Fair Warning! Don't Miss ... Damned Pilots & Post

DAMNED PILOTS - SPACED OUT EP

Today's fair warning comes in the form of this pair of albums from upstart record label Radioactive Records, emanating from Italy.  Damned Pilots are also from Italy and they've got a hard rockin' post-nuclear glam thing going for them.  Of course, that's not all they've got going for them, they've got a pretty deep bag of tricks.  Some heavy funk groove and dreamy psychedelia in the mold of late-sixties The Who which has been known to take off and fly the unfriendly metallic skies.  These Damned Pilots have also been known to navigate the smoggy, sludgy atmospheres as well.  Be sure to give them a listen on the player below and visit them on facebook, right here.

BIO:

"The DAMNED PILOTS are a Super-Rock band.  Their sound has been tagged as "nuclear rock " by listeners and fans, as it embodies a wide spectrum of different influences.  "DAMNED PILOTS" is a concept band.  The idea is to bring music and visual together,defining the environment of a rock-doom cartoon like "science-fiction" scenario, featuring cartoon like spaceships battles, lost bars on distant planets and a whole set of weird characters.

The DAMNED PILOTS are 4 mature performers,who were already active in the underground rock scene for years before joining the band.  Since its early start,the band has been self producing demos over demos,
in order to get their sound ready.

DAMNED PILOTS first production is the "Spaced Out" EP, featuring 6 tracks; 4 original songs and 2 covers ("Sleeping in the fire)" by W.A.S.P. and "Believe me now" by Electric Light Orchestra).  The band started performing live in Holland, Italy and Slovenia, nailing several different sold out shows, to promote their new record and their songs.  Right after the "Spaced Out" recording session, the DAMNED PILOTS flew up to Amsterdam/Holland to work with producer Ron Goudie (Stryper,Gwar,Social distortion , Death angel.Fear,Poison).  Together They recorded the pre-production of the "Overgalaxy" cd ,a 10 tracks full-length album, wich is meant to be re-recorded into full production in the next few months.

On the sci-fi "Band from space" level,the DAMNED PILOTS are currently working with Portuguese visual and comics author, Quico de Nogueira, who is producing a whole comic book "DAMNED PILOTS" adventure book (wich we plan to distribute together with the physical copies of the record, as well as brought the internet).

The DAMNED PILOTS are: Sgt.OTE - voice, Don Nutz - drums, erick Space - bass, Johnny Angel - guitars."


And when you're done that be damned sure you check out...

POST - POST VOL. 1

Post is a really cool band too.  Hailing form the Netherlands, they are a power trio consisting of Sven (guitar / vocals), Jeremy (bass) and Mike (drums).  Their sound is planted in the solid soil of stoner fuzz which can at times uproot itself and take off, making a punkish turn for the worse.  Fuzz guitar anchors this album, holding down the fort, while the prominent rhythm section flies off the handle and provides the songs with muscle and momentum.  One more time, don't take my word for it, feast your aural orifices on the player below and after giving this fast-paced album out for a spin, go ahead and visit them on facebook, you can find their band profile page right here.

Follow the links on the players above to the Radioactive Records bandcamp page, there you can download the albums, it's up to you what you do with them after that ...

Doom Charts for 05/15/13

Top 25 Songs

#). Song Title (artist/album)

