Category Archives: Metal
Fauna – The Hunt (Music Review)
Fauna
The Hunt
Aurora Borealis
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Link: http://www.aurora-b.com/band_pages/ABX038.php
Climb up in the attic and dig around for a while. I’m sure there is that VHS player stashed somewhere in the back. Got it? Good. Now go get you a dirty copy of Faces Of Death and make sure the slow motion option is on when you watch it.
That is what it feels like when listening to The Hunt. At first you get this cinematic ambient brooding going on. But when you least expect it, a death metal onslaught clocks you upside the head and doesn’t stop beating you in the face for what feels like hours. It’s sheer horror to bear, but let’s attribute that horror more towards the car accident syndrome when driving by, you just cannot seem to look away.
The Hunt is this combination of death doom and gloom covered by spurts of ambient electronic soundscapes that sometimes prowl around your eardrums while other times taunting you to see how long it will take for you to crack.
It’s like Type O Negative covered Burzum but would much rather listen to something like Labradford. Quite confusing, but that’s the essential reason that makes you want to listen to Fauna. After a few listens, I still don’t know what lurks around the corner.
Open the door that leads into the dark depths of the unknown and expect some strobe lights to beat you down along the way. They didn’t say it was easy, but nor did bands like Whitehouse or Zoviet France.
Desert Sessions – Volumes 7 and 8 (Music Review)
Desert Sessions
Volumes 7 and 8
Southern Lord
Rating: 2.8 out of 5
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Desert_Sessions
Remember that part in the movie Vanishing Point where Kowalski (Barry Newman) is in the desert, and he stumbles upon a hippy commune with desert hippies playing music and religiously performing some crazy free-form dance? It felt like an existential mirage generated from the heat of the desert.
If you substitute ‘60s psychedelia with a roving dust storm of gypsy revivalism, then you get the gist of the first song “Don’t Drink Poison” from Desert Sessions.
I always thought that scene in Vanishing Point was a weakness of the movie, as is Volumes 7 and 8 of this collective.
Despite the first number, a watered down original version of “Hanging Tree” that later was re-recorded for Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf, and “Poly Wants A Crack Rock” — being the finest examples in the stoner rock style — this compilation keeps a low profile that doesn’t really do its part to push the envelope like it should.
The Desert Sessions collective has always included the best in alternative performers and these two volumes are no different. Mark Lanegan, Alain Johannes, Joshua Homme and others make up Volumes 7 (Gypsy Marches) and 8 (Can You See Under My Thumb? There You Are).
Trailing towards the end of the collection (the final imprint on this collective was Volumes 9 and 10), and serving as an historical document for Queens of the Stone Age, unless you are a deep fan of Screaming Trees or a Queens junkie looking for earlier versions of a few songs that make the lifeblood of the band, then you are not going to really want to bother with the rest. Sure Johannes’ Eleven imprint is embedded in here somewhere, but you will have this picked over if you keep that philosophy.
Astrosoniq – Quadrant (Music Review)
Astrosoniq
Quadrant
(Exile On Mainstream)
Rating: 4.8 out of 5
Link: http://www.astrosoniq.com/
There is something going on. You wait and wait, and the anticipation is killing you because you know whatever that is going to happen will be big. You can feel it in your bones.
The anticipation transcends to being teased with wailing guitars, subtle spacetronics and finally Fred Van Bergen boasts, “We ain’t gonna stay no more. In this lifetime just waiting for a sign.”
And right before you scream that you just cannot take it anymore, you get the sign and Astrosoniq explodes into a cacophony of hard-edged stoner rock that will spin your long locks into a tornado of head-banging fury. Bergen trades sentiments for “We ain’t gonna leave” as the fury of the guitars screeching and screaming with vocal howls spiral you into the wall.
And this is the first five minutes of Quadrant. By the time “Faustian Bargain” ends, you have to pick yourself up off the ground and wonder what the hell just happened. But “Clouds of Decay” kick you until you are back down.
I may not have been born when Deep Purple explored their range in “Child Of Time,” that was two years before my time, but becoming familiar with the song, it was a simple statement of power and expression. This was power rock that breathed for over 10 minutes.
