brighton's beaches to find another new act in the domicile of doom, King Goat.  Progressive tendencies and suffocating atmosphere is the name of the game here.  King Goat is another one of those amazing Soggy Bog of Doom podcast discoveries (there seems to be at least one every episode), and are also part of a colossal wave of great new bands out of the seaside town on the south of England.  It seems as though each ripple of water that touches the city's shores carries with it a unique and heavy muse who then lays down on the beach and gives birth to a new and quite different sounding band.

King Goat are of the epic doom variety.  Vocalist Jockum is soulful and expressive, singing with a quavering urgency that gives him the air of a mad prophet.  The local doomsayer whom all shun and despise but in the end is proven right as always.  The guitars are chilling and oppressive, the drums plodding but given boosts by some fine cymbal work.

Overall, 'Atom' is a well conceived EP with each song growing organically out of the previous one.  There's no run on effect or anything like that, but there's a tone that wafts up on opening track, "Machine God" that spills outward into each new song, with each one expanding on and adding to the atmosphere.  Tempos are typically of the 'down' to 'mid' kind, drummer Jon understanding that excitement doesn't always have to come from speed, but can also result from tension.  He takes on that often thankless job and gets it just right.

The recording isn't of the best quality, which is understandable with King Goat being such a new band (and from the looks of it a young band as well), I suspect a high quality recording will bring this band's full potential to light.  As it stands, 'Atom' sounds like a live recording and if it is, they already show some nice polish in terms of interplay and tightness as a unit, which is all the more impressive considering there's five of them usually all playing different rhythms.  It's a promising debut, I can't wait to see what they do next.  One gets the feeling that when the scaly and bloated muse visits them again their next release will be something truly epic.

Church of Void on facebook
King Goat on facebook

The Alchemical Mixture - Bite The Bullet & Pet The Preacher (album reviews)

From: Copenhagen, Denmark.  Highlights include: "Hit the Ground"
and "I Will Not Die".  Rating: 4/5.  Release Date: late April 2013.
Total Run Time: 20:07

Bite the Bullet is a two-man operation out of Copenhagen, Denmark.  But don't let their number fool you, it's a full sound the band puts out, utilizing different instruments such as piano and trombone on closing track "My Soul".  There's no shortage of musical ideas here, nor is the band short on the skill to pull those ideas off.

Fuzz, staccato piano and fluttering high-toned vocals illuminate opening track "I Feel Love".  The song is somewhat reminiscent of Roxy Music but toughened up by degrees.  Classic alternative rock with manically blowing clouds of guitar smoke distortion to throw up walls of sound until all melody is enclosed and hidden away in a rubber room of its own devising.  "Hit the Ground" is classic American psychedelic rock in the Byrds idiom, utilizing the never dull, always great sounding E, A, D, G chord progression (correct me if I'm wrong) during the verse with high/low harmonies.  The harmonies really sell this thing and it doesn't hurt that the two guys in the band kind of resemble Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley.  It's a great song, classic psych (see the video below).

This is the psychedelic world inhabited by Bite the Bullet.  There's something about the high harmonies, slightly cowboy western sounding fuzz riff and persistent drums that lends a song the element of danger.  That's just what happens on "I Will Not Die", evoking classic images.  Cowboy booted tough guy, a free spirit who don't take no shit off no man, rolls back in the small and quiet town where he grew up, in a black Cadillac of course with shag carpet interior , looking to escape the mistakes he's made in the big city ... until they catch up with him putting everyone in the town at risk.  It's a great vibe on this song, even if the story it evokes in this reviewer isn't terribly original, it still makes for a cool picture show in my mind's eye.  In other words, I dig it, it's got like a Nick Cave or Tom Waits dusty air about it while still being dreamy and psychedelic.  Kind of like The Big Lebowski, if you can boil that movie down into an overall impression encapsulated into one song.

This is the band's debut EP, being born of the ashes of their former band Highway Child.  A full-length album will see vinyl release via Bilocation Records this summer.  For now you can stream this EP on the band's official website.

Cover artwork by Lucas Ruggieri

From: Copenhagen, Denmark.  Highlights include: "A Part of Me"

and "Bright Land - Black Death".  Rating: 3.5/5.  Run Time: 35:35

Also out of Copenhagen are Pet the Preacher, the oddly named band who set the (under)world alight with last year's 'The Banjo' concept album.  It was a rollicking revue of big bluesy riffs and lyrics that shouldn't have worked but did framed around a scenario of a man's journey through his own private hell and the way to get out.  Less than a year later, here we are again.  The band is back with a new/old double EP containing the band's debut release from 2011, 'Meet the Creature' on side A, while the band's latest release, the 'Papa Zen' EP, comprises the whole of side B.

For those already familiar with the band's first EP, this will be a rehash but it appears here for the first time on vinyl.  Ditto 'Papa Zen'.  It's a great way of getting older material out to new listeners, like myself, who hadn't heard it.  As a first recording, the excitement and enthusiasm is clearly evident on these three cuts and just maybe a trace of self-consciousness.  It can be hard to tell with these guys though, they come from out of left field and do their own thing at all times.  The penchant for experimentation that the band is becoming known for can be found here in some oddball rhythms on "I Won't Let You Go" which shouldn't work but do and an otherwise mad scientist approach to a melding of stoner metal and traditional blues, something you would never have expected to sound so original but grows like barbed wire vines from the seed of the blues..

