Album Review: Nightmares On Wax – Feelin’ Good

The best parties all have soundtracks and invariably, at some point, the frivolities will feature a band who play something so chilled out and achingly soulful that you might well struggle to identify them. Ask enough times what that band is and there’s a good chance you’ll discover it to be Nightmares On Wax.

Since the early 90s, NOW project mastermind George Evelyn has been taking his band on the road and steadily feeding us album after album of solid downtempo gold. These days, he’s a busy man (Evelyn is a label owner, a consultant and a producer) so it’s no surprise that this latest record, Feelin’ Good, represents his first full body of work in five years.

Evelyn, of course, has never really set out to write a complete song; one with a beginning, middle and end. He’s always been more of a scene-setter, a mood-creator, so it matters little that his music loops back on itself again and again. Think of his writing as more of a set of slowly evolving emotions and you’ll begin to appreciate the qualities that lurk within each of Feelin’ Good‘s evocative, phasing beats. Long gone are those harsh cuts that crafted the staggering journey of his first few albums, now it’s all about absorbing the vibe. He’s whisked us away from the dancefloor and firmly embedded us in the chillout zone, riding that cyclical, percussive wave to its inevitable mesmeric climax.

The concept of making music in the sun is something that Evelyn is clearly loving – “Not to take away from any of my previous music but Feelin’ Good is what I’ve always been trying to do. To this end, Evelyn has collaborated with old friends and sourced intelligently from others. For instance, the orchestration and strings were created in Berlin by Jazzanova arranger Sebastian Studnitzky and the drum patterns come courtesy of “virtuoso German jazz percussionist” Wolfgang Haffner. One run-through of opening track ‘So Here We Are’ should be enough to win you over. Like a refined mix of Carboot Soul‘s ‘Jorgé’ ripples with soft, interweaving trumpets and strings – you can almost hear the waves rhythmically lapping at the shore and feel the heat of the sun under which this was brewed.

Digging deeper, you’ll uncover the joys of a warbling, soft shoe shuffle (‘Be, I Do’), a strong jazzy Earl Klugh-esque vibe (‘Luna 2′), and some funky rocksteady (‘Now Is The Time’). There’s also ‘Eye (Can’t See)’ to digest – a strong, incandecent number, curiously reminiscent of The Herbaliser and even Bombay Monkey, which is layered to the gills and drives on through its varied breaks and affectations. These together, offer a perfect range of differently-paced and smartly-presented numbers that all cycle and fade. They’re tonal pieces that will define the moods of our party-goers; the ones they will drink in. Naturally, they form the album’s bedrock moments.

Inevitably, there is some anomalous filler to contend with. We get the sore thumb of ‘Give Thx’ plonking itself down, crooning away like some dull Motown boy band, and ‘Tapestry’ which offers up a pointless instrumental with 80s tones and a weird knocking that, first time round, will trick you into getting up to answer the door. To counter these, there are a couple of smart surprises in ‘Masterplan’ and the ‘Om Sweet H(Om)e’. The former sees Californian folk singer Katy Gray pop up with a touch of fragile trip-hop to complement some sumptuous, embedded violins that bring a subtle sway to proceedings and gift it with a sweet Bond-ian motif. The latter is an odd, 7-minute ayurvedic wash that features Evelyn and Shovel (M People) chanting “Om” at us in the style of Tibetan monks.

It is all about the journey with NOW albums and this one’s natural end does come with the ultimate party comedown – where did it say on the Feelin’ Good tin about that one? Also, no matter how pleasant the rest of the package may seem, this journey doesn’t really take you to any wildly interesting places either. Happily, the smoothness of the ride, a far cry from the sharp techno apexes and sudden hip-hop divots of debut A Word Of Science, does mean it’s certainly an album with a beautiful flow to it and that is essential in this blissful chillout zone of theirs. These may just be a series of outlines essentially, but we, the audience, are the ones who must ultimately fill in our own colours. Once more, Nightmares On Wax provide the backing music to the party; once more, your enjoyment is only limited by your own imagination.

This review also online @ The Line Of Best Fit = http://thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/nightmares-on-wax-feelin-good-134405

Mini-Album Review: Twin Atlantic - Free

Where Biffy Clyro took a career to hone their sound, Twin Atlantic have nailed it at their second attempt and their album “Free”, with it’s rough edges and unctuous core, hellishly addictive riffs and bitingly honest lyrics, delivered in Sam McTrusty’s thick Glaswegian brogue, are radio-rock’s secret weapon.

A small piece I wrote for TLOBF's Scottish Album Of The Year Award 2012 - also online here.

Album Review: Anathema – Weather Systems

This collection of brothers and friends, the Cavanaghs and the Douglases from Liverpool, have spent the last twenty-odd years receding from bellow to mellow and now instead of touring with war machines like Cannibal Corpse you’re more likely to find them gracing the bill with soft-hearted, introspective proggers like Paradise Lost or Porcupine Tree. Weather Systems, Anathema‘s ninth studio album is yet one more step towards complete purification and the final draining of their metal blood. Using similar methods to those used on their last release, We’re Here Because We’re Here, the band slowly add layer upon layer of emotion to reach that moment of true impact, and by doing so manage to make their point in the most subtle of ways.

The two-part ‘Unforgettable’ is something of an ambitious introduction; the first part weaving an upsurging, acoustic guitar arpeggio (an instrument you’ll hear plenty of) around Vincent Cavanagh’s velveteen vocals, and the second a piano-led, melancholic boy-girl duet which brings in more of Lee Douglas’ high-pitched, crystalline singing. Sitting up front the tracks feel like a bit of a sore thumb; the kind of demanding songs that would be far easier to swallow further down the playlist.

The rising panic of tracks like ‘The Storm Before The Calm’ and ‘The Gathering’ certainly get the heart racing. The former features an abrupt change of tack, lifting the pace under a deluge of white noise and programmed industrial touches, and the latter needs the reassurance of a few sideways glances at the bigger picture. It gets them by rubbing shoulders with ‘Lightning Song’, whose violins and acoustic guitar tug at the heartstrings only to walk us – smack! – into the punch of a muted electric guitar strike.

With each track linking back to the central theme, the album forms one steady circuit of the bases to form an enigmatically absorbing home run. You’ll identify with the central character of the piece when he picks up the baton, running with it across the dark inferences of tracks like ‘Sunlight’, ‘The Beginning And The End’ and between the hackneyed monologue of a near-death experience that weighs heavy upon ‘Internal Landscapes’.

Everything is, of course, open to interpretation, but having recently suffered a family bereavement I couldn’t help but see the album as the slow death of a confused and pained soul; a record that I found in some ways upsetting, as the emotions are still raw. Some of the lyrics may be honest but they seem to cut so deep. Viewed at different moments, though, the music proves complex enough to contain a less brutal side and offers several rays of light, so I may come to take comfort from it in the future.

Weather Systems is most certainly a bold move by the band, an attempt to lay bare, with honesty, the emotions that emanate from the subjects of loss, regret, pain and death. As singer Daniel Cavanagh has rightly pointed out, “This is not background music for parties. The music is written to deeply move the listener, to uplift or take the listener to the coldest depths of the soul”. A mission most definitely accomplished.

