Album Review: All Them Witches – Dying Surfer Meets His Maker

Direct from the recording studio of a remote mountainside cabin, hand-built by the band, perched above the fake glamour of Dollywood, here comes an utterly bewitching album of luxuriantly rich sounds. It draws its inspiration from across the dusty plains, glutinous swamps and rolling hills of arcane America and knits together the softer edges of desert rock and folk blues with transient tonal nods to country, pop, psyche and stoner.

The first thing though that hits you about this album however is the unbelievable restraint shown throughout to not swamp the songs with lyrics, instrumentation or verbose affectations. Remarkable, especially when you consider the quality of the musicianship on show and the melodious quality of the vocalist – one Charles Parks. No, here things are stripped back to allow for the essential to shine and the unnecessary to melt away.

Stepping through the doorway and into that initial mellow riff of “Call Me Star”, you are whisked immediately away into All Them Witches’ universe. The tension, the stress melts away and you begin to float. It works as a real statement of intent, forewarning us to expect the unexpected; there are to be no fireworks, no clap of thunder, no desperate need to blast out your ears before they settle. Hewn back to its humble core, it oozes star quality. Sat atop its mellifluous acoustic guitar, the band displays an exquisite touch, gifting the song a lightness and an almost magical quality. Both beguiling and jaw-droppingly beautiful.

The instrumental eight-and-a-half-minute “El Centro” picks the pace up, drowning the listener in a Torche-like melting pot of battering stoner chugs and shifting psychedelic affectations that centres round a two-note riff. Within two tracks they have blown any preconceptions you might have of the band not once but twice. And for the kicker? How about a spot of “Dirt Preachers”? A driving rhythmic build with a grim vocal performance injected with malice and menace and a storming chorus. The viciously slow final section drags up sinister undertones of religious paedophilia by littering the lyrical wordplay with lines like “Come all you children to my arms” and “Twist your fingers, I’ll call you a star”.

Betwixt and between, there is a bluesy lush jam, a half-whispered vocal, a dash of harmonica and a gorgeous acoustic instrumental to wallow in. Venturing down “Open Passageways ” and its pursuing tonal reprise finds ATW managing to morph the goodness of Coldplay’s early naivety with Moby’s “Extreme Ways”. It’s a monster track of acoustic guitar with bowed violin gifting it a folky hue with a sumptuous kick of vocal hook – “Scream and shout and bellow / Chew up your love then swallow”.

Then, as the album draws to a close, the band continues to loosen their belts, resulting in a maddening dropping away of exploratory content. What it does allow them to do, eventually with Monster Magnet hats firmly in place, is jam; to gradually step backwards from the lead to walk beside the listener offering simple chanted echoing incantations and a degree of psychedelic warbling.

The “solitude of the mountain”, as Parks describes it, has indelibly coloured the album, removing it from their harder, faster back catalogue and gifting it a laconic, unforced swagger and a beautifully controlled flow where everything fits with everything else. Having initially been released in late 2015, essentially what you’ve got here is the record everybody missed from their album of the year lists. From here there are no limits.

Also online @ http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/02/all-them-witches-dying-surfer-meets-his-maker-new-west-records/

Album Review: Antlered Man – This Devil Is Them (New Heavy Sounds)

The PR blurb for London’s Antlered Man describe their new album as “dark” and “weird”. Though they might not be the most complimentary descriptors, they’re not a million miles off with that. You’d certainly have trouble boxing them up into a genre. For the sake of argument, let’s have a crack at “artsy punk/rap meets rock/sludge in an explosion of psychotic avant-garde posturing”. Yes, that’ll do.

After firing out their debut album, Giftes 1&2, last year the band wasted no time hitting the festivals and managed to squeeze in 15 last year. Fairly impressive when you consider the 100 other tour dates they managed in 2012. There’s a definite hint of the on-tour in-jokes in the theatrical writing style of this sophomore album – the song titles alone suggest that much.

They’ve definitely gone in heavier here with This Devil Is Them as the ludicrously-titled opening track, “The Ballad Of Hamhock Fullsleeve” attests. The lunatic fringe is properly out in force as something akin to Melvins meets Tool meets Tomahawk meets These Arms Are Snakes emerges like the thrashing, writhing, triple-headed, multi-tentacled behemoth it is. You try and pick which limb or mouth to focus on first out of that little lot. If the panic-stricken drum rolls and carefully-placed guitar pings don’t explode your noggin, then the gut-busting bass, twinkling chimes and unhinged vocal (which waits until well over 3 minutes to pitch in) undoubtedly will.

All too often Antlered Man ask too much of their listeners. No-one in his right mind could like the entirely dislikeable character of “Claude The Ideal Bloody Gentleman” with its dissolute, padded-out structure or the 2-minute skittish mania of “My Surname, My Cum” – a last-track “fuck you” to the listener that isn’t appreciated.