"Into a Darker Night" kicks the swinging saloon doors off the hinges of side B and swaggers in powerfully with some quietly urgent intensity.  "Papa Zen" is an instrumental that pops the cork off the tension built up in "Darker Night".  "A Part of Me" refocuses the intensity and tension through a heavier lens.

While band leader Christian Hede Madsen is busy with his more blues focused side project Hound, I doubt fans of Pet the Preacher will have to wait long for the band to make their next move as they're an inspired band who emphasize artistry and integrity over trends.  One thing this band won't run out of any time soon is ideas for new short stories.



Bite the Bullet official website
Bite the Bullet facebook

Pet The Preacher facebook

GET IT HERE

The Alchemical Mixture - Orange Blossom Jam & Ziz (album reviews)

The Italian psychedelic, stoner and doom scene is one of the richest, most prolific and consistent in the world today.  I thought I'd lift the skirt on the Italian underworld once more and expose two of the newer, not so widely known heavy psychedelic bands that call the country of Italy home.

ORANGE BLOSSOM JAM - MYSTIC JAR OF DOOM

Cover artwork by Valiu Voodoo

From: Osimo, Ancona.  Highlights include: "Forever High" and "Bees 

Dance".  Rating: 4.5/5

Orange Blossom Jam have got to be the most metal psychedelic band I've ever heard ... or is that the most psychedelic metal band I've ever heard?  Heavy psych taken to extremes, space rock and doom combine to form one of the most unabashedly heavy metal psychedelic combos around Italy or anywhere else for that matter.  This is heavy fuel for doomy fires.

About halfway into ten minute instrumental opening track 'I', the guitar crunches out one of the most ... "fuck yeah" moments you will ever hear in heavy music.  The kind of simplistic riff and syncopated rhythm that makes you wonder why you've never heard it before, or why you don't hear this kind of thing more often.  It sounds so easy.  It's the way you imagine heavy music as an overall concept in your head.  Dun-dun-dun, Dun-dun-dun, etc.  OBJ don't bother trying to overcomplicate the heavy, they've got loads of time to complicate things while toying around with their endless psychedelic ideas, so when it's time to kick ass, they simply roll up their sleeves and take care of business without being shy about it.  The heavy grooves only continue to roll off the band's collective tongues and fingers from there.

"Bees Dance" builds slowly, taking time to construct perfect moments from the most basic of foundations.  It's a confident band that takes this approach.  By not trying to do too much, they accomplish so much more.  The album is bookended by ten minute jams.  "T.H.C." is the second of these and, again, strikes the perfect Black Sabbath chord in the introductory riff.  Once again the vocals are heavy, gruff and forced through a smoke blackened throat.

This is some of the most powerful music I've heard in a while, managing to capture the best of the material and ideal worlds by combining the worldly strength of heavy muscle with the mystic understanding of the psychedelic mind.  A mind that is blown wide apart by the likes of Ziz.  Where OBJ found a mind-body balance, Ziz lets the mind take over.

ZIZ - EVER

From: Voghera, Lombardy, Pavia.  Highlights include: "Ziz"
and "... And To Protect".  Rating: 3.5/5

In many ways, these two bands couldn't be more opposite.  Ziz bill themselves as supernatural occult rock, toning down the heavy by degrees and increasing the use of texture.  Ziz adds waves of synth heavy or melodic embellishments to their compositions depending on need.  The outcome of the synth effect is always the same though: otherworldly textures.  While the heaviness is comparatively downplayed or understated, the band finds time to reference Paul Chain / Steve Sylvester style horror doom in places, never afraid of peering into that dark abyss,  but never staring so long of deeply into it that it becomes their obsession.

Instead, Ziz floats like a giant head in the sky broadcasting messages down as from a mind-controlling UFO.  They like to beam down late seventies / late eighties film soundtracks and simply allow the listener to create the images in their heads.  Synth gets a good workout throughout the disc and becomes their distinguishing characteristic.  "Welcome To The Machine" elements combine with A Clockwork Orange sounds to animate the spirit of Ziz, especially on "Tardigrad".  I can't imagine this kind of thing being everyone cup of tea, but those who dig it will probably love it a lot.  Robotic voices speak across the entirety of the disc's 31 or so minutes, sparking a conversation that, ironically, never becomes metallic.  The closest the band gets is to the neighboring skies of Hawkwind on the uproarious closing track, "Space is the Place".

In selecting these two albums to showcase side-by-side I have attempted to display the sheer creative breadth that is flooding out of the country of Italy.  Be it heavy metal or alternative rock, each band puts a little bit more thought into their product to place it on a psychedelic pedestal.  You can listen to both albums on the players below

Orange Blossom Jam is:                                  Ziz is:

Matteo Stronati – Guitar / vocals                    Alessio Bertucci – Guitar / vocals
Nick Soltani – Guitar                                      Lorenzo Trecate – Synth / vocals
Satia Dalia – Drums                                        Daniele Curone - Drums
Andrea Simonetti – Bass                                Nicola Cosella – Bass / vocals

Genre: Heavy Psych, Space Rock, Doom, Metal

Release Date: September 19, 2012 (Orange Blossom Jam); February 18, 2013 (Ziz)

Orange Blossom Jam on facebook
Ziz on facebook

The Alchemical Mixture - Naga & Zodiac (album reviews)

From: Naples, Italy.  Rating: 5/5.  Total Run Time: 22:50.
Release Date: January 17, 2013

Italian doom band Naga have unleashed their demo upon the unsuspecting masses on bandcamp as a 'pay what you want' deal.  The demo's made up of two lengthier tracks, rather on the razor edged distortion side of the doom ledger.  The band is made up of two thirds of the sludge doom band Kill the Easter Rabbit (KTER), who haven't been heard from since 2010's 'Apokatastasis' full-length album.  Like Spinal Tap before them, they have gone through their share of drummers, Naga's charter beat-basher, Dario, is a twelve year plus veteran of the band Nameless Crime.  One other roster move to report, they have switched from a twin guitar attack to a guitar and bass lineup with Emanuele Schember moving to bass.