Also online @ TLOBF

Album Review: Ufomammut - Oro: Opus Primum

Doom is a genre which, to the untrained ear, can seem so simple and yet remains so complex that it has prompted Wino, one of doom’s most prolific artists, to claim it took him “15 years just to stay in tune”. One of the more expansive exponents of the genre, Ufomammut, have been eking out their laconic anthems of oppressive dread and invigorating power since 2000. This time around the Italian demons of doom and their unidentified flying mammoth (“mammut” being the Italian for “mammoth”) are back with a bold double-album release, the second part of which, Oro: Opus Alter, is due for release later in the year.

All of the band’s albums have a theme and Oro is no different. With a double meaning, encapsulated in its title, Oro combines the Italian palindromic word for “gold” and the Latin translation of “I pray” or “I speak”. The album itself delves into the concept of knowledge, power, fear and the human mind’s ability to distil those emotions into the kind of expensive bling you might find dangling from Mr. T’s bulging neck.

From the very first sounds of their aircraft powering down for ‘Empireum’, and the initiation of a steady speaker-to-speaker series of thrums and warbles, we are sucked from our burnt-out husks of lives and cast adrift into our own warped psyches by the music. The track builds from this point through emerging tom-thuds and snare-rolls, walking us down the spine of a twinkling riff, until we reach a battering crescendo of distortion, white noise and eventual overload.

Blacker, more menacing and far less captivating than the above are the tracks ‘Aureum’ and ‘Infearnatural’. The former drags us backwards through mud before hammering fuzzball chugs and dying vocals at us for 12 minutes or until we scream for mercy. It’s the more dastardly twin of those corpse-painted souls Primordial performing to the badgering rhythms of St. Vitus. With so many false endings it doesn’t seem to want to die, no matter how many times we hit it. The latter treads the same path with an even more sinister, all but obliterated, loop of spoken words.

‘Magickon’ returns to reprise ‘Empireum”s central riff, driving it through a couple of key changes, buzzing us back into oblivion. Hidden deep in the background are a series of vocalisations, a second track which only seems to become apparent when it begins to whine as it slowly sets about eating its own form. With ‘Mindomine’ venturing further into a wasteland of psychedelics, as monastic chanting leads us back towards Ufomammut’s penchant for cosmic drone, it’s something of a relief to spy the glowing exit sign.

Repeated plays allow a deeper connection to the changes of mood, the whole lysergic journey revealing itself as a maniacal descent into hell and back. Certainly, the message regarding the strengths and fundamental weaknesses of the human soul are potently clear. Despite my many reservations against repeating such a trip, it’s a message that I, somewhat worryingly, look forward to revealing further when they bring us the second half of the story.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/04/ufomammut-oro-opus-primum/

Album Review: Band Of Skulls - Sweet Sour

Southampton’s Band Of Skulls are a band on the cusp of something special. Their debut album, Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, nicely egged on by a couple of impact single releases, took them to some exciting places, and this latest long-player is already receiving some high-profile attention. Radio 1 has been blasting out the promo singles on a regular basis and, tuning in, it’s pretty easy to see why.

A quick glance at bassist/vocalist Emma Richardson’s Rorschashian inkblot artwork, this time around, is your first indication that Sweet Sour is going to rock harder than their debut. It has developed into something far more sinister than the blossoming glory of their debut. I’ve fallen into her trap by assembling its imagery into either a dissected, bloodied chicken corpse or, possibly, an Alien facehugger about to impregnate the viewer. Whichever it is, she’s nailed the album title in one startling image.

Certainly, the top end of Sweet Sour is all about the crunch. Guitarist/vocalist Russell Marsden has said “We wanted to write material that’s primed for where we’d got to. Beefier songs for bigger stages”. They are certainly that, with tracks like ‘Bruises’ and ‘Devil Takes Care Of His Own’ loaded with lurching, grimy riffs that pepper the songs with crafty precision, the rhythm ensconced in a methodical structure of attack and release.

They may be pulling the now-familiar shapes of rock bands past, but they have avoided the trap of merely echoing the mould that bands like The Vines or Jet once slid themselves into. Instead, BOS simply refuse to pile it all into the mix at once. Rather, enigmatic gaps in the music are added, the tonal quality becomes a malleable presence, and the pace is slowed to a crawl. It’s this kind of skillful songwriting that bolsters the effectiveness of the repeated lines which become the addictive hooks to be nailed home. It’s rock with added nous: the kind last seen active in the inventive minds of The Black Keys and Nine Black Alps.

Take the the boom-boom-tiss and falling arpeggio string taps of the title track or the steady two-chord repeater-riff that pads its way through to the key hushed strapline of ‘Devil Takes Care Of His Own’. Think Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock n’ Roll’ getting down and dirty with AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ and you’ll be half-way to understanding just how powerful these songs are.

Somewhat disappointingly, surrounding these top-end tracks lies a patchwork of hit and miss. ‘Wanderluster’ walks you down a dead-end of tentative echo and formulaic patterning before insulting you with a prosaic, posted-in chorus. ‘Lies’ crumbles beneath its own assuredness, circulating a couple of times before panicking and falling on the sword of brevity. Then, stepping back on the gas, they dredge up hints of The Subways with a soul-shaking groove, as memories of deliciously playful boy-girl harmonies are reignited, for ‘You’re Not Pretty But You Got It Goin’ On’.

The pace drops toward the album’s close, allowing the listener to sink back down within Band Of Skulls’ downier side. Tracks like ‘Navigate’, where Richardson beautifully steals the mic, ‘Hometowns’ and ‘Close To Nowhere’ all shift your perceptions of where this band fit in the wider scheme of things. Marsden recently nailed it with the words “Songs are your weapons. We’re the Swiss Army Knife of bands”. They can catch you napping with a real rocker like ‘Bruises’ or effortlessly disarm you with something like ‘Hometowns” whispered, yet super-sharp line “It’s just kids having more kids for fear of being alone” which comes from behind a veil of pastoral flute and gently tinkling stringwork.

As expected then, there’s some sweet and some sour; a description with a double meaning, applicable to both the album’s emphasis and its quality. Regardless of how fast the album grows and fades from your playlist, Band Of Skulls have cracked enough noggins here to really cause an industry ruckus. The countdown to lift-off has begun; twinkling in the distance, stardom awaits to receive them.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/02/band-of-skulls-sweet-sour/

Album Review: The Subways - Money And Celebrity

The Subways are a band that has always unapologetically walked the tightrope of being gloriously addictive and mind-numbingly repetitive. They’ve always tended to stick close to the steady, predictable path of verse, chorus, verse and, rather than stray into composing complex structures, focused all their efforts on ramming home just how energetically they can perform each note or shout each lyric. In the past, it’s a tactic that has got them noticed and their hard-work ethic has resulted in them nailing down some serious festival and tour slots. The big push forward, of course, never quite came due to the recorded material never selling in decent numbers. Now, with the release of this, their third album, just when you feel they needed to go for the jugular and try a different approach, maybe put themselves out on a bit of a limb, it’s a a surprise to find them still banging out those same songs, simply tweaked and repackaged.

Tracks like ‘It’s A Party’ and ‘We Don’t Need Money To Have A Good Time’ utilises that same recognisably dynamic, guitar-driven pop-punk that boots in the teeth of the listener, whilst all the time flinging cloyingly predictable lines at you about just how simple things can be if you don’t engage your brain. On a certain level, the usual boy/girl vocal works as well as it ever did with Billy Lunn effectively sticking two fingers up at everything whilst Charlotte Cooper waves her arms manically in the air, egging him on. When the two vocals come together, it’s a riot of carefree singing. The trouble is many of us will have stopped listening by the second chorus. Maybe it’s me that’s grown up or them that haven’t (they really should have by now), but what previously might have passed for youthful enthusiasm, now is all too easily translated as mere immaturity.

