Album Review: Queen Elephantine - Kala

With a production value as rough as a hangover, Queen Elephantine cast a little one-take stardust over their music. It’s lo-fi and dissolute. Hearing them recorded can’t be far away from the aural experience of seeing them live. Feedback and fuzz are their friends. Farting sub-bass is a constant bedfellow and hissing snare is their heartbeat.

In opener, “Quartered” they thrust together a visceral, spiked form of electro-punk and staple it to the slow drift of melancholic doom. Think of a heavy-lidded, tripping version of Bleach-era Nirvana and you won’t be far off. The two-chord attack of “Quartz” (and twin “Deep Blue”) takes us a step further by introducing yawning vocal stabs with spasmodic bursts of guitar. The mid-track drop into a maudlin build lets the bass rumble play on alone to really dig out a groove.

Elsewhere, the tribal toms of “Onyx” lay the rhythm for a slow-burning psychedelic jam: sliding, trundling, chaotically pulsing and phasing with discordance, chaotic input and abstract warmth. A kind of loose-seated Weedeater with added feedback. To finish, the marvellously-titled “Throne Of The Void In The Hundred Petal Lotus” is a sedate, amorphous sludge oozing its way down a blood-red river clogged with writhing, pain-racked bodies and in through the gates of Hell.

What you’ll find is so stripped, so devoid of complexity, so unloveable and so unrefined that it offers little beyond that initial impact of rediscovering the thrill of the avant-garde; the early flush of youth where quality mattered little. If lo-fi doom is your bag, you’ll get a kick from this but you won’t cherish it for long.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/11/queen-elephantine-kala-transcending-obscurity/

https://queenelephantine.bandcamp.com/album/kala
https://facebook.com/queenelephantine

Album Review: Craang – To The Estimated Size Of The Universe

Ah, the joys of coming across the onomatopoeic band-name. To all intents and purposes, Craang sounds like their moniker suggests they should. The sudden resonant “craaannng” of strings reverberating through a mass of distortion. Actual metal on metal action. Oddly enough, as a heavy band capable of dredging up some powerful emotions, Craang are reminiscent of another onomatopoeic band, Kongh. Despite their blacker outlook and doomier “kooooonnngh” those Swedes definitely share a love for a good wall-of-sound and pounding repetition with this impressive Greek trio.


As a debut album, quite frankly TTESOTU is astounding. There have been plenty of releases of late riding the retro gravy train but this four-track concoction of space, stoner and psych is quite unlike anything that has come before. Yes, some of its content may bear a passing resemblance to Hawkwind, Zappa or Pink Floyd but it actually draws strength from far more contemporary sounds than these. Take “Butterfly” for example. It digs out the kind of sick, splattering riff that Fu Manchu or Orange Goblin might have conjured and rides it until it sinks so far into your consciousness that you cease to notice it any more. You can feel your own pulse begin to syncopate, realigning itself with the music to create a new cadence for you to live by. Not only this, but the cyclical lyric “hold your breath” [or "breasts" as it beings to sound after one to many t̶o̶k̶e̶s̶  rotations] will follow you to your grave. All this, and still the music remains utterly uplifting, infectiously introspective and emotionally exacting.

Throughout, you’ll pick up on the slow, steady development taking place in the layers beyond the drone fuzz brushstrokes. Forever shifting, the picture morphs before your eyes, as much as the album’s stunning artwork suggests it might. Perhaps it’s the warm production, maybe it’s the fact that as a three-piece the sound is spartan rather than busy, or perhaps it’s the little effervescent qualities that shine through, but all I know is that “Magnolia” plays like an absolute dream. You really do feel a certain sense of having been removed from space and time as you go drifting off into the cosmos-stretching sonic wonderland that Craang have created here.

