Album Review: Earth Ship – Hollowed

Berlin’s Earth Ship are a band that crosses genres. Depending on your state of mind when you press play, you’ll hear something different each and every time.

Firing out two parts doom and one part southern metal, Earth Ship have managed to muster an album that collects, like music nerds, a vast range of their influences. Starting out with a driven, downbeat Alice In Chains vibe they steadily ramp up the pace and the power to peak at something equating to Kylesa’s whirlwind crush before bringing it back through thrash and blackened metal to settle back into a doomy groove.

Blasting off the wall of noise with a scowling bag of nails vocal, opener “Reduced To Ashes” melts an initially gutsy, visceral sound into a driven dual vocal that mimics the melancholic laments of the aforementioned Alice In Chains. At ts heart the jerking back-and-forth swinging rhythm is a simple structure by design, so it’s a surprise to find it repeating throughout the album. Following up, the title-track introduces itself as its tonal brother, attacking from a different angle with half-paced, down-tuned chugs creating an imposing force. This looser blueprint risks demoting it to mere filler but at least it warns you just how complex their constructive thought processes are.

Deeper in, the variation continues – morose, lush verses, driven with effortless power by twin vocals, melt into a roared death attack. Surrounding it they use an amalgam of High On Fire’s immense vocal grunt, Monster Magnet’s heady theatrics and Torche’s relentless cyclical riffing to shock and invigorate.

“Conjured” provides a wicked groove interspersed with harmonised vocal “aahs” and is both accessible and memorable. Then, diving into the abyss, “Monolith” offers up a suitably menacing, rumbling undercurrent with big blackened melancholic tones. Imposing its wrath upon the listener it echoes through to violating feedback. “In Fire’s Light” is even darker, heavier and throws ever more powerful hits. It also features the enigmatically repeating line “The sands of time are running low…”. Here, they sound like a beefed-up Purified In Blood.

Wading through, the succulent, thick layers envelop you. Whichever you choose to lock onto, be it the scrawling multiple-overlaid vocal, the demonic throat-scouring or the slow, persistent driven quality, you are always plugged in. And then there’s the moments when they revert to feeding in old school elements. One particular track that will give you a shit-eating grin is the thrashed-up “Castle Of Sorrow”. The fiery, metallic tang, of the thing throwing out curses in twin-speed attack with pillar-to-post riffage is a joy. Even the monotonous closer “The Edge Of Time” has value here with its long, weighty, sustained chord strikes and maddening Acid King-esque ethereal doom.

There are negatives to consider. These aren’t so much songs as they are a series of flavours. There is an over-reliance on sheer power when the variety of attack should be the star. With trigger points supplied by the guttural roared sections they do have a tendency to batter the eardrums a little too often. A solid wall of noise each time will only drive you in one direction. And the album does rely a little too much on needless party tricks. As an example, “Safeguard Of Death”‘s automaton vocal intoning instructions over and over will drive you nuts.

Earth Ship are essentially like getting all your favourite foods and putting them on a single plate. Consume each individual part carefully and you’ll love this experience. Mix them all up and it’ll taste like something you’d give to your dog.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2016/07/earth-ship-hollowed-napalm/

Album Review: High On Fire – Luminiferous

One band who undeniably create a weighty wall-of-sound, an earthy noise that explodes from fathoms below the surface, is High On Fire – they never were a band for the faint-hearted. Embedded into the driving whirlwind that is Des Kensel’s colossal drums we find Jeff Matz’s dirty distorted bass tone smashing into the wrecking ball riffs that burst from Matt Pike’s “nine strings of Hell”. Combined it creates kaleidoscopic swathes of fuzz and metal distortion. Yet, it’s not all about swamping brains and busting eardums. Thanks to the standard epic production and mixing from the legendary Kurt Ballou, the voluminous, viscous gloop of a groove is also layered deep enough to retain the band’s true rock n’ roll leanings.

