EP Review: Crippled Black Phoenix – New Dark Age Tour

Crippled Black Phoenix have always been a hard one to pin down to a single genre so its no surprise to find multi-instrumentalist Justin Greaves still warping any pre- or mis-conceptions we may have of his band. This long-playing EP comes hot on the heels of last year’s White Light Generator – an album that marked their 10th anniversary.

Having tackled the emotional journey from stoner doom to freak folk they continue their homage to the likes of Pink Floyd by covering their classic composition “Echoes” from the 1971 album Meddle. Here they strongly echo the source material yet manage to expand it from its original 23-minute running time, employing some neat little tricks and charming affectations, to a whopping 37-minuter in two parts. Definitely a melange that Floyd fans will want to check out.

The two original tracks here provide most insight into their evolution. With trumpets and gunshots opening the album the scene is set by “Spider Island”… something wicked this way comes. Slow, clean, dark instrumentation with a long, languid, deeply affected vocal brings the constituent parts to climax somewhere between the damaged grunge of Soundgarden and the dizzying wash of Monster Magnet.

Nestling up to this the title-track and album focal point is a psychedelic journey down a more occult side-road. Big on cyclical effects, pinged bass and warming Hammond organ, the structural twists stand out like bullet-points. The central rhythmic break is a doozy, lingering within an echoic chamber of Jarre-ish Oxygene effects. From here, the instrumental patterning continues to morph until It becomes apparent that the track has already reached its peak and lost its sense of direction long before it meanders to a close.

A record that is not without fault then, but one that sits pretty on its perch.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2015/12/crippled-black-phoenix-new-dark-age-season-of-mist/

Album Review: Mars Red Sky - Stranded In Arcadia

The "psychedelic stoner rock" description that this Bordelais trio have imposed upon themselves does little to actually describe their lightness of touch or just how inventive their songwriting can be.

Soon to be released in the US (Europe had it back in April), Stranded In Arcadia contains tracks that sound like they've simply drifted in from the desert with deeply stylized, sultry vocals that place you in amongst the buzzing swarm of rich, tripped-out instruments competing for space. The majority of songs here reside within the stoned triangle of Kylesa, Fu Manchu and Band Of Skulls as the band seek to draw inspiration from everything in between and beyond.

From the off, there are big hits of Kyuss and Electric Wizard as "The Light Beyond" sets off pumping out a voluminous, elephantine bassline supplemented by floor-shaking fuzz and wailing vocals. Very quickly you'll hit the volley of catchy choruses and cutting vocal hooks like those that punch forth powerfully from "Hovering Satellites", "Holy Mondays" and "Join The Race".

Do look out for the sharp, bluesy groover "Circles". It's a unique track that goads the sweet dual vocal of Julien Praz and Jimmy Kinast into suddenly mimicking duos like those that appeared in The Animals or 60s-afficionados Arlo. The end result is unbelievably rich in colour, insistently introspective and comes complete with a mile-deep groove and a timeless, sun-kissed vibe. Elsewhere, there is an abundance of warbling pedal effects, "Arcadia" and "Beyond The Light", and glitching electronic techniques employed, most probably in what would have been an intensive session of post-production. These are the tracks that reveal the most about the band's intentions. They are clearly invitations to release your shackles and travel as far along their emotional journey as you dare.

There is an elegant simplicity to so many of these structures. The cosmos-stretching cursive sections and the repeating motif certainly allow the listener to fully explore the variety of spaces into which they are thrown. To that end, there are those who may find the music to be a little too repetitious, unnecessarily twee or, at worst, agonisingly self-indulgent (the stomping "Seen A Ghost" is a particularly tiresome prospect), but persevere and there is far more to marvel than to sneer at. It is certainly the case that those who drink deepest will undoubtedly feel the soothing qualities of this one part-doom, two parts-psych soup best of all.

Also online @ Scratch The Surface = http://www.scratchthesurface-webzine.com/2014/06/mars-red-sky-stranded-in-arcadia-review.html

Album Review: Landskap - I

Landskap may be a common word in Scandinavia (you can probably guess its meaning) but this coming-together of 60s and 70s heavy psych obsessives actually hail from London, England. Formed in 2012 by members of Father Sun, SerpentCult, Fen, Pantheist and Dead Existence, their debut LP reeks of retrospective magick - right down to the tracklisting. It's a 34-minute, 4-song, 2-track disc - the 2 tracks being a hypothetical Side A and Side B in true arcane vinyl tradition. It is Landskap's refusal to fully bow their heads to modern music industry demands that lands the first blow in their war on the new world in which we all dwell.