‘I Wanna Dance With You’ takes the pace down a notch, with producer Stephen Street softening up the pretty flabby mix even further. Sadly, it all ends up sounding like a cross between The Lightning Seeds and Hard-Fi rather than something new and exciting. With the drab ‘Celebrity’ miserably poking fun at the vacuous – “She doesn’t care about the TV shows / Unless of course it’s about Eastenders / Hollywood is where she wants to go”, ‘Down Our Street’ doo-dooing and skipping along like some clueless Ocean Colour Scene pop fodder and ‘Money’ showing off a duff snare sound that has been muffled into a dull thud, there’s much to find fault with. Thankfully, ‘Popdeath’ wraps itself around you with the vocals intertwined and harmonising nicely, ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ kicks up a neat riff and some effortlessly addictive angeldust, and ‘Rumour’ plucks away at a dark series of chords and unravels some true vitriol.

I find myself disappointedly reporting that Money And Celebrity has no spectacular surprises or dangerously emotional forays. Nope, this is the same happy-go-lucky bunch of silly sods you fell in love with six years ago. They remain steadfastly within the limitations of their respective abilities, playing to their strengths, bypassing their obvious weaknesses. In a sense, they are magicians – song after song emerge from their hats, each one instantly recognisable and unsettlingly reminiscent of something you just can’t put your finger on. Ironically, The Subways are still doing what it says on the tin, a fact that will probably be their downfall.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/10/the-subways-money-and-celebrity/

Album Review: Japanese Voyeurs - Yolk

Now, I like my grunge, so I was always going to dig Japanese Voyeurs. Since they popped up on my radar a few years back, I’ve been following with interest but have yet to be blown away. Other bands who cite strong grunge influences (Nine Black Alps, Dead Confederate, Seether, Trapt, etc.) have stood up and delivered strong, gutsy music, but this London quintet have yet to do so. This, of course, is despite holding one massive not-so-secret weapon, vocalist/guitarist Romily Alice. If you’ve never heard her sing before, think “attitude of a teenager, voice of a toddler”. Her squeaky delivery and stick-thin appearance is a proper Marmite factor. It’s one of the reasons why I actually prefer their recorded material over their live shows, and there aren’t many bands who reduce me to saying that. The reason? I find the piercing quality of her vocal is softened somewhat on the albums but, being brutally honest, it’s also that watching her contort herself into shapes just makes me wince – I want to have one hand on a phone, so I can call the emergency services the moment she snaps.

They certainly seem to be moving in the right direction with Yolk. It’s heavier than their EPs and, consequently, the contrast between the music and the singer is instantly noticeable. Alice’s vocal stands out powerfully and this shows it off in it’s best light. Tracks like ‘Get Hole’, ‘Blush’ and ‘Milk Teeth’ buck and churn their way into life with her voice cracking wonderfully within the musical maelstrom. It’s clear that the Voyeurs’ Nirvana worship knows no bounds as, on top of the pervading air of “couldn’t care less” lethargy that they exude and their fixation (see their website and the album cover’s ultrasound snap) with the unborn (remember In Utero?), they have clearly taken the notes and rhythms of ‘Very Ape’ and ‘Aneurysm’ and rearranged them to form ‘Dumb’ – yes, even the track-title is half-inched from the Seattle grunge monsters.

‘You’re So Cool’ has a big, dirty groove that sits pretty out front and has plenty of mid-range chopped guitar action that washes over and under you in layers. The vocal is set back in the mix and bursts forth in short waves of attack. Oddly, their lead single ‘Cry Baby’ has none of these addictive features, relying on a solitary, flaccid pop hook and an ineffectual spot of string-bending. It’s frustrating as they can quite easily do pop and do it well (‘That Love Sound’, full of blossoming emotion, and the bleak soliloquy ‘Heart Is A Fist’ being fine examples) but they need to stop resorting to type.

Take ‘Smother Me’. It’s a perfectly-positioned reduction; pure, plodding evil. There’s a doomish quality to the track that lifts it up a whole other level. It grabs you and ducks your head under the surface so that Alice becomes distant and ethereal. It’s the key to this whole album. If Japanese Voyeurs can grab onto this thought, leaving behind their other affectations, like the discombobulated messes ‘X-Rayted’ and ‘Dumb’, they can really start to make their own mark on this industry.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/07/japanese-voyeurs-yolk/

Album Review: Explosions In The Sky – Take Care Take Care Take Care

Here we have an album title that smacks of a last goodbye and yet, in a recent TLOBF interview, Explosions In The Sky assured us it won’t be their finale. Guitarist Michael James pointed out that despite this fact “it does have this emotional pull to it of ‘goodbye’. Even if it’s for five minutes or five years, there’s always an emotional component to a goodbye”. He also pointed out that by repeating the title three times “the words begin to blend together and ‘Take Care’ becomes ‘Care Take’, so we’re taking care of each other and saying goodbye and it just had this very sweet and sad feel for us, which really matched the tone of the songs”. Good news then because this particular collection of tracks has all the trappings of a post-rock masterpiece and is certain to leave fans of the genre craving more.

This is the band’s sixth album, and there is more of an encompassing rise-and-fall nature to the songs than we have bared witness to previously. They have threaded elements of dance and pop into the mix to grant us a healthy glimpse of their current collective states of mind. This is particularly noticeable on the tracks ‘Trembling Hands’ and ‘Be Comfortable, Creature’. The former is a short little ride though furious chanting to a driving rhythm that plants crescendos that peak and soaring bass that lifts you up high where you can throw shapes unnoticed, whilst the latter, an initial saunter down a sun-streaked forest path, leads to a neat free-falling riff, a flurry of electronic touches and a series of 65daysofstatic dancing beats.

Like all good albums there are emotional peaks and troughs. You’ll dip down as you feel the pain of the gorgeously mournful, tender touches of ‘Human Qualities’ and ‘Postcard From 1952′ which both have a see-through frailty about them. You’ll hear tapping fingers on pages, jogging feet, slow breathing through the nose, a rise in pressure inside your ears. Like paper-skin, the threaded veins of strings and gently pulsing heartbeats show through to speak of tough times in the many languages of music. You’ll climb up and marvel at ‘Last Known Surroundings’ which feeds tribal pipes, chiming keys, cyclical riffs and a persistent snare into the echoing machinations of a vast industrial mill to create a hedonistic wall of sound.

If there is anything missing here, it’s a lack of shocks. Only those brief moments of industrial psychedelia really make your jaw drop. One of those moments occurs as the countrified pop and bleak desert rock of ‘Let Me Back In’ bids you adieu. It’s a warped groan combined with a jarring reverse vocal and it’s almost enough, on it’s own, to make up that deficit. Whether it hits you hard or not you’ll still find youself sitting in momentary silence. So, as you exhale, a breath you didn’t realise you were holding, and press play once more, to allow yourself another pass though the picturesque scenery of yet another classy Explosions In The Sky album, do consider whether it’s their finest. Hyperbole maybe but, from this reviewer’s perspective, it certainly comes close.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/04/explosions-in-the-sky-take-care-take-care-take-care

Album Review: Funeral For A Friend - Welcome Home Armageddon

It’s 2005 and Funeral For A Friend are a band on top of their game. They’ve crept up and stunned us with their debut album and followed it up with a wodge of incredible live shows and a, supposedly difficult, second album that, if anything, makes our hearts beat even more rapidly. Fast-forward to the present day and, following the double cardiac arrests that two uninspiring, sterile album releases represent, and with guitarist Darran Smith following bassist Gareth Davies out the door, they now appear to be a band on the critical list. There is but one glimmer of hope, a faint pulse, that I, personally, clung onto before I span this latest effort, and that was that last year’s fan-funded EP definitely felt more urgent, passionate, grittier. To see a couple of tracks from it lurking on Welcome Home Armageddon is not necessarily a bad thing then.