1. Widow Stone (Sonic Mass / single)
2. Savage Dancer (Black Moth / 7" single)
3. Polygon of Eyes (Scorpion Child / ST)
4. Stone (Alice in Chains / The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here)
5. Sinister Gleams (Abysmal Grief / Feretri)
6. Crux To Bear (Across Tundras / Split LP w/ Lark's Tongue)
7. Tower of Silence (Cathedral / The Last Spire)
8. Highflyer (Eternal Elysium / Highflyer EP)
9. Leaning on a Bear (Purson / The Circle & The Blue Door)
10. Keyhole / Inner Saturn (Shinin' Shade / Sat-Urn)
11. Dancing With My Demons (Chains / 7" single)
12. Dull Ache [I Hate Myself Today] (Tentacle / Ingot Eye)
13. Shadow King (Beastwars / Blood Becomes Fire)
14. Nuclear Messiah (King Goat / Atom)
15. Chrononaut (Crag Dweller / Magic Dust)
16. Cryogenics (Utah / ST)
17. Death March (The Gates of Slumber / Stormcrow)
18. For the Throne of Fire (Kröwnn / Hyborian Age)*
19. Yorgan Mountain (Green Shade / ... Bright Interlude)
20. Solution (Supermachine / ST)
21. Holy Planet Yamoth (Necronomicon / The Queen of Death)
22. Purple Void (Spacefog / Purple Void)
23. Money Shot (Early Mammal / Horror at Pleasure)
24. Silverwing (Sideburn / IV Monument)
25. Kärsimyksen tie (Musta Risti / ST)

* New Song

Outgoing songs:

Warrior Woman (Corsair / Ghosts of Proxima Centauri)

• Last Chart
• About the Doom Charts

The Machine & Sungrazer split (album review)

Fantastic cover artwork by Maarten Donders

I discovered The Machine a year ago when I picked up their superlative 'Calmer Than You Are' album.  I became hypnotized by the distinctive busy hi-hat drumming of Davy Boogaard.  Add in some awesome riffs and the clean but strong vocals of David Eering (who produced both sides of the record) and the gravitational heaviness of bassist Hans van Heemst and the band becomes a stoned funk monster.  I had known of Sungrazer and probably heard one or two of their songs somewhere along the way, but this split was my first time really diving into the band.  Here's what I thought of the split.

The Machine kicks things off with a ten minute wallop of fuzz, funk and spacey grooves.  The band lets their spirits wander free on this jam in a way that feels looser and yet more organized than the extended jams on 'Calmer Than You Are'.  Because the band would latch onto a groove and repeat a phrase seemingly endlessly on 'Calmer', this ten minute track feels shorter than the eight minute tracks on that album because there seems to be more variation, more textural exploration, more paving of riff roads to different places.  The song is called "Awe" and that's as good a title as one can come up with to describe this megalithic monstrosity.  One can only stare in slack jawed wonder as wave after wave of groove washes over the listener.  "Not Only" is a shorter, punkier number that picks up the pace and sprints towards The Machine's big finish.

A fuzz crowned sunshine riff pours forth from a split open cactus, "Slipface" is pure desert rock.  The fuzz is dry, the groove is hot and there's no shade in sight.  The only respite comes in the form of the watery vocals which speak of aquatic subjects.  The ultimate tease.  Three minutes into the track, night falls, campfire sparks dance among the stars and the listener is treated to an extended wah caked solo atop understated tribal drum fills which fill out the shadows with fearful wonder.  Seven minutes or so in to this nearly 11 minute song the listener is treated to the first hints of alarm.  There's something lurking within and distorting the shadows.  Danger of all dangers, it's actually the sun, threatening to end this most perfect of nights and offer another day of hard desert trials.  Heat mirages dance upon the horizon as the sun claims another victim.  If this were simply a three song EP from The Machine alone and the night were to end there, I would be more than satisfied.  But Sungrazer is up next, and Machine couldn't possibly have proven a tougher act to follow.

Sungrazer pilots a fuzz zeppelin which explodes as in a dream on their first offering "Dopo".  Burning embers fall lazily from the sky but the listener doesn't much mind.  The track ends on an otherworldly discordant harmony a la Alice in Chains.  It's something I'm hearing more and more of these days, bit by bit, and to be perfectly honest with you, I can't get enough of it.  This close harmony spills over into the Sungrazer's second cut, "Yo La Tengo" which has a very laid back Buffalo Springfield feel to it while swirling chords reach back from the present like tentacles to pull the listener under.  The listener is able to get his head above water to witness the chaotic scene of psychedelic riffage above the surface before plunging back down to the serenity of the welcoming depths.