Okay, with that all out of the way as an introduction, now it's time to dig into the music.  "The Path" opens things up with a sludgy doom riff and strong dynamics.  It doesn't take long for Dario to prove himself a powerful, dynamic drummer and a perfect fit with Emanuele and Lorenzo.  Straight off, the vocals are more brutal, more angry and less melodic than those of KTER, the last gasps of a dying wretch.  It's a great song that leaves nothing on the table, tempos are explored, dynamics exploited and that old feeling emerges of when doom was brand new (at least to the listener) matte black and dangerous.

"Vitriol" also explores inter-song dynamics, using major-minor chord variation to create an emotionally devastating effect.  If being chewed up and swallowed by some prehistoric monster was music, this is what it would sound like: chomping rhythms, crushing riffs, ringing splashes of light and saliva followed by a long journey down a very dark tunnel as the song changes and the band explores new tracts of sonic territory.

I'll be perfectly honest with you, this is exactly what I'm looking for in my doom.  Give me riffs, draw them out, change them up, take them to the burial chamber and make them suffer.  You don't always know what you're looking for until you hear it and Naga's two song demo may not make you sit up and take instant notice, but once the band begins exploring dynamics and different textures it all comes together.  It's only then that you realize: "I've been needing to hear this for a long time and didn't even know it".

From: Brisbane, Australia.  Rating: 5/5.  Total Run Time: 24:13.

Release Date: February 17, 2013

Another band that gives me that sweet and sour doomed feeling is Brisbane, Australia trio Zodiac.  While info on the band is sparse, I do know that the band features three fifths of hardcore punk band Last Chaos and I suppose it was time for these guys to embrace the doom and worship the riff.  So mote it be.

The big seventies-style doom riff plays a huge part of their sound.  Distinctive and melodic vocals and drums that add textures and layers to the storytelling rather than simply keep time weave a powerful spell over the listener.  Zodiac is a great band with a powerful and genuine traditional doom / paleo-metal sound.  A band whose tape can honestly be said to sound as though it actually was written and recorded during the late seventies or early eighties is a rare find.  They don't do it by copying and pasting their favorite sounds of the era into 'scrapbook songs', it's something achieved by production values, a refined ear and intuition.  Oh yeah, did I mentioned they released this three song demo on cassette tape?
The tape has sold out but it's still available from Nuclear Blood and No Patience in Australia, along with Shadow Kingdom, Hells Headbangers, I Hate Records & At War With False Noise.  I've got mine!

Riffs plunge down a Bermuda's triangle vortex of the classic devil's third tritone on opener "Vertigo" and spill off from there.  "Somnium" is another strong example of the band's ability to build an epic soundscape from a slow, tritonal riff and do so within a traditional doom framework that is both respectful to its origins and unique unto itself.  Towards the end of the latter song a haunting banshee wail from vocalist Ben Peters signals the band to finally cut loose and up the tempo.  It must feel great to do so, considering the band's pedigree.

I've no doubt Zodiac will end up on the radar of many and receive tons more press, and if they already are on your radar, give Naga a try, I'm sure you'll like it, and vice versa.  While Naga adds handfuls of filth to their sound, both bands are coming from very much the same place, the pond of primordial slime from which all doom bands have arisen.  The monumental tritone riff, which each of these two powerful bands put their own unique spin on to.  You can listen and download each of these great releases on the players below.

Genre: Sludge, Doom

Naga is:                                                                    Zodiac is:

Emanuele Schember - bass, effects                             Mikel Elborne - bass

Dario Graziano – drums                                              Will Learmonth - Drums

Lorenzo De Stefano - guitar, vocals                             Leo Price – guitar

                                                                                 Ryan Cooper – guitar

                                                                                 Ben Peters - vocals

Better Review:
Sludgelord on Naga
Too Late to Pray on Naga
Astral Doom on Zodiac

Naga facebook
Zodiac facebook

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The Alchemical Mixture - Mammoth Salmon (album reviews)

2X3=666 - A PAIR OF CRUSHERS

Cover Artwork by Ryan Redman at Ratart.

Highlights include: "Hypnotic Transference" and "Self Induced"
From: Portland, Orgeon.  Rating: 4/5

MAMMOTH SALMON - INTERNET EP

Portland, Oregon is a treasure trove of great bands with Red Fang, Snail, Crag Dweller and Bison Bison being among the best.  So when a new band shambles onto the scene expectations are sometimes skewed.  Either too high or too low.  Portland is a cool place.  Maybe the nicest American city I've been to.  It all feels very clean and new and there's definitely a creative electricity in the air.  To the town's credit, it has replaced New York as the mecca for comics artists and writers.  It's a place where things are happening, a mix of young and old with what is quickly forging into a strong identity of vigor, humor ... and an underlying din of noisome clamor.