Well I’m happy to report our patient is out and about and doing well. It’s softer and more subtle, but the 44-second guitar intro ‘This Side Of Brightness’ evokes the opening to the magnificent ‘History’ from their 2005 album Hours. Thinking about it, it’s a little stroke of genius and it sets you up for reminiscing fondly on times when FFAF albums used to weld themselves to our souls with triumphant melodics, containing both smooth and rough edges, and addictive lyrics delivered with feeling. The following track here, ‘Old Hymns’ disconcertingly speaks those thoughts back at us – “I used to mean something to you, but I turned and left you in the cold”. Spooky, no?

There’s no doubting there are instant big-hitters here but what marks this album out as a giant step up is the switch of anaemic filler for angry, slow-growers; complex song structures that worm their way slowly into your brain and end up surpassing the instantaneous high of the single releases. In the former camp, you have tracks like ‘Sixteen’, a soaring pop-laced anthem with plenty of top-end guitar noodling, ‘Front Row Seats To The End Of The World’, a glorious marriage of screams and cleans, and the rock punch of ‘Aftertaste’. Opposite them, you’ve got the intricate webs that are weaved by the spasming ballad ‘Owls (Are Watching)’, ‘Spinning Over The Island’s threaded grunt and the superlative 5-minute title-track with its multiple personalities.

Yes, the god-awful, faux-American drawl of Matt Davies-Kreye pops up every now and again and goads the guitars into riding roughshod over the softer tracks, but those moments are few and far between. It was probably inevitable when you consider the amount of aggression that the band have thrown at this album. Thankfully, with added angst comes added variety and this is exemplified by the skidding metal bursts lurking in ‘Spinning Over The Island’ and the speed-demon ‘Broken Foundation’ with its explosive guitar solo. If you also take into consideration the fact that Funeral For A Friend are already the undisputed kings of vocal harmonies and suddenly you’re talking about a band that can, again, not only look their peers in the eyes but can once more inspire them. Yes, it’s just one album but, put into context, it’s going to mean the world to a whole lot of people. Welcome home, FFAF.

Also online @ The Line Of Best Fit = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/03/funeral-for-a-friend-welcome-home-armageddon/

Album Review: AXXONN – Let’s Get It Straight

What is a rulebook if you can’t tear it up once in awhile? Brisbane’s Tom Hall has the imagination to do such a thing and, now he’s commandeered AXXONN as his solo project, latest album Let’s Get It Straight proves he wields the power to grip it and rip it.

Previously, with No Anchor bassist Ian Rogers on board, the band were known mainly for driving out dirge-riddled electronica, but here Hall goes one stage further by combining all his musical loves in one place; taking genres as far apart from each other as black metal and J-pop (although you’re doing well if you can spot that one), drone and electronica, doom and ambient rock or, as his biography reads so eloquently, “powernoise and icecream”, and sinking them all deep into a soundtrack that speaks to both the mind and the soul.

It could be that Hall was feeling a bit peckish when he concocted this brutal crossover recipe but there’s definitely a food theme here with titles like ‘Cod & Chips’, ‘Choc Milk Addiction’ and ‘Frosties 2L’ knocking about. The music itself often brings the eclectic output of 65daysofstatic, Fieldhead or, even, Mogwai to mind. Hearing skipping, downtempo rhythms being fed into a heap of electro-noise is thrilling and, in the case of ‘Choc Milk Addiction’, a smothered, shoegazing vocal is thrown into the mix aswell – it’s quite possibly how 65DOS would sound if they joined forces with The Big Pink. And yet, to focus on that one thought, ignores the rest of the musical spectrum that Hall explores. ‘Golfini’, for instance, combines crisply strummed and plucked acoustic guitar, then smothers it in electric fuzz, squeak and overdrive, and ’10 Pound Trouble’ presents us with a bravely bare field recording of territorial bird squabbles before crystallizing our minds with a hammering, resonant piano layered up with synth beats.

The imagery as you proceed through the album comes thick and fast and most of it is convincing enough to prove that this is no walk in the park. ‘Slave Driver’s sub-heavy cannon blasts stick you in a barren desert, watching helplessly as shells burrow their way into a sandstorm of white noise and industrial drone. Then, the eking build of ‘The Slow Death’ casts you adrift, oxygen-starved, floating through star-spattered space, whilst ‘Perfect For Acid’ ties you up in its basement and performs dark, aural torture on you as you swing back and forth through a blinding sea of strobes. It all adds up to one messed-up, wildly introspective trip.

Inevitably, there is material here that wouldn’t even bond together if you used superglue, and the title-track is the standout black mark. Throwing a church organ into a jumble of 80s house music it seems is just a step too far. But then there are wham-bam tracks, like the eight-minute industrial mallet that is ‘From Blacks Void’, that wipe the slate clean and make you think again. It’s not an easy record this – it’s that banana boat ride you opt for instead of the relaxing option of simply lazing and tanning on the sand. You’ll feel nauseous, you may get flung off every now and then, but it’s the kind of thrill ride that leaves you stuffed full of adrenaline, gasping for breath and with a mile-wide smile on your kisser.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/02/axxonn-lets-get-it-straight/

Album Review: Ultraphallus - Sowberry Hagan

Those Belgian noiseniks Ultraphallus are rashly experimental. Their challenging, sensory warfare sits on the crossroads where the paths of Nadja, Bleach-era Nirvana, Sunn O))) and Kong all meet up. Now, if that sounds like quite an odd collection of names to stick into one sentence you’d be right. But then actually getting to grips with the abrupt track-by-track changes of direction of Sowberry Hagan is a task in itself. Whether they’ve been brave or stupid is ultimately your call, but hopefully I can help with that.

The album was recorded on a Liége farm in just four short days. Four days of instrumental speculation with banjo and saxophones popping up amidst layers of white noise, samples and field recordings. Listening to the whole shebang you’d have to hope that it wasn’t a working farm. The cockerel wouldn’t get a look in!

Ripping through a multitude of techniques they assail us with a spot of white noise, not unlike a grotty recording of a macabre horrorshow, for ‘Pathological Freemind Verse’ before obliterating us with bawled punk as into the the snapping maw of ‘Right Models’ we go. Dropping tempo to settle into their more familial groove of badgering doom, vocalist Phil Maggi begins to psych us out with his best unhinged lunatic impression for the soul-sucking ‘River Jude’ and then menacingly half-whispers in our ear through the plonk-a-thon ‘Indians Love Rain’.

For ‘The Red Print’ (a track where the level of cotton wool disorientation will have you trying to un-pop your ears throughout) the band seem determined on drowning the dying guest vocal of Eugene Robinson (Oxbow) beneath the surface of a boiling ocean of sound. He manages to heave himself up to deliver a line, then splashes around a bit, until they drag him back under. This goes on with him re-emerging just breathless moments later until, agonisingly, he finally disappears beneath and we enter an underworld of psychedelic warblings.