From the off, the delicately-balanced 12 minutes of layering that constitute "A Nameless Fool" draw inspiration from Pentagram's psychedelic catalogue combined with Sabbath's soft-sided drift. There's an opening explosion of cymbals and strings that drop off into a cosmos-wandering solo. As the bell tolls in, the emotional atmosphere and elephantine pacing is set for Jake Harding's sultry resonant vocal to impart his words of wisdom into the echoing yonder.

"The things you crave, they draw you near / Desire's reason remains unclear / But still you crawl on weathered hands / Dragging down your fellow man."

As the demonic solo drops you'll find yourself straining to pick up a wedge of fat-stringed dissonance. Had they thrown that in, you'd be staring straight down the barrel of St. Vitus. In its place, a warbling organ rumbles along in the background sprinkling a fresh layer of cheese. It's immediately clear that Landskap are the preachers and us fans of old school doom are the converted.

Somewhat precariously tacked onto the end of Side A is the menacingly-titled "A Cabin In The Woods". Surprisingly it takes us about as far from the dark horror that its title suggests. Instead, we get a 3-minute gently warbling instrumental full of warming tones and astral patterning that takes us floating towards the exploratory edges of bands like Procul Harum and Pink Floyd.

As Side B kicks in, "Fallen So Far" rolls up with a feisty riff and a dark purpose. There's one initial smack of heady psych rock before it all settles back into doom-laden verses with a dissonant, splattering bass and antagonistic choruses. The whole stomp soon steps it all up into double-time and we're quickly careering towards a noisy oblivion. Headbangers beware - this is a beast.

"To Harvest The Storm" is another warm-toned instrumental with top-end wandering bass and twinkling, echoing Doors-esque organ. As the guitars kick in the rhythm gets more urgent and the smacks of Deep Purple and Hendrix begin to really come through. By the end you'll be jiving to the Hammond-induced psychedelics like a tripped-out turkey, arms flailing, head rotating, lost in the midsts of some intense Woodstockian flashback. Yes, at 12:30 it is a monster but, by god, it's worth every second for the intense surge of climactic pleasure that it offers.

Way too short, yet beguilingly sweet and utterly absorbing, you could wedge this debut into the heart of your old man's record collection and he wouldn't even flinch. It's hard to decide whether Landskap are retro to the point of being reclusive obsessives or whether they just invented a time machine and brought this "debut" back as a gift. Whichever, a debt is owed.

Also online @ Scratch The Surface = http://www.scratchthesurface-webzine.com/2014/04/landskap-i-review.html

Album Review: Goatess – Goatess

With a cover reminiscent of something out of Hellboy, Goatess’ self-titled debut certainly stands out. Titled The Birth Of Pan it features what looks like an unborn faun in the womb; strangely beautiful and pretty hard to ignore. What lurks within is similarly tough to forget.

Stockholm’s Goatess set their stall out splitting their efforts between throwing out weighty Sabbathian doom and gloom, driving, sludge-packed rock and exploding, cosmic psychedelia that threatens true enlightenment. If you recognise the hauntingly melancholic, resonant vocal and are thinking it might be Ozzy Osbourne himself (“I never say die-e-e!”), you’d be understandably mistaken. It belongs to none other than cult vocalist Chritus Linderson (Lord Vicar, ex-Count Raven, ex-Saint Vitus). Originally named Weekend Beast, the band was born of Chritus and guitarist Niklas’ desire to play less-structured doom metal; something with atmosphere centred around their worship of the heavy riff.

Opener “Know Your Animal” turns out to be an excellent diversion from their stock material, coming through a lot cleaner and feistier than it’s mucky brethren. The overdrive does kick in for the chorus, but compared to the blues-soaked stomp of “Alpha Omega” it’s full of positivity and life. From here its a slow descent into the sludge pit where the Sleep-esque rotational, trance-inducing single-chord plod rules all. The 10-minute “King One” is the finest of these dissonant soul-suckers, finding numerous ways to re-ignite the joys in mastering the lengthy one-riff song. If the ear-to-ear phase doesn’t do it for you, it could be the game-changing dropout, the tweaks toward Soundgarden-like grunge, the trilling top-end or the heavy use of the drum fill, but most likely it’ll be the sum of those parts. Basically it’s got all the things that “Ripe” and “Oracle, Part 2″ haven’t.