Mammoth Salmon step outside of their local paradigm to create a lumbering, earnest and threatening attack full of thunder with none of the tongue-in-cheek upside down frowns of their neighbors.  Their three track introductory EP was recently released as a "Name Your Price" digital download on bandcamp.

Opening track "Narcotic Delirium" is an instrumental which showcases the band's basic approach, an introduction that boils down their overall sound.  It's three and a half minutes are so packed with bottomed-out swagger it's amazing the duo can stay upright while playing it.  There's an impressive amount of noise here for just two dudes, creating a tremendous amount of volume, enough to make one realize that two men working together can accomplish plenty.  Of course, I've an inkling that some overdubbing has taken place, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Still, Paul Dudziak (guitar, vocal, bass duties) and Mitch Meidinger (drums) raise the dead with these three songs.

"Self Induced" introduces vocals into the mix.  They are of the chest beating variety, clean and muscular, forcefully shouted and sound as though recorded on a rain soaked battle field.  "Hypnotic Transference" is wah-blistered funk, every bit as head-noddingly hypnotic as the title suggests..  Now we have a fuller and more accurate picture of the Mammoth Salmon sound.  The very name of the band conjures accurate pictures of the sounds they produce.  Massive and monstrous, imposing slow riffs on an unsuspecting populace with wafts of fishy funk dripping with dumpster juice and maybe a little fresh blood.  It's not the most substantial release in terms of length and girth, at 13 minutes it's the soundtrack to a coffee break, but it should whet appetites for fans of downtuned, crushing, bottomed-out jams.

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Highlights include: "Magnetic Fields of Radiant Light" and 

"Nothing Follows".  From: Portland, Orgeon.  Rating: 4/5

MAMMOTH SALMON - INTERNET EP 2

So what do these two fellas do for an encore?  Why, they simply release a brand new EP.  On the surface it all, quite literally, looks the same.  Same art, same number of songs, similar length, etc.  But this short record is more remarkable for the differences to its predecessor than it's similarities, which admittedly are only made more apparent by the surface similarities.

On "Nothing Follows", the opening statement of 'Internet EP 2' the heavy as lead balloons tone is dampened slightly, allowing the guitar to feel the breeze in a little bit lighter environment.  The aggression factor is also downplayed in measured doses.  The mirth factor seems to have increased proportionally as well with a more sing-songy approach to the vocal melodies.

In some ways 'EP 2' is a more experimental effort.  Even though it's difficult to say anything definitive about releases this short ('EP 2' is 16 minutes long compared to 'EP 1's 13 minutes length), the willingness to change some things up and toy around with texture and atmosphere becomes crystal clear as a motivating factor on closing track "Magnetic Fields of Radiant Light". Instead of simply sticking to a strict one guitar, one amp, one guitarist, one tone, one sound approach across these two EPs and six songs, Dudziak changes things up.  Perhaps it's that the bass isn't as prevalent here, it's hard to say.  "Magnetic Fields" is the spiritual cousin to "Hypnotic Transference" from the first EP, while "Green Lung"s cliffside chest-beating stance fits perfectly within the oeuvre.

I'm going to hazard a guess right now and say this duo's next, 'EP 3' should be coming on or around June 21.  It's probably just a coincidence, but their debut came on last year's winter solstice while this one came the day after the vernal equinox.  But if I were a betting man, I'd put a fiver down on the table that their next release will only see the band grow further and further into their heavy as a sack of nails in the face sound, dipping into ever more deepening pools of psychedelia along the way.  For now however, there's half an hour's worth of big, lumbering, foul-smelling fuzz with plenty of meat on its bones for you to dig into.  And it's  all available at a price that you get to name.

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Genre: Stoner, Doom, Experimental

Reminds me of: March The Desert, Sleep, Zosimos

Release Date: December 21, 2012 (EP 1), March 21, 2013 (EP 2)

Mammoth Salmon facebook

The Alchemical Mixture - Brujas Del Sol & Early Mammal (album reviews)

DEVOUTER RECORDS EDITION

Brujas Del Sol - Moonliner

Highlights include: "Conquistadors" and "Baba Yaga".

From: Columbus, Ohio.  Rating: 3/5

BRUJAS DEL SOL - Moonliner

If there were a band today that has been featured on this blog that takes the otherworldly aspects of psychedelic music and stretches them out to cosmis proportions, it's Brujas Del Sol.  Velvet snow falls from cloudless purple skies onto a sea of trees waving breezelessly in the airless void of some distant moon.  These are the dulcit tones of 'Moonliner'.

This LP, soon to be released on Devouter Records, is a compilation of sorts.  A collection of the group's singles which shouldn't work to create a solid and coherent listening experience but does.

Psychedelic drone is the band's drug of choice and they would have the listener nearly overdosing on repetition.  Long stretched out grooves test the tensile strength of some of these compositions nearly to the breaking point.  The best analogy to make on this front would be that the band take the role of Sheherazad of the Arabian Nights, never able to finish telling her story upon fear of death, digging in for an endless story cycle that tells no overall story but doesn't need to.  The art is in the telling.

The particular brand of psychedelia that Brujas Del Sol produce is not missionary music, the dreamy often ethereal and long-winded passages are successful in just having taken place.  Once the proper groove has been found the band pin their ears back and just keep going, battening down the hatches, hammering their point home with casual ease.