Elsewhere “GDZ” oozes along the soft buzz and fluorescent tonal mix of Torche, “Ian Will Break Again” bristles like Kongh whilst speed-rapping like Senser. “Phony Tough” settles down and flies true with a beautifully hewn groove which “Salute Da Calm” follows with an echo-laden acknowledgement to the shoegaze of Slowdive. Star of the show, however, must go to the stoned drone of “Audition Tapes For Hades” which, whilst obviously overstretching itself to reach the 10-minute mark, glows with an eerie menace as Damo Ezekiel-Holmes finds his true calling as a softly-spoken angel of death.

Lyrically, when a band is firing mucky, attention-seekers like “My surname, my cum” and “This practical genius-like yeast infection” it’s very easy to dislike them (though vocalist Damo does apologise with “Sorry sorry sorry, what a criminal last line / There’s a mean streak in me when these fuck-ups are mine!”). However, when they do pull out hooked doozies like “Sweetheart, I couldn’t protect you / No matter how hard I tried” or “Girls couldn’t hit us with a running jump, Gods couldn’t hit us with a death-defying stunt” they know to ram them home with concerted repetition.

On the plus side, the groove on this beast is vast when it settles down – the latter half of the album should please the sludge fiends amongst you. The first half will sit pretty with the punks. Most will agree, the odd burst of rapping is more for show than it is essentially integral to the music and a high degree of patience and diligent attention is required to fully comprehend their ADD-afflicted concept. With so much content packed into such a small space, like a boxer on amphetamines, it’s generally going to miss as many times as it hits.

Also online = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/10/antlered-man-the-devil-is-them-new-heavy-sounds/

Album Review: Mortor – Shoot ‘Em Up

Welcome to Mortor. No, not Mordor, you numpty. This band have absolutely nothing to do with Tolkien or his expansive works of fiction; they have zero to do with the Land of Shadow; they are not where the fires of Mount Doom burn, and they have zip to do with the Eye, the Mouth or any other facial feature of the dark lord, Sauron. Instead, they have everything to do with the “Mor” of Morbid Angel and their pig-grunting lunacy and the “Tor” of “Kreator” and their balls-to-the-wall thrash metal. I can also hear much of the denim & leather greaseball sound of Motorhead in Shoot Em’ Up, their sophomore album, breaking up the steady flow of ripples that comes from their straight-up hammering crush. With those guys for heroes, these Canadians were always destined to form a band with the name Mortor.

Stuffed full of jagged, hammer-on, hammer-off ragers like “Under The Flag”, the blistering title-track and “Infidels” – tracks that come loaded to the gills with rumbling bass, furious speed metal and almighty Corpsegrinder-esque burbles – Shoot ‘Em Up is a no-frills assault on your lugholes. Yank up the volume and the vibration it generates at the bottom-end of your aural range is mesmerising. This thing is an absolute beast of an album. “Clusterfuck”, for instance, adds flesh to the dripping, glutinous form of the bog-monster that the early tracks outline. As the track notches down the pace, you can actually feel its feet thudding on the ground as it advances upon you, a muddy trail pooling behind as it lumbers on. This is one foul stench you cannot escape.

“Trigger Happy” has jerking rhythms and guitar leads that begin to introduce other more anthemic Amon Amarth-esque elements. There’s hints of that battle metal drama about moments like this and it’s brother “Locked And Loaded” that just induce more and more panic into the mix. Those guitars go a bit over the top in places, but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? And don’t get me wrong this is one fun album. It absolutely refuses to take itself too seriously and that is ultimately its saving grace. If it had made even the slightest attempt to hide its weak spots, Shoot ‘Em Up would be rendered instantly redundant. There is no black metal masking here (although “Days Of Our Knives” does flirt with breaking that fourth wall), no self-absorbed progressive elements to rub your beard knowingly to. Oh no. With track-titles like “Whiskey Surgery” and the utterly loco “Let’s Deflagrate” you can be sure this is all about having a good time.

Certainly, this kind of hammer-down tomfoolery has been practiced before (it kept reminding me of Austrian Death Machine, Swashbuckle and Six Feet Under for varying reasons) and don’t be fooled into thinking that there is a wild degree of track-by-track diversity. However, if you dig the sound of ten people playing drums at once and a farm animal for a vocalist you’re going to be all over this. It all boils down to your personal preference: you can take the 44 seconds of galloping, driven crush that constitutes the “Intro” and be left gasping for air and gasping for more or, alternatively, you can listen to the full 47 minutes and be slowly bludgeoned to death by madmen with lop-sided grins and inflatable hammers. The choice, as they say, is yours.

Also online @ The NewReview = http://thenewreview.net/reviews/mortor-shoot-em-up