Album Review: El Doom And The Born Electric – Self-Titled

Ole Petter Andreassen is El Doom, Norwegian artist, producer and founding member of death n’ rollers The Cumshots and stoner poptarts Thulsa Doom, two wildly different-sounding bands. I must admit I was intrigued then, when his Born Electric project plopped onto my desk with the information that he had collected around him a sort of a “Who`s Who of the Norwegian progressive/jazz scene. We have Norwegian Grammy-awarded bass-player Nicolai Eilertsen (Elephant 9), drummer Haavard Takle Ohr (El Cuero), Hammond wiz Ståle Storløkken (Elephant 9) and guitarists Brynjar Takle Ohr (El Cuero) and Hedvig Mollestad (Hedvig Mollestad Trio). Unfamiliar names but, as early listens prove beyond a doubt, all incredibly adept at their art.

Across the 53 minutes of their debut’s running time, there are some straight-forward tunes, like the indignant howls that haunt ‘With Full Force’ and the threaded hooks and melting heart of ‘The Lights’. However, the lengthier pieces reveal the band’s true colours and penchant for throwing everything into the pot and liberally stirring. Take ‘Fire Don’t Know’. It bursts forth with a bumpy camel ride of a guitar riff that unbalances you with its thunderous grunt, threatening to throw you off before El Doom can pour out his tremulous David Bowie meets Neil Arthur (Blancmange) vocal. Obscure 70s/80s references aside, the nine-minute blazer, wrapped around a malleable, prog rock wall of sound, crescendos and abates its way through careering psych and driving stickwork, vibrating wodges of Hammond and reverb-heavy guitar solo.

Thought that was good? Get a load if ‘It’s Electric’. It’s the strait-jacketed madman within; the forceful bass bullying it’s way to stand side-by-side with El Doom. It’s the sound of The Melvins channelling Rush through Mastodon’s insane set-up. The blue hints, oddly offer up the kind of tonal flourishes that Mark Morton brings to Lamb Of God to mind, and the dying licks of Spanish guitar slap on nothing but a huge grin to your gurning face.

‘The Hook’, naturally, stands out a mile. The sheer panic within Doom’s quavering vocal almost loses the plot; chaos defined. Matching it there is a blitzkrieg of guitars that dive down into cloud before reappearing to continue the dogfight. Volume knobs are toyed with and the jarring chords begin to collapse in on themselves as the production calls it a day and fades them out well before their time is up. Still, there are some sublime riffs lurking within all this. The best of which is the sinuous lick that marks out ‘Subtle As A Shit House’ and will see you strapping on the air guitar and screwing your eyes up in reverie. Sure the track falls into a pit of classic rock posturing but you’ll buy into it to get back to that sublime riff once more. Oh, and you want a spot of Soundgarden-esque grunge? Look no further than the 11-minute wanderlust of ‘Red Flag’.

All tracks covered then, we have learned that to appreciate El Doom And The Born Electric’s debut, an open mind is an absolute must. For those fans of all things rock who are willing to dig into something a little more jazzy and a lot more progressive than they are used to, will be handsomely rewarded.

Also online @ Ave Noctum

Album Review: Threat Signal - Threat Signal

When I first caught a whiff of Canada's metal machine Threat Signal back in 2009, the feisty stench of bloody power chords, sweaty drum thunder and tearfully bellowed vocals pretty much knocked me off my feet. The album was 'Vigilance' and the track was "Afterlife". It had everything from that creepy slow-build and sharp snap into focussed aggression to an infectiously sassy swagger. Now, having heard their muscle-bound self-titled follow-up, it's instantly apparent that they've pulled out all the steps to chuck in as much vim and vigour as they can muster. They've brought a new drummer and guitarist to the party and have returned to using their seven-string axes. Dropping to A# has certainly beefed up the bottom-end chug and there is also an added tech metal dynamic. All of this, vocalist Jon Howard claims, "has made everything sound much heavier and darker; it also offered my vocals a different range to sing in."