With that as a starting point, there are definitely moments of downright catchiness, such as "Conquistadors", "Baba Yaga" and "Satanic Surf Girls ..." as tracks to look out for in particular.  On these, fuzz rock, alt rock and even surf rock all in their turns become the beacons which bring the band's psychedelic ship into harbor.

Early Mammal - Horror At Pleasure

Highlights include: "Money Shot" and "Resurrection 

Men".  From: London, England.  Rating: 3.5/5

EARLY MAMMAL - Horror At Pleasure

Early Mammal take psychedelic rock, drag it by its patchouli greased dreds through the dark woods at night, shotgun in tow.  Through black masses and repeated animal sacrifice the band slowly convinces their victim of the righteousness of their actions until a Stockholm syndrome is developed.  Dark psychedelic music then springs fully armored from the forehead of Early Mammal and it's called 'Horror at Pleasure', an apt title indeed.

I can't tell you what it is for sure about this album and the music contained herein, but there's a major occult vibe going on.  It jumps out at you like a skeleton leaps from a closet when least expected.  Occult may or may not be hitting the mark because the vocals are hard to discern at times (more on this later), but there is a dangerous vibe to this album.  It drips with rock n' roll danger.  It's a darkness that goes way beyond dressing in black, turning crosses upside down and playing downtuned.  This is what conservative parents of the 1950's and 1960's were afraid rock music would turn into.  A snarling, smirking, hyper-sexualized beast of mind-expanding / mind-destroying melodic noise.  Early Mammal are the Rolling Stones transposed as youngsters to the punk era and possessed by taloned devils.

Take instrumental number "Checking The Bullshitter's Queen" for example.  "What does that even mean?" the conservative parents would ask and the music would be like, "if you don't get it now you never will."  The music explodes into ever more esoteric territory the further into the album one goes, the band skipping from long instrumental segment to long instrumental segment, cracking many a skull and taking many a name along the way.  A whole world of sounds is their stomping ground and Early Mammal stride long, their reach is wide, conquering vast tracts of territory as they go.

It's apparent that Early Mammal took great care to develop this album as a cohesive whole with a distinctive voice lent to songs linked by instrumental interludes and that fade in and out atop one another.  In this way 'Horror At Pleasure' is a satisfying listening experience that never jars the listener out of its dark world.

The mixing of this album leaves a bit to be desired with the guitar dominating to the detriment of the vocals which are often buried beneath layers of effects, but for the most part at the very least the melody carries through.  In the end the obscurity of the vocals only adds to the dark and dangerous depravity of Early Mammal's 'Horror At Pleasure'.

Genre: Psychedelic, Stoner

Release Date: April 1, 2013 (Early Mammal); April 15, 2013 (Brujas Del Sol)

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Go to a gravel pit at night, pretend it's the moon and howl at the earth.

Better Reviews:
Stoner Hive Brujas Del Sol review
Heavy Planet Early Mammal review
Stoner Hive Early Mammal review



GET THEM BOTH HERE

The Alchemical Mixture - Dead River & The Valley (album reviews)

LET THE FUZZ FLOW

Dead River - ST

Highlights include: "Wash His Bones" and "Burn Alive".

From: Melbourne, Australia.  Rating: 4/5

DEAD RIVER - ST

Dead River's self-titled EP is one of the toughest psychedelic rock records I've heard in a long, long time.  It's the burnt out and slightly strung out toughness of an all-nite diner with blues-inflected slide riffs and the ambience of the neon glow of disinterested guitars ringing and wailing in the background.  'Dead River' is loaded with leather jacketed and puke stained band t-shirt attitude that lets one know that these three ladies (Bindi Masterson - Vocals & guitar; Bonnie Mercer - Guitar and Shaunagh Furlong - Drums) have been through the wars and come back with a few missing teeth but a few stories to tell as well.

As a general thing, the Dead River flows with fuzz, providing said toughness.  A thick froth of fuzz like the skin that grows on old beer that's been left out for a little too long in an open container.  From there the cacophanous drums crash and bang continuously, relentlessly until all that's left along the shore is bloody pulp.  The lead guitar can then play the role of the disembodied ghost, possessing a riff every now and then but mostly content to be a truly free spirit, floating atop the Dead River like smog, haunting each of the four tracks with that strung out and burnt out vibe.

Dead River carry on the tradition of the drugged out side of Spacemen 3 and the rougher and readier side of early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club while showing signs of maturing into their own sound with "Burn Alive".

The Valley - ST

Highlights include: "Rad Dungeons" and "Royal City".

From: Seattle, Washington.  Rating: 4/5

THE VALLEY - ST EP

And if the fuzz comes down from the Mountain and flows down the Dead River, it certainly does so cutting a swathe through The Valley.

This Seattle quartet (Dan Beloit - Guitar / vocals / songwriting duties; Doug Manis - guitar; Colin Faddis: drums; Tim Basaraba - bass/vocals) play a driving style of melodic fuzz rock, somewhat along the lines of a stoner band like Red Desert through the lens of a band like Sloan.  They've been around for over ten years now and even though I live in the general area this is the first I've heard of the band.  It's a fine introduction to a band, it feels like hitting them mid-stride.