For four straight tracks they strap you beneath the wings of an aircraft, dangling in the heat from the jet engine, billowing in the drag of 60,000 tonnes of thrust. Opener “The Black Plot” powers up their instantly recognisable swathe of rotational vortexes and gutsy, crushing machinations whilst the howling “Carcosa” and “The Sunless Years” both come infused with a warming buzz, oodles of stoner doom grunt, wild resounding solos and are splattered with the thick, gargled vocal that rattles from the scarred lining of Pike’s newly-sober throat. A veritable bag of nails, it laughs in the face of the earth-shaking instrumentation attempting to flatten it.

This time round, happily for those needing a breather after the spiky, speed-demons that are “Slave The Hive” and the title-track, California’s finest have littered the album with little air holes out of which pours energising melodics and sleek, dark portents that wrap themselves round simmering, beautifully-paced growers. Riding upon “The Falconist” you absolutely get the sense of mounting the back of this rising bird of prey, wedged between its beating wings. It douses itself in hints of classic rock and NWOBHM with its simplistic progressions and organic patterns. From the crush of Torche and Crowbar into the loving arms of Iron Maiden yet never leaving the core of their sound far behind. It would be remiss of me here then to not also mention the Monster Magnet-esque psychedelics and echoing, vocal drift that forms “The Cave”. It is the brooding hinge on which this whole album swings. Without it, the album would be bereft of its most interesting flavour.

Having torn into Luminiferous, their seventh long-player, with the same verve and power that they riddled their debut with, it seems almost unfathomable that the band even know how to create a weak or maniacally experimental album. The one thing that they rarely pull from their repertoire, however, and something that is missing here too, is the invention of a brash, repeating lyrical hook, an unforgettable riff or irresistible earworm. Instead, they choose to build their music close to the ground; they were born to do so. It defines them. The need to lay a rock-solid foundation oozes from their pores. As a consequence, the High On Fire label has become a sign of assured quality. Fans will know what to expect, newbies will either move on or absolutely devour its intensity and crave more. Just remember, before you press play… buckle up.

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2015/06/high-on-fire-luminiferous-century-media/

Album Review: Colossus – The Breathing World

Frailty within crush – the illusion of impact through dissonance and groove can so quickly be tempered by their integration into a honeycombed network of progressive, exploratory structures. What you end up with is the aural equivalent of a wire brush – thick, harsh lines that mesh to form a shape with more space than solid.

One band that falls into this category are Colossus. Striking moniker, striking sound. Labelling themselves as post-sludge, this Swedish trio have their emphasis very much on the former syllable rather than the latter. In all honesty, there is much more stoner drift in their music than they are willing to admit to. The Breathing World carries on from where their debut, Wake, left off and “follows the protagonist’s crooked journey to clarity in a surreal and mysterious but deeply human world.” Their words, not mine.

It’s actually an album that wobbles, rather than strides, into existence with ‘Yehi Aour / Wanderers’ featuring deep, maudlin guitars, jarringly mirrored by a towering vocal monotone. It soon gathers pace and strength of purpose though, becoming the proverbial rolling stone, shedding moss by the bucketload.

Niklas Eriksson’s vocal has most certainly flourished since Wake and is further assisted here by Tom van Heesch’s (Rammstein, Michael Monroe) meatier production. There is an exciting variation of tone here, and Eriksson experiments by doubling up on the vocals and pulling back from his characteristic top end to explore his full range. At full stretch, when he clutches at his upper register, his delivery does become strained but, conversely, it also provides that unique focal point that separates the band’s sound from the masses.

From ‘Darkling Root’ we are pushed further down their rabbit-hole as the pace rises to become a forceful groove, peaking with the addictive hook that marks out ‘Plumed Serpent’ and the furious cries for “Lib-er-ation!”. Here, they begin to pick up elements of Torche, early-Baroness and little riff affectations that mirror monsters like those of Mastodon and Pelican. They also begin to reveal a certain penchant for subtle post-rock exploration.