Inside this network of repetitive bludgeoning, there lies the axis point of the album. It lurks in the middle of the startlingly experimental “Full Moon At Noon”. The dominant, forceful riffing and sudden crisp, loud breaks suddenly give way and the track collapses into swathes of mind-expanding experimentalism. It continues on through “Oracle, Part 1″ and the incredible “Tentacles Of Zen”. This 12-minute denouement features eye-opening sound clips from a scene from the 1976 BBC dramatisation of I, Claudius where Mnester (Nicholas Amer) theatrically suggests that Messalina (Sheila White) take part in a tournament of sex. His lascivious imagining of “copulation on a cosmic scale” provides the perfect introduction for the mesmeric sonic orgy that follows – be sure to have your bong at the ready for the magnificent section of tribal drums and ethnic strings.

Goatess’ constant shape-shifting, some might say unbalanced, sound is a feature that crops up quite a lot. Whether it is an effect they wanted during recording or is merely an unintentional post-production anomaly is unclear, but it certainly adds to the overall disorientating effect. Svart Records are building up quite a special roster of bands right now and these mind-bending Swedes have slotted in like a charm.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/07/goatess-goatess-svart-records/

Album Review: Bloody Hammers - Bloody Hammers

The cover should tip you off to what awaits inside. That watery purple font echoes those that adorn Black Sabbath’s Master Of Reality album and the candles, goat’s head and naked chick imply somebody’s been dabbling in witchcraft. Your imaginations will race but what you should expect is something of a watered-down version of that. It’s a debut album that drags you kicking and screaming back to a simpler time when minimalist mid-tempos, verse-chorus-verse structures and lyrical repetition dominated rock music. To that end, a dose of Sabbathian doom is threaded directly through Pentagram’s somewhat barmier take to grant the band a grimy, infectious drive mixed with an overpowering whiff of Alice Cooper-esque cheese.

What really goes and spoils the backstory is Bloody Hammers’ nagging emotional detachment to their music. Add to this failing, a paucity of originality, the upsettingly predictable path each song takes and the gaping holes where all its sweet riffs should be. Cyclical patterns can be used wittily, but here, time after time, the song-title merely forms the rusty pivot to the track. Take the dire opener “Witch Of Endor” with its undesirable, somewhat sad hook that will annoyingly glue itself to your skull – “Solution is raise the dead and find the conjuring Witch of Endor (raining in Hell) / Solution is raise the dead and find the conjuring Witch of Endor”. The three-chord, non-committal dullard “Fear No Evil” follows that up with a chorus of “Oh, fear no evil / Oh, fear no evil”. This criminal filler material is being promoted as the album’s selling points; they form their two front-of-house, straight-off-the-bat tracks. It blows me away. Call me a philistine but, after the tenth spin of this pair, I wanted to dig a hole and bury them both.

The lyrical themes, despite being a bit “out there” really aren’t at fault – it’s the slack, toothless delivery that lets the content down. The album’s foot-draggers like “Say Goodbye To The Sun” and “Don’t Breathe A Word” should be filling me with dread, soaking me in the bleak emotional turmoil of their creators, but there’s definitely something severely wrong. Ignoring the amateurish implementation, including that meandering church organ and those grim, sludge-soaked power chords, there is a distinct sense of drama. To engage the listener these songs require them to feel endangered, on edge, as if the players are just a tad unhinged. If they’re really aiming for an occult vibe then perhaps, it would all gel, if the songs were more engaging; perhaps sparked a little bit of bewilderment. Those on offer are crying out for the dark crackle, the mad twists and enormity of tone that Black Sabbath and so many of their peers and offspring have conjured. Bloody Hammers need to embrace their crazy.

These North Carolinians certainly know their historical onions, so it feels like I’m properly missing something here. Yet, all I’m hearing is an over-reliance on sludge-packing dissonance to bail out Curse’s dull 4/4 rhythmic plod, Devallia’s groaning organ and Magna’s bassline dirge and baleful crooning vocal. Today’s retro fan should be demanding that their heroes reboot history, not simply rehash it. Perhaps, in the future, they’ll shy away from that desire to rely on their twin attack of ineffectual mooching / turning their strings to mush – to my mind, it does them a disservice. The only point where they seem to offer something more of themselves is in the upbeat march of “Beyond The Door” and the hopeful blues vibe that infects “Souls On Fire”. Other than those flickers of life, there’s little else to get excited about. To be frank, Bloody Hammers need a bit more bloody and a lot more hammer next time round.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/bloody-hammers-bloody-hammers