One criticism one might throw in their direction is that they have a tendency to wallow towards repetition a little too easily. Consequently, all the songs bear a passing resemblance to one another – “Slo Forward Jam” plays like an instrumental build to the majesty of its neighbour, whilst the lengthy jam, “The Meteorian”, essentially drives off the same rhythmic pattern that “Magnolia” sets up. What this latter track does sport is some effortlessly affecting dreampop lyrics and an immense section of synth that lifts the whole piece into something incredibly cinematic in feel. You might also catch the strains of a flying saucer coming in to land as they wind up the warble effect to Biblical proportions. The truth is out there, apparently.

There is definitely no hiding from the enigmatic joy, passion and crushing presence that this album carries. The whole is weighty yet the tone remains light as a feather. Quite where they go from this mountaintop remains to be seen, but the safest bet on the planet would be an immediate invite to Roadburn, ProgPower or Desertfest.

Also online @ Heavy Blog Is Heavy = http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2014/10/16/craang-to-the-estimated-size-of-the-universe/

Album Review: Mammoth Mammoth - Volume III: Hell's Likely

It might be some massive Movember-related office in-joke that I’m not aware of, but I’ve been reviewing a lot of hairy bands recently. And I mean bands with hirsute monikers. I’ve had the frizz of All Hail The Yeti and the cowlicks of Texas Hippie Coalition moulting all over my desk and currently I’m sweeping back the endless fringe of Australia’s Mammoth Mammoth.

You know that any band who describes themselves as “Chasing mayhem… hunting unicorns… murdering fuzz” have a seriously good sense of humour. That is evident from the music they are making and exactly what kind of tools they are wielding here. You’ll recognise their warm throb of the sort bandied about by bands like Orange Goblin, but instead of digging out a slow groove for it to sit in, Mammoth Mammoth attempt to weld that to some pretty fast Motorhead-esque rock chops instead.

The title-track of this third album of theirs sets off at a breakneck pace, with “Go” and “Bare Bones” ramping up that “heavy murder fuzz” that they seem so desperate to sell. Underneath it all though the simple chord structures and vocal harmonies of naff 70s/80s rock combos begin to peek through – almost as if a coiffured Poison or rug-sporting KISS are trying to party up the joint. The juxtaposing upbeat songs and down market amp-abusing sees the band begin to pick off a sound approximating that of a cotton-wool smothered AC/DC. That overzealous bass buzzcut just murders the vitality of their standard rock gimmicks like the call-and-response tactics or the wild guitar solos that they plant. Instead the clean strings and vocals are dragged down into shit-kicking their way out of places like the interminable marathon “(Up All Night) Demons To Fight”. I don’t care how “fun” your band is; recycling three chords for seven minutes can’t be anyone’s idea of a good time.

The second half of the album sees the band really ripping into their songs. This addition of chugged grunt and sinister vocal allows them to grasp something a little more tangible. Both “I Want It Too” and “Bury Me” plunder more torpid rhythms and feature bleak nagging passages that reaches down to much darker places. They are songs that begin to draw comparison with bands like labelmates Monster Magnet and Canadian looney-tunes Barn Burner. With no fewer than five bonus tracks on this here promo, they certainly have plenty of tuneage to offer. Party anthems “Another Drink” and “Let’s Roll”, the monstrous grind of “Weapon Of Mass Self-Destruction”, the lighter, nimbler “Slacker” and “The Bad Oil” (where they attempt to transform into The Ramones and miss the boat by running the track for six minutes too long) all benefit from grittier production which really brings their gnarlier side to the fore.

End of the day, Mammoth Mammoth clearly didn’t write Hell’s Likely with the finer details in mind; they just wanted to write music that was fun to play and with enough bottom-end to break eardrums. By the album’s close, you’ll either be besotted by their no frills, no nonsense, all power bravado or bored to tears by their lack of ingenuity and “bull in a china shop” approach to song construction. Expect plenty of bristle, but don’t be surprised if all you get is split ends.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/11/mammoth-mammoth-hells-likely-napalm-records/