Fuzz and flange characterize this eponymous EP with some nice big, meaty riffs, smothered in fuzz gravy, especially on the first and last tracks, and a generous helping of rock and roll pop sensibilities.

They say opposites attract and stylistically, The Valley's glossy melodies couldn't be further from the dirt-encrusted assault of Dead River.  But where the twain meet is in the muddy groves of fuzztown.  "Rad Dungeons" and "Royal City" are satisfyingly fuzzy and heavy tracks with just enough aggression to match the driving rhythm and convince the listener that The Valley mean serious rock n roll business.  "Northern Cascades" and "Blue Sonic" feature plenty of drive of their own, but shows the band in a more spaced-out psychedelic light.  These latter two tracks have slightly less howl to them than the former and are more rock oriented with catchy melodies on the vocals all the way through, especially "Blue Sonic".  When The Valley plays around with psychedelia, it's usually in a textural context with wide-open spaces of staccato riffing with flange that 'suggests' more it 'tells'.  As subtle as this band gets though, they're still  not above bludgeoning the listener over the head when need be.

Genre: Psychedelic, Stoner, Fuzz Rock

Release Date: February 13, 2013 (Dead River); October 30, 2012 (The Valley)

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Digging for fuzz clams on the bloody banks of the river.

Dead River facebook
The Valley facebook





Thanks to The Soda Shop for introducing this author to The Valley.

The Alchemical Mixture - Annimal Machine, Black Overdrive & Hellryde Inc. (album reviews)

It can be hard to get into a Mexican state of mind when living in or around Vancouver.  Daydreams of hot climes and great food are tempered by 200+ days of rain and fast food chains on every street corner.  But today we're going to try to get there, but not by sheer mental will of effort.  Today we're going to focus on los tres grandes EPs of recent vintage from Mexico by the likes of Annimal Machine, Black Overdrive and Hellryde Inc.  Yeah, that's the ticket.  One listen to any one of these three EPs and I'm sweating my ass off.

The three bands featured here all have different approaches and all sound quite different but they all have one thing in common: they are all "heavy as fuck".

Annimal Machine - ST EP

Highlights include: "Rage" and "Condenado".  From:
Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco.  Rating: 3.5/5

Annimal Machine is one of the more aggressive stoner bands I've heard, relentlessly attacking their instruments, especially visceral is the heavy hitting of drummer Fat Bastard (who makes the all-name team).  See opening track "Condenado" for evidence of this.  The excitement of the performances really comes across and the band gets into some high powered synergy which is infectious.

While the energy output and aggression levels are high, the band still manages a loose, jamming feel to the three tracks on their EP.  Much like Spelljammer's Vol. II, each of these three songs breaks the 8-minute mark and there's an exploratory feeling.  "A Fistful of Dollars" is a look at the band's slightly more subdued side.  It's slow, especially when compared to "Condenado", but it's not lacking for energy or drive.  It starts off with a good two minute jam before settling into a fairly straight forward structure and a very solid groove.  The final two minutes of the song pick up the energy and excitement level and lead quite well into the true standout track, "Rage".

"Rage" is the final synthesis of what was great about the first two tracks: the heavy hitting instrumental pounding attack and the slower, groovier feel creates a headbanging, blood pumping highlight that simply must be felt and not just heard.  Already my body temperature has gone up two degrees.

The entire affair is laced with a punky 'don't give a shit' attitude and I suspect that the three dudes in the band intuitively 'feel' what they create without overanalyzing it.  Very much a west coast attitude.

Black Overdrive - ST Demo

Highlights include: "War Weather Worshipper" and 

"Soulless".  From: Mexico City.  Rating: 4/5

But due east a-ways, we find Mexico City's Black Overdrive, authors of one of the more promising and exciting recent demos from the underground.  They have a simple message:

Fuck ballads!! Crank it LOUD!!

I, for one, concur, as the sweat collects, beads and falls down my forehead.

Black Overdrive's six song self-titled demo EP is a hard driving and fuzzy kick in the teeth.

Black Overdrive is not the kind of band that paints beautiful pictures with highly complex song structures or atmosphere, their sound is quick and dirty graffiti scrawled on a crumbling wall.  Ripping guitars with the occasional flight of pyrotechnic frenzy and blazing drums create a backdrop for yelled vocals that get their point across needless of melody.

'Black Overdrive' is nothing if not consistent in feel and sound.  And that feel has to do with having one's head in a vice and the sound has to do with the grinding of one's teeth.  It's an intense affair, with no let-up.  Crushing guitars and pedal to the metal drums with the punk ethos prevalent on Annimal Machine's EP flip the bird to big studio magic, hair and makeup bands that are all about quantity over quality.  This is really what ties all the underground bands together throughout the world.  But the question of whether integrity begets quality becomes a chicken and egg thing.

Black Overdrive play what they want and say what  they want, fortunately, what they want is for the best.  "War Weather Worshipper" has already been a hit on the Doom Charts and there's no drop off in quality from there.  Each of the six tracks on their demo EP is killer with a consistent mood (with perhaps the understandable exception of their version of Fu Manchu's "Squash That Fly", although it leads perfectly into "War Weather Worshipper") and casually terrific performances.  There's nothing casual about me at this point, though.  I've got sweat stains on my back and armpits and am hunched over, panting.  But I move forward, ever forward to travel north ...

