Album Review: Holy Grove - Holy Grove

Formed in 2012, this release marks the eponymous debut album from the doom-friendly quartet from Portland, Oregon. Sounding like a mind-meld between the cauldron-staring Black Pyramid, the dynamic Blues Pills, and the fantasy riff-chucking of The Sword, Holy Grove’s self-titled debut focusses on pitching buzzing stoner into 70s doom riffs that glisten with Lovecraftian intent.

Opener “Death of Magic” swings a sackful of big hearty bass, ladles on the groove and rocks you from pillar to post. Throughout fuzz-driven guitar riffs pitch and yaw all around whilst Vidal’s softly echoing vocal floats above it all. Her determinedly heartfelt cries bear a striking similarity to the storming output from Acid King’s Lori S.

Further in, “Nix” pulls out some feisty hooks and chucks in more psychedelic noodling before dropping into a half-time cosmic crawl to end. The heartstone of the piece though is the one-two segued caress of the title-track and the addictive bluesy lines of “Huntress”. They bear emotion that grips and won’t let go – “Kneel down at the altar”, indeed.

The Sabbathian-influenced “Caravan” wraps itself around the classic riff of the aforementioned’s “Evil Woman” before the 9-minuter, “Hanged Man”, with its dark chanting and punishing, warped overdrive tips a hat to Saint Vitus and seals the deal.

They’ve clearly had a ball making this album; you can hear the glee in their riff worship. Their continued deference to the metal gods of times past works for them as it stands up on its own – a stonking creation. Yep, there’s nothing truly innovational here but it’s still a thoroughly joyful experience and they are deservedly going down a storm in the live arena.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/04/holy-grove-st-heavy-psych-sounds/

Album Review: Murmur – Murmur

After plunging the depths with their raw, feedback-abusing, drone-heavy and, at times, utterly inaccessible debut album, “Mainlining The Lugubrious”, this Chicago quintet have pulled back their black metal curtains and allowed in a little more light for their sophomore self-titled.

They have undoubtedly veered towards more of an intensive drone and psych experience, with only suggestions of their former Nachmystium and Burzum stylings shining through. Expect plenty of rhythmic anomalies, staccato attacks and even a little touch of punk nous thrown in to the mix. Tracks such as “Bull Of Crete” and the hellish dirge-into-mayhem of the two-part “Zeta II Reticuli” and “King In Yellow” form the bloodied fists of malcontent. It’s like finding the atonal nadir where These Arms Are Snakes’ vicious howls meet the avant-garde lunacy of Kong.

Retaining their love of ambience, you’ll discover amidst the dying paroxysms, dark bleatings and discordant noise, fresh shoots bursting forth from the dangerously jagged 11-minute monster, “Al-Malik”, and the soulful Latino flourishes of “Recuerdos”. Elsewhere, the album is only memorable for its lack of hooks, curiously liquid segueing between tracks and inconsistent tonal patterns.

What does ring true is their choice of bonus track. If Murmur’s ultimate fetish hadn’t been obvious before then the closing cover of King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 2″ will nail that thought into your mind. Faithfully performed (though without the original’s kitsch instrumentation or warm blue tones) it seems a shame they neglected to insert as much of their heroes’ gnarly groove or deap-seated psychoses into the rest-of the album.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2014/01/murmur-murmur-season-of-mist/

News: Anciients & Buzzard King

The joys of traipsing through BandCamp has revealed two total stunners this week in the form of Canada's Anciients and Cambridge, England's Buzzard King.

Anciients, set to release their debut album on April 12th (April 16th in North America), are described as "somewhere between sheer, apocalyptic heaviness and precise riffing — a Vancouver-based rock juggernaut forging crushing heavy metal evocative of veterans High on Fire and contemporary sonic craftsmen Opeth, Anciients have combined fuck-off-huge chords with mind-altering riffage that takes you on an unfamiliar trip."

They've stuck up a trio of tracks from their forthcoming Heart Of Oak album on their BandCamp page here - http://anciientriffs.bandcamp.com/album/heart-of-oak - I think you'll find "Faith And Oath" to be an absolute jaw-dropper.

Fans of  "bourbon-soaked heavy rock noir", as the band describes themselves, need to head over to Buzzard King's BandCamp page - http://buzzardking.bandcamp.com/ - and pay close attention to the tracks "Diesel And Danger" for it's stone-cold groove, sweet riffage and blues-streaked vocal and "Tumbling Spires" for it's howling drive and memorable barbs of each verse and the effortless roll as it takes you through their full range of gears. Think Clutch meets Rival Sons via The Doors and Graveyard.