Sungrazer comes closest to The Machine in terms of sound, specifically from the 'Calmer ...' album on final track "Flow Through a Good Story" which means it might have made more sense to open Sungrazer's side with it.  Then again, it might have been too samey and the band might have lost its own identity in the process.  Either way, the song finds a perfect home on this split.  Fuzz riffs that bend upwards like daredevil ramps off which the listener jumps into the waiting arms of groove.  The calmness and almost lackadaisical nature of the vocals during all this madness makes for a really intense atmosphere.  (Remember that technique kids, it's a good one)

Overall, Sungrazer's half of the split is less sun-baked, about a billion times calmer than Machine were and more psychedelic as a general rule.  Especially trippy is Rutger Smeets' six string noise maker as it explores more otherworldly environments than a Star Wars picture.  Both bands acquit themselves quite well by refining their own distinctive sounds.  Is there a clash between tracks three and four?  Perhaps, but that's why the devil invented the second side of a vinyl disc.  To cleanse the musical palate before flipping it over.  As one with only the digital files, I go out for a smoke during the intermission.  It was always going to be like that, these are distinctly different sounding bands and that's really the beauty of this thing.  Two sounds colliding on a single disc, coming together as a single entity.

Highlights include: "Awe" and "Flow Through a Good Story"

Rating: 4.5/5

Total Run Time: 47:23

The Machine is:                                                                       Sungrazer is:

Davy Boogaard – Drums                                                         Hans Mulders - Drums
Hans van Heemst – Bass                                                         Sander Haagmans – Bass/Vocals
David Eering - Guitar/Vocals                                                   Rutger Smeets – Guitar/Vocals

From: Rotterdam (The Machine); Maastricht, Valkenburg, Puth (Sungrazer), Netherlands

Genre: Psychedelic, Stoner

Reminds me of: Buffalo Springfield, Kyuss

Release Date: February 14, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Communing with the cosmic coyote ...

Better Reviews:
The Soda Shop
Sputnik Music
Rock Freaks

Sungrazer interview for Not Another Music Blog about the split

The Machine official website
Sungrazer official website
The Machine on Facebook
Sungrazer Facebook

**Special thanks to Cosmic Lava for introducing me to The Machine

Fair Warning! Don't Miss ... Ten Foot Wizard - Return to the Infinite

BIO:

"Ten Foot Wizard was formed as a side-project by members of Manchester metal band Bisonhammer in 2009. Since then the band have played just a handful of gigs each year but have garnered a reputation for putting on an incendiary live show, recently supporting Karma To Burn and Witch Mountain.

The band play their own brand of heavy blues rock that owes as much to classic bands such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin as to more modern bands such as Clutch, Queens of the Stone age and Fu Manchu.

With the release of the debut album 'Return to the Infinite' on May 2nd 2013, Ten Foot Wizard hope to be playing live a lot more often and carve out a niche for their bluesy beard rock."

Be sure to listen on the player below, click the link and follow through to Ten Foot Wizard's bandcamp page with your beard lovin' support and while yer at it, check them out on facebook (link below).

Ten Foot Wizard on facebook

Also, for our Mancunian friends, be sure to clear your agendas for Ten Foot Wizard's show on FRIDAY, JUNE 7 @ THE DUCIE BRIDGE (152 Corporation St.) in MANCHESTER, ENGLAND. Friday night show, no holds barred!  Great line-up for this show with Space Witch and Bastard of the Skies, too.  Here's a link to the event page on facebook, be sure to check it out and get ready to have your beards rocked right off your northern faces!

Lowburn - Soaring High (album review)

Lowburn didn't need to happen, it just sprang up out of a mutual love for all the great bands we take for granted (as per their bio): Kyuss, Black Sabbath, Monster Magnet, Blue Cheer, Acid King, Cathedral, Sleep and even ZZ Top.  You see, these "4 old geezers who want to rock" are past and present members of epic metal band Battlelore and don't exactly need some underground stoner side project to divert their attention, it's just that, their attention was already diverted, such is the power of Stoner Rock!

