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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Shinin' Shade - Sat-Urn (album review)

Cover artwork by Matteo Tumulash

Shinin' Shade is one of those crazy bands that are hard to pin down.  They incorporate elements of doom and stoner rock into a sixties prog psych foundation, or is that the other way around?  It seems the more of this kind of music you listen to the harder it is to identify anything you hear afterwards.  It's all just heavy music, which is fine by me ... as long as it sounds good.

Opening number "Our Time & Space" sets a strong precedent that is observed time and again to immense effect.  Pendulous, teasingly slow riffs wrap around megalithic drumming to open up onto vistas of pure psychedelic grooviness.  The next thing one will notice is the singing.  Jane Esther-Collins vocals are deep but feminine, loud and effortless, sometimes reminiscent of Uta Plotkin of Witch Mountain but with a lighter touch.  There are moments, particularly during the last bit of lead-off single "Keyhole / Inner Saturn", that are nothing short of breathtaking.  The way she holds a powerful note as the band moves behind her like the hidden triggers for booby traps in an ancient, cobwebbed tomb or mausoleum ... well, it's something really special.

Don't think for a minute though that this album won't put your head on the butcher's block.  One may tend to read the phrases "lighter touch" and "psychedelic grooviness" and conjure images of structure-less guitar noodling full of endlessly ringing notes locked in glimmering circles.  Not bad, at the proper moment that kind of thing can be absolutely perfect, but not always powerful.  Shinin' Shade are a heavy, heavy band, menacing and indeed powerful. Their compositions are full and never meandering, though the songs are often on the longish side, there's very little breathing room within them, they are focused, dizzying and dazzlingly heavy, dynamic and shine like a ritual knife blade in the candle light.  In fact, it's not until we get to the end of the penultimate track, "Denied Lovers", that the band takes its first meandering breather with an instrumental psychedelic sound painting that bridges feelwise into album closer "Epic Talking".

Each of the seven tracks on 'Sat-Urn' are weighty and substantial, leaving the listener with the impression that a satisfying astral journey has taken place.  A journey to Steve Ditkoan non-physical planes, unseen before the naked eye but known intuitively to be in front of the listener's face all along.

Photo by Alessia Leporati.

Shinin' Shade's second full length is heavier, tighter and tougher than I had anticipated going in.  I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.  I wasn't sure of what to expect when I first approached this album, but I came into it with an open mind.  The sound this band can evoke is akin to the awakening of an enormous slumbering idiot god floating dreamlessly in deepest space.  Rumbling, quaking and orbited by suns that appear as shattered looking glass fragments by scale.

Highlights include: "Our Time and Space" and "Over-Sea Nightmares"

Rating: 4/5

Total Run Time: 48:06

Jane Esther-Collins - Vocals
Allen Kramer - Guitar, Mellotron
Mek Jefrey - Guitar, Vocals
Roger Davis - Bass
Mike De Chirico - Drums

From: Parma, Italy

Genre: Doom, Psychedelic

Reminds me of: Alunah, Seremonia, Witch Mountain

Release Date: March 25, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: The Ancient One directs your soul to the Nightmare dimension only for it to get vacuumed into and stuck inside the Negative Zone.

Better Review:
Welcome to the Void in Greek
Ech(((o))) and Dust

Shinin' Shade facebook

Alice in Chains "Stone" Lyric Video Premiere

Look what came in the old electronic mailbag today kiddies:
 
The lyric video for "Stone" makes its world premiere on Vevo today. Check it out. 
And stay tuned for the official video for "Stone," coming soon.

Alice In Chains Twenty-Three

If you haven't seen the unofficial Alice in Chains documentary, Alice in Chains Twenty-Three, the film that received a prestigious honorable mention at the Inland Film Festival, you can see it here now. 

Brujas Del Sol album stream

A little while back Brujas Del Sol's 'Moonliner' album was featured on this blog, as Devouter Records were cool enough to let me hear it a bit early (read the review here) (I also wrote about the album on the terrific Stoner Hive blog which you can read here).  It's a six song collection of spacey droney psych wandering in the realm of Spacemen 3's more epic moments.  Today is the big day that 'Moonliner' is being released, you can now stream the album in it's entirety at the soundcloud link directly below.  From Devouter Records:

https://soundcloud.com/devouter-records/sets/brujas-del-sol-moonliner




Devouter Records are proud to present the release of Moonliner by Columbus quartet Brujas del Sol. Out digitally and on coloured vinyl on April 15th.

Moonliner

Brujas del Sol is a psychedelic quartet that focuses their attention toward fuzzed out, loud, swirly, droney compositions.
Old bandmates Adrian Zambrano (guitar, vocals) and Derrick White (bass) formed Brujas del Sol with drummer Jason Green in the fall of 2011. Instead of pre-writing songs, the band took a more organic approach; recording every improvised jam session. After a few months, hours of musical ideas were captured. Listening back, the band picked a couple of favourites which became their first songs. A variety of musical ingredients began to melt into a sound of their own; hypnotic krautrock, fuzz-laden blues grooves, swirling surf-rock, ambient drones all found their ways into songs. 