The softer souls of ‘Virgin’s Milk’ and ‘The Silent City’, in particular, are riddled with emotion as Eriksson dips down to a whisper to pull out tunes that dig their nails beneath the skin. Elsewhere, the dissolute structure that houses the rich, psychedelic pull of ‘Fuga Mundi’ stands in direct contrast to the uninhibited, roaring waves and menacing undercurrent of ‘Whetstone’.

Fans will inevitably love The Breathing World for its esoteric edge, whilst the less tolerant will struggle to accept such histrionics and yearn for more of their famously empowering groove. Colossus have some way to go to find an easy balance between that frailty and crush. What isn’t in doubt is the fact that this next phase in their development is a bold step up from their debut. Its a magnificently diverse, gloriously colourful, forward-facing, wildly introspective album.

Also online @ HBIH = http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2015/03/27/colossus-the-breathing-world/

Album Review: Torche - Restarter

Talk about over-egging a promotional pudding. There’s been a retro Torche vs Robots computer game thrown out into the public domain and enough single tracks released to tease a brick into submission. Having been drip-fed all that, to the verge of saturation, it is a delight to finally understand how the tracks flow as a complete set.

In fact, the interconnectedness of Restarter actually surpasses even that of their wraparound 2012 release, Harmonicraft. What shocks is how each track impacts like a pressure wave leaving the ears ringing and a metallic taste on the tongue. The band have clearly drifted back to the heft of their early releases with tracks like "Annihilation Affair" and "Undone" piling discord onto discontent. Yet what continues to impress above all is the intense production levels. With bassist Jonathan Nuñez twiddling the knobs and Kurt Ballou mixing they have once more managed to blend a range of dynamics into what is essentially a wall of sludge, and yet retained the heart-warming crisp edges that so mark out the clean vocal harmonics. It allows the band, even here in this crushing vortex of an album, to retain an element of accessibility.

The end result is tracks like "Minions". It is what Gary Numan would have created if he'd been given a jackhammer to operate instead of a synthesizer. Here, above the burn and the crushing mountain of guitar fuzz it pings with an effervescent quality that reaches into your chest and shakes your very core.

What is missing here though is a range and variety of tones. Their last release marked out by light and dark shading was still driven beneath by the riffage but came littered throughout with layers of popping, addictive hooks. Restarter, instead, returns to the shadows utilising changes in tempo alone to dig out almighty furrows. The band stave off temptation to stray into key changes in favour of creating a subtly-morphing, hypnotic drone. The result is levels of all-encompassing power that border on the obscene.

There's the agonizingly elephantine bludgeoning of the paired "Believe It" and "Barrier Hammer". Rumbling like the sundering of the Earth; loud enough to extinguish the vocals and break your resistance. If those two don't convince you of the album's extreme metal credentials then the wall of feedback agony that opens "No Servants" will. Yet more proof of Restarter's far from hidden agenda.
Fans of the upbeat, should check out "Loose Ends" and "Blaster" which can be glimpsed as breaks through anvil-shaped clouds. Here the short clipped sentences contain lyrics that almost sound like poems. To attempt to decipher them though is to fry your mind. Take "Blaster"s opening lines as an example - "At last gold, He is bilingual, Lick lips and lusting cars, Six pack, Cold, Built strong and legal, This sound attack travels". Bonkers.

Probably most impressive of all Torche's feats with this album is their determined return to basics and you won't find anything more simple than the album-closing title-track. It fires out a three-chord riff, loads it with a singular driving beat and warbling rotational strings, then milks every last ounce of it for eight and a half minutes until the song becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Essentially, though, there is a price to be paid for this desperate attempt to claw their way from the mainstream. As single releases each track works but bring them together and you'll realise the casualty here is the album itself. In a live arena the sinister power that Restarter wields will thrill, but as a static piece it's dense beyond reason. The marketing might grab you, you might even buy it and like it, but you won't cherish it.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/torche

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: Torche – Harmonicraft

Take a look at that gaudy, pink artwork. Flying cartoon newts (some friendly, that burp rainbows, and some not-so friendly, who belch dark clouds and lightning bolts) that fly around a sky dodging falling candies, chocolate bars and bubbles. I’m not even going to speculate on what that one down the bottom of the picture could be happily licking.