The album as a whole is, at first glance, an exercise in various claustrophobic techniques. Adeptly, Ultraphallus smother us with the pillow of neurotic drone (‘Torches Of Freedom’), try to strangle us into submission with hedonistic, industrial doom (‘Suspense Bird/Human’), or break our spirit with fistfuls of discordant sax over scathing noise (‘Cinghiale’). And if they’d left it there, we’d be initially thrilled but ultimately unfilled. By presenting escape routes through the likes of ‘Right Models’, the banjo and birdsong 12-second blast of ‘The Crumbled’ and the grunge-tastic riff that inhabits ‘Golden Fame’, the whole experience becomes something else: an exhilarating thrill-ride into the unknown that makes our hearts beat faster and gives us a feeling of light-headedness as neurones fire us into something approaching happiness. Sowberry Hagan is justifiably, heroically brave.

Also online (and officially recommended) @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/02/ultraphallus-sowberry-hagan/

Interview: Wino

Powerful handshake, body littered with timeworn tattoos and with a veritable sweep of gently whitening hair, there is no mistaking the legendary guitarist/vocalist Robert Scott Weinrich a.k.a. Wino. Slumped so deep into a sofa, he seems almost past the point of no return, yet he rouses enough of himself to reflect on his recent achievements, a mere scratch on the surface of his long association with what many would pigeon-hole as doom or stoner rock. The reality, as his latest slice of acoustic nostalgia is testament to, is something that is, on the face of it, impossible to define in such simple terms. So little time, so many questions. I managed to grab a few minutes before his Shrinebuilder show at the London Scala to ask just a few of them.

Are you enjoying your day so far?
Last day of the tour, it's been really fun. I've been on the road a long time before this tour so looking forward to a couple of days off.

Of course… supporting your solo album ‘Adrift’ in October?
Yeah, we did almost a two-month tour. Had about 10 days off back in L.A.

'Adrift' has just been released here. How much of yourself do you feel is in there?
Well it's a pretty personal record so I'd have to say a lot. The songs are my way of letting off steam a little bit. Also there a couple of songs on there that were written way back when I was, like, 16.

I love it but its acoustic bare-boned nature took me a little by surprise?
It's the first time I've done anything like that and it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It turned out to be a real challenge. All kinds of things like the different gauge picks you use for more string attack when you're recording it - you use a heavier pick, you hear more of that "kkk-kkk". All these things. At the same time the engineer we used, who's a friend of mine, is also a little bit of a strange guy. He wanted to do a lot of proselytising when we were recording, which was really annoying. I want him to give me my space but… y'know. We agreed to disagree about a lot of things [laughs]. So it was a little bit of a trial but, at the end, I was happy with things.

Did you enjoy the different recording processes required as opposed to an album recorded with St. Vitus or Shrinebuilder?
It was very different. Now, I think I've learned from it, so it was cool. So, not only am I proud of the record but it was also a good learning experience.

Do you think you'll have another crack at recording in that way?
I'm definitely going to do another one and I think now I won't be quite so apprehensive. I'm definitely going to prepare a bit more lyrically, 'cos the arrangements and the lyrics were a little bit of a hold-up. Most always, there are a few little lines that don't get finished until you're standing in front of a mic. A lot of the songs, we never played them live before we recorded. The optimal thing to do is to write a song, take it out on the road and play it live before you record. Sometimes you just don't have that luxury.

It was great to hear ‘Iron Horse/Born to Lose’ again and the way you’ve managed to reveal the lyrical content makes it that much more powerful. What was the thinking behind covering that song particularly?
I've always done that song because I've always loved that song. That version, anyway. The "On Parole" version of that song is pretty fucking old; Larry Wallis was playing guitar. After that, they did the first Motörhead album where they do that song, but I don't like that version. It's a real bluesy version. So that earlier version always grabbed me when I heard it, and I bought that record having never heard Motörhead ever. I bought it 'cos of the picture on the front. It just looks so badass, I thought it can't be bad. So, it's an easy song to play and I like the theme - motorbikes and the lifestyle - it's the ultimate fucking bike song.

Have you had a chance to hear what Lemmy thinks of it yet?
I haven't spoken to Lemmy about it yet, but I would like to play it for him at some point.

Why did you choose this particular album title?
That's kind of how I feel. I was having some domestic issues; I'm kind of estranged from my children, so it matched how I was feeling.

So, the UK’s been waiting with baited breath for Shrinebuilder. What was it like being upstaged by a volcano?
It was pretty fucked actually. We kept trying and trying to get in [to Europe]. Al Cisneros' [bassist/vocals] original idea was that if we came in over Africa we could have made it in, but then we might have never made it out so, after the first couple of shows we knew we couldn't make it in - the first four shows was like a third of the whole tour budget. We really wanted to play so that was really cold. Something good did come out of it though because, as we can get together so rarely, we used the extra time to go into rehearsal where we fleshed out our next record. We've now got way more than enough material, so we're in good shape. I think we're going to do a couple of other releases first. We're going to release a live album first before we go in and record which might not be until next November.

How did Shrinebuilder actually come together to record an album in the first place?
Well, the idea had been around for a little while, and then me and Al decided to slip the idea to Chris [Hiatkus] on drums. Then when Chris left Om he said it wouldn't quite be right for him, so that left just me and and Al. About that time Al had asked me about bringing in Scott Kelly (guitar/vocals) and I thought that was a great idea. Then we needed a drummer and basically all of us agreed that if we could have our dream drummer it would be Dale [Crover] and when he said "yes", we were pretty blown away. I think we'd been together about 6-7 months. The interesting thing is we never actually played together until the night before we went in the studio. It was either me and Dale, or me and Dale and Al, or Al and Dale, and then, finally, me and Al and Scott. The first time we all got together was midnight on a Thursday night and the next day we went in the studio. Three days later, we'd recorded the record, so it was pretty rad.

Three days is a pretty short time. It seems incredible that the individual styles of writing managed to fit together so rapidly and so perfectly.
A lot of cool stuff happened, a lot of serendipitous stuff. I was struggling with the lyrics for this riff that I'd bought to the table and Scott happened to call me at that exact moment and said "Hey man, I got some lyrics that might help you finish that song" so it was pretty amazing. Then Al had a piece that he'd tapped out that fit just perfectly. So everything on that first record is written by all of us - everyone has written a little piece of each song.

So a lot of it was written over the phone?
A lot of computer files sent to each other. It actually forced me to get little bit more computer-literate. But it's getting easier and easier now.

Immediately the supergroup label was slapped on you. Did that add pressure?
You know everybody needs words to describe stuff. That's how stoner rock came about and that's how heavy metal came about. I don't focus on this kind of stuff because it's not what I need to be focussing on. It's nice to be accepted though.

It's possibly because you've got four big fanbases that are all interested in this one project.
I think it's interesting that you point that out because there was a bit of a firestorm - there was this thing where the stonerrock.com guys didn't like the sound of Scott's voice and then the Neurosis people who didn't like my voice. That's pretty interesting actually. (Laughs) The stoners were hating on Scott and vice versa. It was pretty funny. I’ve never been in a band before with that style of vocals, and I'm not just saying this 'cos he's in my band, but he's one of the few screamers where I actually like it. Maybe it's the timbre of his voice.

How often are you getting to practice as a band?
We really don't get a lot of time. We rehearsed two days before this tour. Probably two sets a day. We probably practiced the songs three or four times each, if that. But we're pretty good at it. The one thing in our favour is that everybody's been around the block, it's easier to do things; nobody's got ego problems. There's no real problems like you'd get with a new band. We respect each other. Not that there's competition between us. When I was little kid I asked myself "How can bands as good as The Beatles possibly have broken up?" It just seemed unfathomable. When you're young what you don't realise is that people come into play here. You could be the best player in the world but if you act like an asshole you're gonna have problems, right?