During the spring of 2012 the band hit Electraplay Studios which yielded two EPs-Moonliner volumes 1 & 2. As the writing process became more demanding, the band wanted to add a keyboardist. Ryan Stivers joined that summer and the band went forth composing music for the last installation in their Moonliner trilogy. 

While spending most of the summer writing and opening for national acts A Place to Bury Strangers and Black moth super rainbow, Moonliner volume 3 was recorded and finally released December of 2012. After reworking Vol.’s 1 and 2, several favorable reviews and countless hours of honing and refining their craft, the band is poised to bring to you The Moonliner LP.

During the course of 2012 the band recorded three separate volumes of the Moonliner series releasing them on their bandcamp page to raise awareness of band.  The three volumes were then re-recorded at the end of 2012 with the addition of new member of keyboards for release through Devouter Records.

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http://www.facebook.com/BrujasdelSol

Buy the album here:http://devouterrecords.bigcartel.com/

Romero - Take The Potion (album review)

Cover artwork by Steve Stanczyk (bass) & Benjamin Brooks (drums)

Midwestern power trio Romero are one of those uncategorizable bands whom amateur bullshitters such as myself can't make heads nor tails of, so we simply label them stoner and / or doom or sometimes sludge.  But the truth is, they haven't made the adhesive strong enough for a label to stick to these cats.  The mercurial nature of their sound side-steps, jukes and dekes labelization just as soon as a one is attempted to be applied.

Romero have studied their craft well and break down years of influence to appeal to the most primitive parts of the stoner brain.  They pounce onto the scene like star born warriors with riff-tastic weaponry on opening track "Compliments & Cocktails", hitting listeners in the gut with a battleaxe of riffs while vaporizing brains with their experimental structures.  Melodic crooning finds a companion in guttural utterances to form a Mutt & Jeff combo of vocals.  In other words, this is an album full of layered songs and complex ideas.

"Couch Lock" slabs and drags it's way through roughly four minutes of sludge before veering off the highway to spin doughnuts and crop circles in a field of heavy space / stoner rock for a breath-taking final two minutes.  See, that's just the kind of thing I'm talking about.  To cop a cliche, Expect the Unexpected.  It speaks volumes that this song was issued as a cassette single, of all things, about a year ago.  A cassette single that came with 3-D cover art and a pair of red and blue lense 3-D glasses.  That's about as fitting an anecdote about the band and their musical shenanigans as one could come up with.

Even the physical package for 'Take The Potion', put out by Grindcore Karaoke, is a weirdo.  I guarantee it's unlike any CD package you've ever seen or even dreamt up while tripping on 16 tabs of impurest brown acid while riding an ass-rainbow propelled dragon dog through the skies above the desert.  I'm telling you.  It's all pull tabs and die cutting.

Towards the end of the album, the last two tracks in fact, "Wheeling Dervish" and "In The Heather" seem tame in comparison with the rest of the album.  These are the riffiest and most straight forward songs to make the mouth water and hook listeners in.  Tellingly, they come at the end of the album.  There's no easing in to the world of Romero but things get somewhat less complicated on the way out, which is not what the listener is expecting.  If anything you might expect increasing complexity the further into this album you go.  Again, it's telling, isn't it?  Romero take your expectations and pretzel the shit out of them every chance they get.

It all may sound pretty directionless and pretentious on the surface, the way I'm describing it, but 'Take The Potion' has one last surprise to report:  it's neither of those things.  It speaks loudly that the band choose to start the album with a signature riff before peeling back ever-increasing layers of textural complexity.  And through it all the band maintains a sharp focus on structuring compact songs packed with great ideas, as no song reaches very far beyond the seven minute mark nearly in spite of themselves.

Romero is part of what I'm perceiving as a new wave of stoner rockers who incorporate a little prog, a little psych, a little doom, a little of every note of music that has ever touched the ears of the musicians involved to create something aerodynamically unsound that flies like an endangered bird through smog-choked skies.  It can be challenging music, if you're not ready for the challenge then your ears won't be equal to it.  This album is what you put on after having a "... what the fuck ..." moment.  Something this trapezoidal is sure to bang your brains back into place.

Highlights include: "Take The Potion" and "In The Heather"

Rating: 4/5

Total Run Time: 41:55

Jeffrey Mundt - guitars, vocals & percussion.
Benjamin Brooks - drums and vocals.
Steve Stanczyk - bass

From: Madison, Wisconsin

Genre: Stoner, Prog, Psychedelic, Doom, Sludge, Space Rock, Younameit

Reminds me of: The Quartet of Woah!, Utah

Release Date: January 29, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Lost in the woods, you find a tree bark mask fringed with grass and decide to see if it fits.  It's only then that you see that madness is all around you everywhere, all the time.  The giant basalt block of human history rolls on skids of chaos ...