"Uncensored", for instance, kicks like a mule, screams like a lunatic and double-kicks you until you actually feel bruised by the experience. Brutal enough to rub shoulders with both Mnemic and DevilDriver at the same time, it actually treads the inventive path that a small French band called Darkness Dynamite started so impressively down a few years back. "Comatose" and "New World Order" add hooked choruses which thrashily punch their way through to the dark pieces like "Trust In Noone" and "Fallen Disciples" where Howard revels in the speed, roars himself hoarse in the verses, and sinks his teeth into trying to surpass Jamey Jasta for power.

When Howard digs into the choruses his tremulous singing vocal tends to follow the same pattern of hold and pitch and it does, somewhat disappointingly, mean several of the tracks smear themselves across the album, bleeding into one another all too readily. "Death Before Dishonour", with its dark intro and polyrhythmic punch, stands out as does "Disposition" for its startlingly sudden drop into clean melodics and sweeping solo. In fact, as the album progresses, and they focus less on laying waste and more on delving into their box of tricks, they begin to find some pretty inventive methods of attack.

Having heard the nuts on this, it's no surprise to see Zeuss is on production duty and he's definitely given this one the beans. A little of 'Vigilance's subtlety has been lost somewhere along the line but, on the positive side, with an album like this, Threat Signal are now doing exactly what they say on the tin - fair warning, I believe.

Also online @ Metal Team UK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/oct11reviews/cdreviews-threat.htm

Album Review: Floodstain - Slave To The Self Feeding Machine

Floodstain are tough-talking Dutch metallers who, according to their website, were "spawn out of the dark bowels of a town nicknamed 'Hell', a place dominated by gray skies and endless rain, where boredom gets killed by vandalism, drugs and heavy sludge rock." On closer inspection they appear to have originated in Hellevoetsluis, a small village in Southern Holland, although they currently cite the sunny climes of Alfaz Del Pi, a peaceful resort in Costa Blanca, as their MySpace location. So I think we can take all this PR posturing with just a small pinch of salt (although we do love that "horns" cursor).

What we do have to take seriously is their colossal riff engine spewing angry, dark sludge into any spare lughole it can find. Jozz, the vocalist and, amazingly, lone guitarist, layers up his own outpourings to evoke Down's Phil Anselmo at his most vitriolic, whilst bassist Bobysan and drummer Vesso balloon out the bottom-end. They eagerly diversify the aggression to echo both the stoner wall of fuzz of Fu Manchu ('The Slumbering Titan Slayer') and the magnificent roar and balls-out grunt of High On Fire ('Suicide Pep Rally'). Despite all this early bluster they are clearly at their happiest when settling on the driving groove of Corrosion Of Conformity ('Ice Pick Lobotomy'), and sound oddly ineffective when the walking bass and softened build of the title-track take us on a more rocked-up, QOTSA-influenced path - the halfway drop-off into a heaving abyss of jerking, psychotic Pantera hat-doffing soon gets the party restarted.

There's sneaky touches of Sabbath-esque musicality to be found in 'Crooked Teeth' and 'The Slumbering Titan Slayer', that rise up from the deluge of riff-slinging, but they are merely fleeting and by the time you've finished the bad trip of the bonus track's anomalous radio static and sirens, these moments are long forgotten. I could spend all day name-checking bands that this reminds me of; there really is no trick here. If it's meaty and it rocks, Floodstain will amp it up to the eyeballs and beat it black and blue until it cries bloody tears. The liner-notes even see them paying homage to "Budweiser" - the supposed "king of beers". Their early material (they've been going at this for ten years now) was full of promise (do check out the awesome 'Asphalt Blues' on their MySpace) so instead of all these aforementioned influences, that clearly run deep, we'll be hoping for a little more of their own personalities next time around.

Also online @ MTUK = http://www.metalteamuk.net/oct10reviews/cdreviews-fs.htm