So you say the second album is now all but written?
The ideas are finished.

Do you have, say, song titles yet?
Let's see - I'm not sure if I should do this - ah, I can give you a couple. One song is called In The Wake Of Zeus, we talk about the volcano, and another is called The Concept Of Now.

Thanks for the tip-offs. You've certainly whet my appetite for the show now! Have a good one.
My pleasure.

Thanks to Rich@Rich-E and Lauren@RarelyUnable

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/12/tlobf-interview-wino/

Gig Review: Shrinebuilder + Wolves In The Throne Room - Scala, London 2/12/10

Ducking into the Scala to escape the capital freeze is a pointless exercise tonight as, be it deliberate or not, the band room is chilled to the point where their cloakroom becomes wholly redundant. It’s the perfect temperature for Wolves In The Throne Room though, who proceed to ramp up the emotion with a combination of gloom, jettisoned fog, etched banners and a protracted candle-lighting ceremony. With the stage fully anointed, their crushing gloop of malevolent black metal, crust and doom rings out, regularly dipping into a burbling, Neanderthal-paced melancholy before bursting out into a session of grating barks and power chords. Like creeping death, they wash over us sparking neither disgust, nor true passion. A few nodding heads and the odd round of gentle applause are all they can muster from those attending, although their fastidious lack of eye contact, rather than their music, is most likely the reason for this.

Nothing less than a volcanic eruption (remember those newsreaders trying to pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull?) could stop Shrinebuilder visiting these shores last Spring, so to finally hear the crowd roar as Dale Crover (Melvins’ drummer/vocalist), Al Cisneros (Om’s bassist/vocalist), Scott Kelly (Neurosis’ guitarist/vocalist) and Scott ‘Wino’ Weinrich (The Obsessed vocalist/guitarist), legends all, mount the stage is enough to cause several grown men’s lips to momentarily quiver. The lank-haired Crover and Cisneros, resplendent as the class clown in his woolly hat, immediately fire up the rhythm section; Dale beats the snare into submission with the minimum of effort whilst Al uses his grotty basslines to overwhelm as much of the room as possible. Kelly and Wino try hard to make headway into the deluge with dissonant guitar and a mixture of vocal howl and croon, but they seem to make little impression. Only a trip up to the Glass Room, where a vast pane dissolves the sound, can cure the problem and single their individual efforts out.

They mix the songs up nicely, firing up the mighty ‘Pyramid Of The Moon’ and ‘The Architect’ as an opening salvo and saving ‘Solar Benediction’ for a raging finish. The middle of the set wanders away from the punchier material to slip into a spot of almost mystical noodling – it marks a period where the now fervently headbanging crowd find space for mild introspection. The band also happily fit in a couple of less well-known tracks; ‘We Let The Hell Come’ shining out like a beacon. Kelly, looking like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards and sporting a perma-stoned expression, is constantly impressive, digging out arse-clenching riffs and scowling vocal which Wino latches onto, plugging any gaps in sound with wah, extravagant slide and morphing melody. In fact it’s also Wino who adopts the role of ringmaster, legs spread, urging the audience to greater heights with a combination of vein-popping head jerks and fierce eyeballing.

There is really only one real spoiler to this brutal showing and it comes in the form of this evening’s stringent ‘no flash’ policy. One fan dares to forget to switch his off and suffers the indignity of having a roadie repeatedly pelt him with flying cups until he ceases. When you’ve got four of the world’s finest musicians before you, performing at the top of their game, turning your brain into mush, it seems the perfect excuse for a little lack of self-control.

All photographs by Rich Etteridge

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/12/shrinebuilder-scala-london-021210/

Album Review: Lords Of Falconry - Lords Of Falconry

This band’s juicy moniker, Lords Of Falconry, conjures up images of vast birds of prey gliding in from hilltops to alight on oiled leather gloves so, as an avid ornithologist, I was keen to learn more. A quick flick through their PR release reveals nothing but hyperbole: phrases like “quixotically naïve”, “green, inferno-like” or “the waltz-like sound of mastodons”. Their MySpace page, similarly, reveals little but misdirection (a claim that they hail from the United Arab Emirates being the straw that broke the camel’s back), but a bit of digging unearths one Steven Wray Lobdell, an Oregonian guitarist with a few bands (Davis Redford Triad, Faust, Sufi Mind Game) under his belt and a doyen of all things psych, and one Sammy James Adams, a North Dakotan drummer with a penchant for cultism and all things ancient.

Here, their music emerges through a heady fog of white noise to deliver, most notably, a deranged howling at the moon (‘Doomsday Legislation’), a wash of drunken guitar feedback (‘Scottish Chords’), a hypnotically swerving, effects-laden solo (‘Manifest Destiny’), and a starkly simplistic and instantly accessible array of rock chords combined with a reverberating, gothic vocal, reminiscent of the style of delivery that harkened from The Mission’s Wayne Hussey (‘Mariana’). All these little affectations pin an individual imprint on each track, but all seem impelled by a filthy rich mix of warping guitar overdrive, a monumental, track-bleeding bottom-end drone and an almost epic use of hard-hitting snare and resonating cymbal shatter to steadily drive the music to the point of implosion, where crazily the music folds in on itself – almost as if the players seem hell-bent on self-destruction.

This fetid wall of muddy psych implies a heavy use of mind-bending drugs and a blatant disregard for subtlety or technique. Here, then, is music that screams self-indulgence. Probably recorded as near to live as humanly possible, with disappointingly short tracks (considering the style) faded carelessly in and out, the whole album feels lost down its own deep murky hole where the aggressive power swirls and builds to raise its head before abating and sinking below ground once more. Smack the volume up, close your eyes and, for brief moments, you should be able to generate a feel of how immense this might sound live but burnt to a piece of plastic it merely disappoints rather than invigorates. Perhaps if they’d left the powerful shock ending of the outstanding brutish grunge of ‘Rosebud’ for last, they might have afforded the moment even bigger impact and left a natural fullstop. However by ending proceedings on the mental disharmony between dizzy, treble-heavy guitar and the thunderpunching bassline of ‘Creeping, The Ether’, they’ve left it feeling like an odd bonus track. “Quixotically naïve” is probably a fair description after all, especially when you consider the painfully miserly 35 minutes they offer you to lose yourself in their ambiguously psychotic world.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/12/lords-of-falconry-lords-of-falconry/

Album Review: Winnebago Deal - Career Suicide

Their last full-length came out four long years ago, but it’s only really been a couple since Winnebago Deal stopped touring and took a hiatus. Considering how fast music industry tastes have shifted in that short time, and the vast influx of bands flexing uber-aggressive punk guns to supplement their output, it’s going to be quite a struggle for the Oxford duo to make an impact with this new effort. Perhaps, a resort to type might seriously be professional hara-kiri but, judging from this Career Suicide, a fierce slab of stripped-back second wave punk is certainly what they’ve given us.

Yep, this sure is one supersonic speeding slab of pure fury, smeared with the grime of their discontent, and it slays. The two Bens, Perrier and Thomas, start out with ‘Heart Attack In My Head’, a fluxing powerhouse that employs smeared sustain over pummelled repeater snare and broken screams to really ram home their point, rip through another 12 tracks that barely scratch the two-minute mark, and finish with the demon nut-crusher, ‘Can’t See, Don’t Care, Don’t Know’, which Perrier uses as an instrument to scrape clean his vocal chords. There’s no rest for the wicked, they say and, at this rate, their arms will be bloody stumps if they tour long with this doozy in their pocket.