Hellryde Inc. - Hellryde Incorporated

Highlights include: "Piss Me Off" and "Insomnia".  From:

Monterrey, Nuevo León.  Rating: 4.5/5

Way up north from Mexico City, very nearly at the Texan border we arrive in Monterrey, one of the most highly 'developed' cities in Mexico to listen to the debut EP from one of the country's most highly developed underground bands, Hellryde Inc.

Zakk Wylde-ian guitar squeals and a clean production sound across the board give this EP a kind of sheen that is in stark contrast to Black Overdrive's offering but is no less raw for it.  The power felt on Annimal Machine and Black Overdrive is still dominant here thanks largely to the aggressive performances of Jesús Osuna [Guitar], Guillermo Uribe [Bass] and Javier Arévalo [Drums] and the confident belting of vocalist Edson Lee.

Hellryde Inc. blast through their five songs in just a smidgeon over twenty minutes and it flies by in a  flash.  So many styles and sounds are referenced here that it gives the listener no time to really get settled into the record and become a complacent listener.  Groove metal, southern metal, stoner, doom and heaps of other statements flit by and  in the blink of an eye are splattered across the windshield and quickly forgotten.  It's always time to move on, always time to move forward on this record.  Graveyard visitation feelings abound on "Love is in the Grave".  A nice wavy tall grass sound in the intro and an "I need to go for a drink" vibe in the breakdowns found within the verses bring these feelings to fruition, but the song's brevity gives it an incomplete feel.  Although as I said, they sure do keep things moving at a fast pace in every single way.  Got to keep moving forward, no looking back on the Hellryde lest ye be turned to a pillar of salt, which would no doubt quickly be forgotten and abandoned.

Despite all that, the band manage to invoke a trademark sound and an identity all its own.  Melting tires sliding on hot pavement at night.

So there it is and there they you have it, three EPs, 14 songs and 71 minutes from a trio bands from Mexico that have nothing to do with each other except that they are all hard and heavy and the listening of which will result in a delirium inducing fever.  I see a vision of wavy lines taking shape.  I need to go outside, get some air.  I open the door and ... ah, rain again.  It was all a mirage.

Genre: Stoner, Metal

Release Date: September 1, 2012 (Annimal Machine); November 1, 2012 (Black Overdrive); December 13, 2012 (Hellryde Inc.)

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Take a cold shower or move to Vancouver where cold showers are the norm 250 days of the year.

Better Reviews:
Ride With The Devil Annimal Machine review
Stoner Hive Annimal Machine review
Global Domination Black Overdrive review
Ear Munchies Hellryde Inc review

The Alchemical Mixture - Chains, Nonsun & Slow Heart (album review)

CHAINS - 'Of Death'

Highlights include: "Anticosmic Void" and "Necromantic 

Force".  From: Slovenia.  Rating: 4.5/5

"Chains was born under the black mark in the Samhain night of anno MMXI. The goal of this project is to make a Hypnotic Ritualistic Music in order to spread the verb of our master Satan.

The making of this kind of ritual is a kind of transcendent hypnosis trance who is channeling all the spiritual essence of the black flame into music form. Chains is strongly linked to 3 senses; vision, hearing and smell; because the experience must be accompanied by hearing music with the visions of all the conceptual artworks and spiced with incense and so all the chants are a mixture of lyrics mixed with a phonetically language transformed in mantras." - From Chains' official blog, Chains Hypnotic Ritual Music.

It's not often that a band invokes the sense of smell but the genre of drone sludge might be the most appropriate venue for one to do so.  All three of these bands emit their own olfactory effulgence in their own inimitable ways.  The ritualistic incense of Chains is offset by Nønsun's animal musk and the rotten decay of the body in the trash bin heard on Slow Heart's debut effort 'Dead Friends and Angry Lovers', a title that could easily refer to my year from mid 2010 to mid 2011 and believe me, it was an awful, awful stretch.

Why review three albums together? When I'm not at work or doing music reviews I write supernatural horror. This is my fuel. There are different moods for different scenes, but when I need to really feel the desolate despairs and desperate terrors of my creations I throw on these albums to set my mind right. The quote above is quite accurate in that, this is all-encompassing music. Sounds that have a physical presence, or at least a physical manifestation of electrification and hairs standing on end.  Each of these albums brings out their own specific mood, for Chains it's the presence of evil just behind you, for Nønsun it's the sense of lurking danger and for Slow Heart, it's the bleakness of hopeless self-defeating thoughts.

But the way in which these three diverse albums achieve these effects is by the same method, the heavy drone. Heavy sludge drone that, again, has a physical presence, a sheer weight, that makes the summer heat heavier, it makes the winter chill colder and makes positive action impossible.

NONSUN - 'Good Old Evil'

Highlights include: "Jesus' Age" and "Forgotten Is What
Never Was".  From: Lviv, Ukraine.  Rating: 4/5

Nønsun's 4-track demo EP 'Good Old Evil', creates the sludge metal equivalent of the clinical yet insect and parasite infested worlds of early Ridley Scott or James Cameron films.  They allow the listener a running headstart on "Jesus' Age", capture him on "Rain Have Mercy" strip the listener of all hope and human dignity on the straight drone of "Message Of Nihil Carried By The Waves Of The Big Bang" and ultimately leave the  listener tied naked to a chair with a shotgun in his face on organ-driven closer "Forgotten Is What Never Was".  A lonely refrigerator hum closes the album out, and the listener knows their tormentor won't be coming back, they'll be left that way, til the end.  Hopeless.