Better Reviews:
The Obelisk
Sludgelord
Beard Rock
Welcome To The Void in Greek
Metal Sucks

Romero Sludgelord interview

Romero facebook

Hour of Power 04/13/13 (playlist)

1. Brother Bishop (Church of Misery / Thy Kingdom Scum) 2013
2. Mortified (Mexicoma / Supervoid EP) 2012
3. Cocaine Wizard Woman (Las Cruces / Dusk) 2010
4. Vessel of Astaroth (Iron Hearse / Get in the Hearse) 2013
5. Alice in Chains 23 mockumentary 2013
6. The Mouths of Madness (Orchid / The Mouths of Madness) 2013
7. Vulture's Landing (Kylesa / Ultraviolet) 2013
8. Master of the Temple (Magister Templi / Lucifer Leviathan Logos) 2013
9. Caul of Time (Beastwars / Blood Becomes Fire) 2013
10. So Heavy, So Slow (S.I.M.B. / Monday Superblues) 2013
11. Корм (Feed) (Electricjezus / Грязь поколений (Mud of Generations) 2013

Doom Charts for 04/13/13

Top 25 Songs

#). Song Title (artist/album)

1. Hillside (Egypt / Become The Sun)
2. Thy Kingdom Gone (Weed Priest / ST)
3. The Great Escape Of The Giant Stone Man (Void of Sleep / Tales Between Reality & Madness)
4. Lucy Lucifer (Veracrash / My Brother The Godhead)
5. Lucid (Mount Salem / Endless)
6. Hacia El 6to Sol (DemonAuta / Caminando En La Luna)
7. Ride (Miss Lava / Red Supergiant)
8. Piss Me Off (Hellryde Inc. / Hellryde Incorporated)
9. The Hammer (Attacker / Giants fo Canaan)
10. Welldweller (Lothorian / Welldweller)
11. Damn Good (Palm Desert / Rotten Village Sessions)
12. The Soul's Midnight (Ice Dragon / The Soul's Midnight EP)
13. Let The End Begin (Ancient VVisdom / Deathlike)
14. Howling (Wheelfall / Interzone)
15. On Strings (VolumeFeeder / Crowns & Chains)
16. Pare Huarg (Lord Summerisle / Demo)
17. Wash His Bones (Dead River / ST)
18. Astral Sabbat (Jess & The Ancient Ones / Astral Sabbat EP)
19. Rad Dungeons (The Valley / ST)
20. Beneath The Black Star (Deep Space Destructors / II)*
21. Misery Mountain (Black Overdrive / ST)
22. She-Wolf (The Wandering Midget / From The Meadows of Opium Dreams)*
23. Corpus Earthling (Midnight Zombie Alligator / Nova Sico)*
24. Signed, Epstein's Mom (Gozu / The Fury of a Patient Man)*
25. Hangman's Laugh (Wheelfall / Wheelfall / A Very Old Ghost Behind The Farm split album)

* New Song

Outgoing songs:
Gotta Have It (Crag Dweller / Magic Dust)
The Bearded Fool (Old Man Wizard / ???)
Your Armageddon (Manlord / ST)
Worship The Devil (Glitter Wizard / Hunting Gatherers)

Top 30 Albums
#). artist - album title

1. Green Shade - ... Bright Interlude
2. March The Desert - ST
3. Weed Priest - ST
4. Sideburn - IV Monument
5. Crag Dweller - Magic Dust
6. Tentacle - Ingot Eye
7. Blizaro - Blak Majicians
8. Iron Hearse - Get In The Hearse
9. Spacefog - Purple Void
10. Neon Warship - ST
11. DemonAuta - Caminando en la Luna EP
12. Cultura Tres - Rezando Al Miedo
13. Gates of Slumber - Stormcrow EP
14. Palm Desert - Rotten Village Sessions
15. Egypt - Become the Sun
16. Bretus - In Onirica
17. Various Artists - Chilean Fuzz Comp.
18. Tsar Bomba - Silent Queen
19. Aleph Null - Belladonna EP
20. Beastwars - Blood Becomes Fire
21. Kröwnn - Hyborian Age
22. Boudain - ST EP
23. Devil - Gather The Sinners
24. Grave Disgrace - Triumphant & Militant Church
25. Mount Salem - Endless EP
26. Devil To Pay - Fate Is Your Muse
27. Year of the Goat - Angels' Necropolis
28. Gozu - The Fury of a Patient Man
29. Mothership - ST
30. Orange Blossom Jam - Mystic Jar of Doom

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