As an introduction to the band, 'Soaring High' gets the saliva glands flowing.  The title track crashes in with some busy snare work, spilling out into some big riffs, straight out of the 'Blues for the Red Sun' cook book.  "Running on Fumes" turns the screw on some of the heaviest, juggernaut rhythms one is likely to hear in this outsider's genre.  The power on display here is undeniable and in that way, very Finnish in its locomotion.  What's surprising is how well Lowburn fits within the genre.  Typically, Finns put an inimitable spin on even the most obscure of styles, making them the outsiders among the outsiders.  It's not often one hears a Finnish band play it straight, but no matter how iconoclastic the sound, I've never heard a Finnish band get it categorically wrong.  Lowburn of course are no exception to this rule.  Through it all, no matter which style or genre they play, one thing that can always be counted on is the power that the Finns produce.  Add to that the finesse of satisfying riffs and slick rhythms to put a smile on one's face and it's a double whammy, an unstoppable force of rock n roll.

"The Power It Holds" gets that Monster Magnet shades wearing, menacing strut thing going in a big way. An insistent background riff puts the listener into a trance to endure the punishing avalanche of flying riffs and grooves that surrounds it, like the eye of the storm.  With the listener still hypnotized, the band goes right into "Moonful of Stars" with only a minimal feedback oriented transition between songs, to offer another pummeling.

How much do you love stoner rock?  Is it possible to be excited about a sound that doesn't offer too much in the way of innovation or a new sound?  Of course!  Lowburn are an 'original' band in the strictest definition and earliest sense of the word, which is,  "an original work is one that embodies the same spirit as the works which inspired it".  There's no question this is an awesome debut from a quartet of veteran musicians, maybe playing in a bit of a different style, but who definitely know what they're doing.  Without even a single doubt, I know that if you like stoner rock, you will love this EP.  The CD version is already sold out (dang!), but you can still download this baby by following the links on the player below ...

Highlights include: "Running on Fumes" and "Moonful of Stars"

Rating: 5/5

Total Run Time: 19:08

Henkka Vahvanen - drums
Miika Kokkola - bass
Tomi Mykkänen - guitar and vocals
Tommi Havo - guitar

From: Lappeenranta, Finland

Genre: Stoner, Doom

Reminds me of: Kyuss, Mexicoma, Midnight Ghost Train, Monster Magnet

Release Date: January 26, 2013

Suggested Listening Activity for Fellow Non-Stoners: In the far distant year of 2020, people will live on the moon and go for a day at a private beach by hitching a ride on an asteroid, this is lonely beach asteroid music ...

Better Reviews:
Stoner Hive
Temple of Perdition
Heavy Planet

Lowburn facebook

Rogue Transmissions - Head of the Demon - ST (album review)

Head of the Demon came across my desk like the stone carving of Pazuzu found in Northern Iraq at the beginning of The Exorcist and I've been obsessed by its blackened ambiance and old school doom metal sensibilities ever since.  Where did it come from?  How did I first hear about it?  Why am I so darkly drawn to the cover artwork?  These are questions without answers, or at least answers lost in a demon possessed black out.  And if they're still out there, I no longer wish to find them.

Now, before we even begin, I must say that what we've got here is a sound that wasn't at all what I was expecting when I picked this thing up, well not entirely anyway.  I was expecting some dark and tough as nails old school metal with doom leanings along the lines of say Night Demon, Natur or even Ghost Tower.  What  I got was blackened and unlike anything else in my collection, sitting atop the pile as a charred gargoyle gorges on a hill of corpses, misshapen and isolated.