The overall vibe of Nønsun is to crush down all hope.  There are 'hopeful' passages in "Jesus' Age" that are trampled almost as soon as they appear from the rubble, hopeful weeds pushing their way, improbably from the hard pavement only the be crushed down for their tremendous efforts.

There is a sheer light at the end of the tunnel of "Rain Have Mercy", with a bright riff and uptempo beat but it leads directly into the nearly seven minute static drone of "Message Of Nihil Carried By The Waves Of The Big Bang".  The victim escapes the killer's shack in the woods, looks over a shoulder momentarily ... and wakes up half-conscious back in the shack under tighter bonds.

'Good Old Evil''s merciless vibe and filth-spewing sludge tone are crushing and brutal, an unflattering tattoo, a slow drive past a car wrapped around a pole before emergency crews arrive.  The haunting image that cuts past the unaffected and the urbane facade and leaves the inner self gutted.

SLOW HEART - 'Dead Friends & Angry Lovers'

Highlights include: "We Want The Night" and "Never 

Trust a Woman (Dressed in Black)".  From: Boston, Mass.
Rating: 3/5

The feeling carries over into the music of Slow Heart, only this band does it differently.  Where Nønsun's Bohdan Goatooth's vocals are deep, raw and guttural, Ron's from Slow Heart are vastly subdued.  It appears to be a giant effort just to sing at all through the overwhelming dark mood.  There is a heavy tone here in the instruments, but the lasting impression is the mood of the album.  Dredging the depths of darkness and despair, the title of the album describes the music well, but doesn't say it all.  The lyrical content and the subdued tone of voice go a long way towards weaving that mood and interlocks with the relentless drone of the instruments.  Everyday's the same and it always rains, mercilessly.

The most 'uplifting' moment is the anthemic opening track "We Want The Night".  Featuring a shambling corpse like tempo and frustratingly obscured pinpoints of light via guitar, it isn't exactly 'Singin' in the Rain'.  As 'God Old Evil' is a shimmering black album 'Dead Friends and Angry Lovers' is a matte gray album.  The perfect musical equivalent of a dense fog.  If Chains' music is set in a black draped, skull-decorated, candle-lit parlor, Slow Heart play the national anthems of Limbo.  Underpinning the entire project is a monomaniacal vision of futility and again hopelessness, achieved by the relentless repetition of musical phrases and tempos that rarely change.  Even the length of the compositions is consistent with four of the five tracks over five minutes and under six.

Slow Heart is the musical step-child of David Lynch babysat by Nick Cave.  Chains is the sound of static given form and substance.  It's the white noise in your ears in the silent room as you try to sleep, amplified.  One finds oneself on a sparse rocky landscape with a hazy yellow and unbreathable atmosphere.  Everything is spare save the choking sludgy drone, as a whole bottle of ketchup drowns a small serving of mac and cheese.  Drums pound low in the mix like the death throes of some giant Lovecraftian millipede far off in the distance.  Disembodied voices pierce the veil and moan dark nothings.  The occasional melodic element grows out of the void like a plant in timelapse photography and is quickly choked off and left to wither.

Chains' music is like a reset button for the mind, it's the perfect soundtrack to dark mental meanderings.  It puts the listener in the right frame of mind to imagine, be creative and focus thoughts.  It's unobtrusive without being background music.  It won't distract the listener from a train of thought because it is an active participant in the process.  It is a vehicle for creativity and in that regard the duo of Chains (Chad Davis along with E. Chains) are quite successful in accomplishing their goals.

In the extremely limited and now sold out CD version of 'Of Death' a 'lyrics' booklet is comprised of song titles in psychedelic font with pictures in lieu of words which are not only excellent graphic artwork (the entire package is) but give form to the ideas present on this release.  "Of Death" features a wild eyed mummified corpse turning in a tight coffin, "Anticosmic Void" shows an hourglass with bat wings emerging from a spinning disc, "All The Colors Of The Dark" reveals a skull-littered cave of torture, "Fireborn" displays a skeletal fetus emerging from flames.  "Necromantic Force" depicts the approach of a skinned horse whose head is framed by a black moon, "Electric Doom"'s totem is a cloaked and hooded wraith and the horned, ragged, saw toothed demon is finally made manifest in the artwork for "Spiritual Evocation".

Three albums of bottled inspiration.  No, this isn't party music, this isn't the kind of thing to throw on when buddies are over for beer, unless of course those beer swilling buddies are travelers down the left hand path. For this writer, this is utilitarian music, it's useful music, but it wouldn't be so if it weren't also enjoyable music.  Pitiless drone for those morbid moods or when it's simply time for a change of pace.  We can't all listen to Red Fang all day or whatever.  That's the great thing about underground music, it doesn't just all lead you in One Direction, so to speak.  Bands like Nønsun, Slow Heart and Chains are from vastly different backgrounds and take the listener to some chilling and eerie places.  The adventurous, the spiritual, the thoughtful will go along for the journey and some will return the favor.

Genre: Drone, Sludge, Doom.

Release Date: October 5, 2012 (Chains); December 12, 2012 (Nønsun); December 18, 2012 (Slow Heart)

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Writing.  Or waiting at the river's edge for the boatman to return

Better Reviews:
Sludgelord Nonsun review
Heavy Planet Nonsun review
Temple of Perdition Slow Heart review