Amongst an album that seems conditioned to congeal itself into one heaving mass, with it’s verse-chorus-verse blueprint being strictly adhered to, picking out highlights is a tough call but I sorta dig the eerie opening build to mayhem and vampiric cajones that ‘I Want Your Blood’ sports even if it does seriously cut the cheese. On the flipside, the 1:09 of ‘Frostbiter’ is particularly obnoxious, the sound almost folding in on itself as Perrier’s guitar and vocals slew around, the dB piling up to a crushing climax, whilst ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ teeters on the edge of punk-pop mediocrity before properly dropping it’s shorts on the chorus. They won’t sell a gazillion copies, the odd brainless idiot will no doubt declare that punk is dead, but the ‘Deal will simply shrug, stick one mighty middle finger in the air, and gig with this hatstand-mad collection of bruisers in every nook and cranny they can find and we’ll all naturally flock forth and hail them kings of all they survey once more.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/11/winnebago-deal-%E2%80%93-career-suicide/

Album Review: Quest For Fire - Lights From Paradise

According to singer/guitarist Chad Ross, this latest release is a “heavy meeting of all the music we love … pounding psych straight from the Canadian heart”. Clearly, “all the music they love” is a reference to the players’ wide array of musical backgrounds (Ross and guitarist Andrew Gunn were once part of indie rockers The Deadly Snakes whilst drummer Mike Maxymuik thrashed it up with metalcore’s Cursed); a fact that has shaped the band’s mind-blowingly varied output as they delve into the realms of stoner rock; and a fact that has enabled Toronto’s Quest For Fire to quickly switch from their self-titled debut’s tendency towards the sharply aggressive, raw punk end of stonerdom to where they are now, on Lights From Paradise, ekeing out passively-shifting, immersive psych (an experience tangibly reminiscent of something last felt whilst listening to The Warlocks) that steadily swells and abates. Throw in a guest spot from Sophie Trudeau (Montreal’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion) and her magic fiddle and it’s like being hard-wired into the music; being drip-fed adrenaline in one arm and morphine in the other.

Trudeau simply owns their oozing seven-minute introductory piece, ‘The Greatest Hits By God’, with her bowed notes gently placed above the grungy oomph of the chugged guitar and echoing vocal. ‘Set Out Alone’ and ‘Strange Vacation’ pick up the pace, kicking up the dust of the past with a Cream-esque wall of fuzz sounding off behind the garage blues drive so reminiscent of current bands like Dinosaur Jr and Dead Confederate. QFF’s party trick is their uncanny ability to knit the rough with the smooth, sucking you in for their punched hooks until you simply drop out with them as they ramp up the sustain and ditch the grunt for a smooth, rush of power chords and drifting vocal that doubles the track length. It’s an effortless shift in emotional direction that so few bands have truly mastered. The transmogrification from ‘Strange Vacation’ to ‘Confusion’s Home’ is the finest example of this and will undoubtedly leave you mouth-gaping at their mastery of moodswings.

Then, with a resounding strike on their division bell, they dig you out of your reverie and dump you, blinking like a newborn, in an unceremonious heap. Why they felt the need to suddenly throw obnoxiously clean acoustics, fatuous percussive breaks and glibly overwrought patterns upon their audience is beyond me. Both ‘Psychic Seasons’ and ‘Hinterland Who’s Who’ prove to be both left and right sore thumbs of this sophomore album. That’s not to say they don’t employ fuzz or Ross’ creamy, oscillating vocal; they merely eschew complex structure to simply blast through peaking rises, never clicking or settling until they shoot out the other side and fade to close. It feels like that switch from the relative safety of recorded programmes to the grainy, flickering image and seat-of-the-pants unpredicatiblity of live telly.

The final nine-minute cruise under the hammered rain of cymbal and drum, Pink Floyd-mimicking all the way, proves even ‘Sessions Of Light’ is more than enough to demand a return to the wondrous immersion that the first half of the album soaked itself in. All this is a bit of a shame because it doesn’t follow that a band with a potted history should produce such a potted album, yet ‘Lights From Paradise’ doesn’t deserve such a haphazard phrase being dumped upon it. It contains moments that transcend beauty, an album that delivers more than the sum of its parts. Put bluntly, a vaguely dim ending simply doesn’t dull the lighbulb of genius that precedes it.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/11/quest-for-fire-%E2%80%93-lights-from-paradise/

Label Profile: Good Fight Music

The track record of Paul Conroy and Carl Stevens is pretty staggering when you consider they were former partners of Ferret (who went on to combine forces with Sony’s RED Distribution and Siege Of Amida Records), Warner Music and ChannelZero. So, in January 2010, when they stepped back into the breach and founded Good Fight Entertainment, an international management company it made a few big ripples in the industry pond. They got RED back on board to help out, divided their company into a music and sports division, and added a new record label, Good Fight Music. It’s the quality material pouring forth from this particular record label that is causing this particular journalist to sit up and take notice.

Of their new endeavour, Carl Severson states, “We’ve built a company that is in a unique position to rise to the challenges of the evolving music industry. We’ve been on the front lines as digital has become the medium of choice for music marketing and commerce, and we’ve grown with it, embraced the opportunities it’s presented. Paul, myself, our staff; we have the resolve to thrive in this climate. Good Fight Entertainment is the culmination of our experiences as artists, band members, managers, musicians and executives. We have the opportunity to work with people who believe in us as much as we believe in them. This is a very exciting time for us.”

So far, the roster is already looking pretty impressive. Rosaline, I Am Abomination, Son Of Aurelius, Disembodied and Madball are a cherry-picked few who have all signed on the dotted line. Their first release was a class act too – Cancer Bats‘ latest album Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones. Having had a chance to review the latest material to emerge, (see below) it has certainly given enough food for thought.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you should be keeping an eye open for:

Band: The Chariot
Album: Long Live
Released: November 2010

Press Release Summary: “With a hard earned and accomplished sales history of over 100,000 units and years of vigorous global touring, The Chariot have entrenched themselves as a standout in the hard and aggressive music movement.”

TLOBF Review: Ultra-rapid, spasmodic changes of attack take you swinging through more obnoxious levels of ear-scouring than you can shake a stick at. From opener ‘Evan Perks’ plaintive repeated howl of “disappointed, I know you are”, through ‘David De La Hoz’ and its multi-faceted tomfoolery (and accompanying haphazard one-take video), to the lacerating smack in the chops that is ‘The King’, The Chariot tread the tightrope of bothersome lunacy and damnable genius. This is destructively cantakerous hardcore music like never before and will leave many in pieces whilst the remainder will be left staring down at their cowering forms with freeze-framed faces, caught in throes of rapture.

Listen here | Watch here

Band: The Contortionist
Album: Exoplanet
Released: October 2010

Press Release Summary: “While hardcore punk may be the sound that rules the day in The Contortionist hometown of Indianapolis, it is the band’s signature brand of forward thinking heavy metal that has made them stick out as hometown favorites”.

TLOBF Review: This is probably the most insanely complex album I think I’ve ever heard. The Contortionist manage to blend bruising post-hardcore and highly complex math-metal with utterly benign passages of rock music. The vocal anomalies (dirty grunts hitting sterile melodies and robotic vocoder narration) match the broken nature of the guitar styles and track structures. ‘Expire’ hangs off crushing deathcore whilst ‘Contact’ unfolds into part-epic rock anthem, part-deconstructed technical metal. And if you thought this was all about creating something insanely aggressive, dig down to the eloquently melodic ‘Axiom’ or part one of the title-track and you’ll be simply blown away by the tenderness on display. With attention spans shortening all the time, The Contortionist may just have created the music of the future.