Typically, and I say this a lot, I need riffs to enjoy my music.  Rarely do I fall for an album which relies entirely upon atmosphere for its charm.  But when a band gets the atmosphere just right, without ever slipping up, well it goes beyond the catchy and becomes gangrenously infectious.  It infects not only the mind but the soul, probably all the more effectively because there's not a lot of memorable moments to rope a memory around, just an overall favorable impression that must be heard again and again to be revisited.  The first time I listened to this album I couldn't stop thinking about it and it took a while to get my head back into normal shape.

While most black metal bands depend on the drums to put up an impenetrable barrier of noise upon which mournful banshee-like vocals are scrawled, Head of the Demon takes a different approach.  About the only thing that really qualifies this dark masterpiece as blackened anything is the recognizable jangly black metal guitar sound which lifts listeners in a bruising whirlwind and transports them to a kipple strewn landscape of time devoured cyclopean ruins.

After spending the bulk of the front half of the album building up the horrific atmosphere in a style that I've never heard done more effectively, "The Key" springs forth with vibrato organ and the listener is transported immediately to vaulted coffin-filled chambers.  Again, after carefully isolating the listener in a filth encrusted cavern whose walls cry black tears of ancient blood, the organ pops out in bas relief like a pustulating boil, vibrant and immediate.  It doesn't hurt matters that the organ rides atop the best riff on the whole album with a lyrical invocation to Yog Sothoth to boot!  Lyrically, Lovecraftian themes are explored and the band does a fantastic job of capturing the hopelessness that the tall man from Providence lent to most of his stories.

While searching for the right soundtrack to fuel the imagination and spark the birth of dark ideas, this stuff provides a heady brew indeed.  Once again, the "hook" here is in the atmosphere.  This album grows nightmares like mushrooms in a black and musty chamber of filth.  Demonic descending scales and wailing notes that connect like spider's web combines with a sketchy and low-fi production sound to create something truly unique, something to be treasured like remains found in the forest.  The atmosphere and tension continues to build all the way to the bitter end of closing track "Wraith from the Unknown" when the Ancient Ones are finally awakened from their slumber and the earth is swallowed in an absolutely lightless abyss.  Everything about the tone of the album is pitch perfect from the band name to the fascinating cover art to the mesmerizing lo-fi production sound that lends it something of the quality of a 'found footage' recording in a decaying and abandoned murder house.  If you're looking to creep yourself out on a lonely night, then put on 'Head of the Demon'.

Highlights include: "The Key" and "Fifth House of the Mausoleum"

Rating: 4.5/5


Tracklist:
1). By Titan Hand (6:30)
2). The Lie in Wait-Riding the Waste (9:22)
3). Phantasmagoria (5:48)
4). The Man from Foreign Land (6:51)
5). The Key (6:22)
6). Fifth House of the Mausoleum (8:18)
7). Wraith from the Unknown (7:54)
Total Run Time: 49:29

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Genre: Doom, Black Metal

Reminds me of: Let's face it, this is pretty unique stuff.

Release Date: January 22, 2013

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: When you wake up in the middle of the night, unable to move with the feeling of an evil presence in the room, put this album on as soon as you are able to regain motion.

Better Review:
From the Dust Returned
Sea of Tranquility

Head of the Demon facebook

GET IT HERE

OR HERE (digital)

Hour of Power 05/11/13 (playlist)

1. I Appear Missing (Queens of the Stone Age / ... Like Clockwork) 2013
2. Throw That Stone (The Brimstone Days / On a Monday Too Early To Tell) 2012
3. Blind (Whitcomb / The Conqueror) 2013 ***
4. Keep Your Weeds (Jex Toth / Blood Moon Rise) 2013
5. Casse Tete (Kings Destroy / A Time For Hunting) 2013
6. Ancient Song (Geezer / Gage EP) 2013
7. At The Cromlech (Kröwnn / Hyborian Age) 2013
8. Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Monster Magnet / Dopes to Infinity) 1993 'classic video'
9. Hollow Tyrant (JG Blizaro) 2013
10. Invokation I: The Acid Skull (Nibiru / Caosgon) 2013

*** Thanks once again go out to The Soda Shop for finding this one