Compare it to their previous releases’ similarly cartoon-esque but most definitely bleaker pictures and you’re seeing images that clearly represent the band’s shift in musical styles. It’s true. Listen carefully to the sludge-infected monstrosity of their eponymous debut album and its much acclaimed follow-up, Meanderthal, which earned the band their “stoner/doom pop” label, and you can hear exactly how they came to arrive at this point and with that artwork.

I’m not going to beat around the bush any further. Harmonicraft is their cleanest, most melodic album to date and it’s release will continue to divide stoner, prog and post-metal fans in the way that Torche have always sought to do. They begin as they mean to continue, with 2 and 3-minute walled sections of rumbling bass that jimmy along cyclical riffs fired through distorted guitars. The band’s sparkle and main selling point here is that from somewhere amidst it’s hammering crush is the echoing, clean vocal of Steve Brooks. In an even purer form than heard previously, Brooks is your upbeat guide through the heaviosity, firing out his minimalistic lyrics, serenading his audience through the thick and the thin. Be it via the medium of punk rock for “Walk It Off” and “Kiss Me Dudely”, the grunge-soaked swagger of “Reverse Inverted” and “Letting Go”, or the chugging rock n’ roll pound of “In Pieces” and “Skin Moth”.

The songs are still trench-deep and busy enough to make your ears pop when they throw in a sudden shift in depth. It’s the yank-up into the guitar arpeggios and neck-snapping drive of “Snakes Are Charmed” you need to watch out for. It’s one of those moments where you know a band has nailed down something truly special. The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck now just thinking about it. They almost repeat the trick with the slow, neck-snapping groove of “Roaming” and the catchy-as-fuck rotating riff of the title-track – I reckon this is what being trapped inside Torche’s own washing machine is like, going round and round with those soiled tour threads.

With its track-by-track homage to looped riffery, Harmonicraft is, undoubtedly, a mood album. You flick it on, it invigorates you for 38 minutes, and then you move along. It’s not something you can easily dip in and out of. Each track feeds beautifully on to the next as subtle shifts in rhythm mean you simply roll with every single one of its punches. The down side of course is that they will face rows of pointing fingers who don’t buy into such a concept. For instance, there are several moments where the song demands more from the band than they’re willing to give. It’s not the first time we’ve heard them proffering only one and a half minute tracks and it’s hard not to feel aggrieved when a track you dig crashes to a halt with a sense of incompletion; the wish left unfulfilled. Would it work if you stitched all the tracks together by a series of chord hangs? I doubt it. Done this way, it can leave you with the vague impression that you’re being pitched too. The nay-sayers will be suggesting that if they really are an ideas factory, then why do so many of their imaginings sound similar? Ah, the trappings of being so clever, so innovative and so skilled are that your public will always question your motifs and demand more of you.

So, sure, at first glance it may seem that Torche are driving towards melding churning pop and gutsy groove together à la Queens Of The Stone Age, yet deeper inspection shows they have also begun to loop back in on themselves. There are songs here that brush-up against the kind of moods that Mastodon’s current work is offering and given the frowning, doomier finale that lurks in “Solitary Traveler” and “Looking On” (think Pilgrim meets High On Fire), we can see they are still keeping all their options open. End of the day, whatever their critics may say, Harmonicraft is a genre-bending original and I’d recommend it any day of the week. Without bands like Torche showing innovation like this, there’d be an awful lot of uninspired and uninspiring music out there.

Also online @ The NewReview