This is what goes on with “As Soon As They Got Airborne…” It’s a 14-plus minute testament to the power and glory of rock. Beginning with a gyrating bass line, this is a guitarist’ song. Ron Van Herpen turns his axe into a lover, seducing the notes and giving them a life all its own that end up making love to Tuen van de Velden’s cosmic synth playing. Somewhere during this time, you get lost in the moment. Initial sequence takes place and the song turns into jet fuel and one of the greatest power rockers you will ever hear. 9 minutes in and the song is set to unfold into the great beyond. It it’s loud, it’s not loud enough.
Confident and brazen, Astrosoniq has created a masterpiece that boldly looks to everything they have done in the past and focuses on all of the elements that make this band unique while packaging it into an album that is more powerful than they have gone before, more exploratory and dives deeper into their musical versatility.
Quadrant is the definition of a metal album.
Eagle Twin- The Unkindness of Crows (Music Review)
Eagle Twin
The Unkindness of Crows
Southern Lord Records
Rating 3.5 out of 5
Links:
Eagle Twin on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/eagletwin
Southern Lord Records homepage: http://www.southernlord.com/
The Unkindness of Crows is an epic, slow jam metal masterwork. The tracks all follow a “crow” theme as set up by the album title: dark, mysterious, and foreboding.
Although Salt Lake City’s own heavy noisecore collective, Iceburn, wasn’t known for their vocals, fans will find that Eagle Twin sounds familiar: both bands are fronted by Gentry Densley.
Percussionist Tyler Smith is the other half of Eagle Twin (twin – get it?), beating on the drums and brass like they owe him a lot of money. This release sounds a bit like Danzig on Quaaludes, but with better songwriting and much better lyrics (and without a singer hiding a napoleon complex).
The track “In The Beginning Was The Scream” starts vocally with Tuvan throat singing styled by growls, conjuring up pissed off Russian herdsmen sporting black hoodies, wielding drop-d guitars, and kicking ass. I can smell the spilled alcohol and dirty pot in the pit already. Indeed, Gentry uses this mean vocal style throughout the record, adding much drama to the mix. His voice becomes more of an instrument perfectly tuned to the band, weaving in and out like a separate guitar track.
Though the album is only a 7-song LP, The Unkindness of Crows still comes in at an hour in length, with some tracks droning on for over ten minutes. While I get the importance of this genre needing longer songs to work right, I found the length of some songs a bit much. That said, “Carry on, King of Carrion,” coming in at 6+ minutes long, strangely seems to fly by. Now normally, long songs like these don’t sit well with my classic-punk rock trained ears, but it works well on this album.
Great album, it stays on my iPod. It will be great for zoning out while working on art. Recommended for fans of Godflesh, Iceburn, etc.
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Shrinebuilder – Self-Titled (Music Review)
Shrinebuilder
Self Titled
Neurot
Rating: 3 out of 5
Links:
http://www.myspace.com/shrinebuildergroup
http://www.neurotrecordings.com/
In the early ‘90s, White Zombie came out with a couple albums filled with sludge-like stoner rock that turned the metal world upside down. Then came Beavis And Butthead and the ideal perception of metal and stoner rock amplified threefold. If it wasn’t for Kyuss and some bands from the Northwest, the ideology of stoner rock would be tainted forever.
If Beavis and Butthead could see Shrinebuilder now, their stiff mullet hair would be blown straight up in the air, mouths agape. What Shrinebuilder has that White Zombie (pre La Sexorcisto) did not is a better production and a more expansive approach to their songs, meandering away from the crunch and grind to explore their more guitar-laden ambient side like they sit around in their tour bus listening to Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul, or early Yes.
The vocals are exactly what you would expect from a band like this: a cross between Tad Doyle and Peter Steele. If there were some Chris Cornell wails thrown in then you would have the ultimate vocalist. Yet the mind-crushing music is what keeps this long-winded EP moving and is worth keeping partly for novelty and partly for some decent instrumental work. Either way devil horns will erect from a stale jean jacket arm and penetrate the ring of smoke that hovers above.