As an interesting aside, Rival Sons are playing Cambridge soon and I haven't a clue why this lot aren't on the bill. The campaign starts here, folks...

Album Review: Horisont – Second Assault

Somewhere along the 250km of roadside that connects the Swedish cities of Örebro and Gothenburg, they must have discovered some manic tear in the space-time continuum. It’s just one theory to make sense of the two cities’ rapidly-expanding retro scene. Combined, they are able to boast an array of hirsute bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Burning Saviours and Horisont – the subject of this review. Each of those are successfully selling their own individual recipes to the same flashback-inducing space-cake. The crazy, tie-dye-wearing fans that are mopping it up can be found swinging their flares like it’s the Seventies all over again.

Horisont’s biography describes their sound as being “heavily influenced by 1970s hard rock groups like Black Sabbath, UFO, Thin Lizzy and Scorpions”; indeed a mouthful, which their wonderfully self-deprecating Facebook page sums up for us as “New Wave Of Swedish Old Man’s Rock”.

As you delve through Second Assault, their sophomore album, you’ll certainly pick up plenty of the aforementioned influences as well as some that they don’t acknowledge. On the magnificent “Crusaders Of Death” you’ll get a big hit of laid-back blues, echoing the shuffle of bands like King Crimson and Wishbone Ash, whilst the very first spin of the opener “Time Warrior”, had me jumping to the conclusion that they’d merely reworked Deep Purple’s “Speed King”. Most certainly, the band’s mark is branded deep onto its surface.

With so many different influences running side by side, the songwriting is a bit of a rocky road. There are clearly some tracks that hit you harder than others. The hearty groove on “Watch Them Die” grabs you by the nuts, but the title-track is a little too dull and the chaotic structure of “Spirit” merely leaves you a bit dazed and confused. At different moments my nostrils burned with pungent whiffs of Uriah Heep’s prog, the sheer power that lurks within Nazareth and even some hints of early-Whitesnake thrown in for good measure.

Axel Söderberg’s vocals are naggingly high-pitched and urgent and take some getting used to. The production keeps them crisp and crunchy so that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the scuffed, pitching riffs and tight, wild leads of guitarists Charlie Van Loo and Kristofer Möller. Sadly, it’s partly this abrasive clarity of sound that ends up being the album’s Achilles heel. The tracks stab at you like insect stings, each taking their influence from a different source.

The multi-directional approach, with the guitar tone changing with each track, means there isn’t a stylistic grab that binds them all together (take the muffled connective padding that all Graveyard’s tracks seem to tote, as an example of a single-minded style that achieves this), so you’ll find it tough to attach yourself to the whole caboodle. There’s also the fact that the rhythm section is intermittently relegated in the mix by the howling vocal and strings. I, for one, certainly found myself preferring the softer, buzzed-out tracks where the waves of lead abate and the bass and drums pop back to the surface in the way that those little colored buoys do when the ocean becomes subdued.

It’s funny. There is one particular American retro band they remind me of very much and that’s Danava; another band who suffer from trying to take a little too much from everyone else to throw into the pot without offering enough of themselves. I expected to dig Second Assault a lot more than I did which, despite my misgivings, is by no means a bad album with one or two sweet, rumbling cruisers and incisive cuts but, sadly, Horisont’s bigger picture is a far blander prospect than the emotion-soaked class displayed by some of their rivals.

Also online @ The NewReview (with samples) =  http://thenewreview.net/reviews/horisont-second-assault

Album Review: King Pest - On The Town

King Pest, the Manchester quartet, invoke the soft-rock music of the 80s. Recent winners of XFM Uploaded and the radio station’s monthly panel vote, they appear to have pleased some important folks in the industry.

This EP is, however, by no means perfect. ‘Reasons’, for instance, is a two-chord traipse through a backdrop of jarring guitar and wilting vocal. The recording even comes complete with a catarrh-filled cough at the beginning. It is the seedy after-gig aging rock star/groupie romp - “she smiles as I slap her bum”. The hideous American lilt in the vocal is truly cringeworthy and nowhere is this more apparent than in ‘I Know’ - a grimly weak, tuneless wringing of the notes.

This band have spent a lot of time and effort recording this material and there is always a redeeming feature to be found. Okay, their press blurb is ridiculously over -the-top - they do not sound like ‘The Pixies playing the hits of The Beatles’, nor do they play ‘glorious, tub-thumping pop songs’. However, if they do go back to the studio and build on the promise of the pomp and drive of the EP’s title-track they’ll be heading in the right direction.