Listen here | Watch here

Band: Conditions
Album: Fluorescent Youth
Released: September 2010

Press Release Summary: “The songs are steeped in hard rock with an infusion of heartfelt pop. Track after track finds towering hook-laden choruses fit to reign on radio’s airwaves”.

TLOBF Review: This comes across like a dose of Flood Of Red’s epic walls of sound yet rocks with the grim determination of You Me At Six. Finding a middle ground between those two can’t have been easy, yet Conditions find it by combining mewing pop-punk with rabble-rousing hard rock. There are plenty of big hooks but, sadly, little variety in delivery and they do appear to be on a collision course with a million other bands. Thankfully, the emotional damage that bursts forth from ‘Comfort Far Away’ combines with tracks like ‘Keeping Pace With Planes’ and ‘When It Won’t Save You’ to thunder in and prove they have plenty left in the tank to show us. This is no one-trick pony.

Listen here | Watch here

This article also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/11/label-profile-5-good-fight-music/

EP Review: 65daysofstatic - Heavy Sky

Emerging from the debris of the recording sessions for latest album We Were Exploding Anyway, comes this craftily-compiled EP featuring six brand new tracks (and one new edit), because surely nothing is too good to throw away. The band obviously feel strongly enough about how special these songs are, as they’ve compiled limited edition artwork for the release and are offering two tracks (unavailable elsewhere) to folks who place a pre-order. Another sign of how serious they are about the content comes with the announcement that they’re about to take it out on tour. So it must be all killer and no filler, right?

Well, kicking off with a bit of a duff extra we find that ‘Tiger Girl’, having been cut down from an admittedly lengthy 10:37 to a mean 3:36, has its emotional peaking effect blunted somewhat. Allowing yourself to dwell and soak up the rhythm is often far superior to the short, sharp hit. A bad start then but, thankfully, the remainder of the EP is jam-packed with crackers.

‘The Wrong Shape’ ebbs and flows dynamically and, as such, is somewhat reminiscent to ‘Crash Tactics’. Comparison between the two actually results in this new release sounding just that bit stronger. ‘Pacify’ crawls into view, sounding much like the bone-chilling opening to Baroness’ ‘Rays On Pinion’, like a hundred fingers running their way round a hundred glasses, whilst ‘PX3′ expounds further on that progressive element pulling in a wholesome heartbeat bass to help out the manic piano. ‘Beats Like A Helix’ grabs great fistfuls of computer-generated beeps and throws drum and bass at it, whilst ‘Guitar Cascades’ is a collapsing, submerged, massively cathartic wall of noise. The real find here, though, is ‘Sawtooth Rising’ which is exactly the one missing element from 65DOS’ exploration of dance music that so inspired ‘WWEA’. It’s colourful, rich, buoyantly building, exceptionally brutish and fused with the classic buzzing signature of mind-melting euphoric trance.

So instead of finding six that didn’t deserve to make the cut, ‘Heavy Sky’ marks the brilliant completion of a stunning and, clearly, devotional body of work.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/11/65daysofstatic-heavy-sky/

Album Review: Mt. Desolation - Mt. Desolation

Mt. Desolation is the deceptively morbid moniker for the new vehicle featuring Keane’s songwriter-in-chief/pianist, Tim Rice-Oxley, and their bassist/percussionist, Jesse Quin. Calling on their contacts to help add flavour, they’ve drafted in The Killers’ drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Mumford & Sons’ banjo-player Country Winston and Noah And The Whale’s fiddle-player Tom Hobden. Their MySpace page describes this hotch-potch band, somewhat cryptically, as a mixture of Chinese traditional and Italian pop, although they sound more like a conglomeration of twee folk and giddy alt-country to me.

Tracks like ‘Departure’ and ‘Platform 7′ are devilishly happy-go-lucky tracks that swing with fat double bass, brushed snare and banjo – the former makes a feature of the freewheeling fiddle whilst the latter is all about the rhythmic plink of the piano. Other songs like ‘Bridal Gown’, ‘My My My’ and ‘State Of Our Affairs’ thicken the pace to venture down emotive paths as the softly-delivered vocals cut deeper – Rice-Oxley also craftily tweaks his delivery to add some quite poignant touches.

Taken with a pinch of salt, this eponymous album serves as a welcome deviation to the standard negativity of much that follows these particular genres around and it’s certainly great to actually hear the band enjoying themselves behind their instruments. But there are more serious moments when familiarity begins to merely breed contempt. There’s plenty that follows the same old predictable pattern; a style of songwriting that Rice-Oxley clearly feels comfortable with. The clinically-adept ‘Annie Ford’, for instance, unabashedly soaks itself in the filthy bathwater of former country music pioneers, lathering on sweeping pop licks with a rich hook and a hefty dose of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

By the time the epic croons of ‘Bitter Pill’ sweep into view, mid-album, you’ll be thinking of Mt. Desolation as a kind of countrified Keane. As breezily adept as this all is, it’s still somewhat disappointing to find just how short a distance the players are prepared to venture from their comfortable position in the middle of the road.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/10/mt-desolation-mt-desolation/

Album Review: Kelley Stoltz - To Dreamers

Listening to San Franciscan Kelley Stoltz‘ upbeat, shuffling rhythms, all bathed in gloriously warm tones, is like having summer beamed directly into your ears. Melody is paramount in everything he does, and for this he naturally heads back to the surf pop, merseybeat and skiffle sounds of the 50s and 60s. On previous albums, he’s managed to cram as much Beatles and Beach Boys’ sounds in as is humanely possible and yet, whilst those sounds are still there (‘Bottled Up’ is pure ‘Eleanor Rigby’), on To The Dreamers there are noticeable deviations with a more proto-punk fervour being displayed and curious psychedelic and melodic electronic touches scattered hither and thither.

Where as ‘Rock & Roll With Me’, ‘I Remember, You Were Wild’ or ‘I Like, I Like’ inspire shaking heads and shimmying hips with a pitching drumbeat, a warbling sax or a metronomic tambourine, tracks like ‘Keeping The Flame’ or ‘Fire Escape’ get noticeably scattergun with sharp guitar strikes, howling pedal effects and theremin interjections exploding the simplicity of the backbeat with coloured bursts of psychedelia. ‘Pinecone’ and ‘Ventriloquest’ then shift down a gear, placing us on a gently lapping shore whilst a pinged bass tosses skippers over the wave tops and hammered keys dig out the sandcastles.

Multi-instrumentalist Stoltz has a small degree of help here, but the majority of what’s on display is performed by the man himself. His live band step in on a couple of tracks and there’s a delightfully buzzy cover of ‘Baby I Got News For You’ where “Big Boy” Pete Miller steps in to sing and play (on the same valve amp and guitars that he used on his 1965 original). Unsurprisingly, this track fits snugly into the album amongst all the other jostling nods to that particular era of gentile music. You can’t help but smile as each track kicks in and takes you spinning back down that time wormhole yet again. To Dreamers is, indeed, the perfect title for an album, innocently dedicated to all those nostalgic souls that yearn for a return to a time when things were just that little bit less complicated.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/10/kelley-stoltz-%E2%80%93-to-dreamers/