Album Review: The Midnight Ghost Train – Cold Was The Ground

Where visual art can announce itself as everything from an explosion of different shapes, dimensions and hues or restrict itself to the most minimalist, one-dimensional, single-colour blocks, music can do much the same. This particular beard-toting Kansas trio find themselves at the latter end, pumping out an unfaltering combination of muffled fuzz bass and sludgy, rhythmic chugging. Essentially, they have taken what bands like Orange Goblin, Red Fang and Clutch have done before and refined it to something a little less expansive and a darn sight more punishing.

Cold Was The Ground marks their third foray into long-players and this one thunders along a similar path as its predecessors, crashing in on the listener as wave upon wave of sonic obliteration. Underpinning this dark, suffocating powerhouse of noisome groove, the smatterings of swampy delta blues, gnarly rock n’ roll and virulent stoner metal lie.

Gently ushering itself in with a warping, one-note crescendo, the introductory ‘Along The Chasm‘ suddenly kicks us into the hammering, rhythmic, mile-deep rut where The Midnight Ghost Train demand we remain for the majority of the album’s running time. As we speed on through tracks like the attack-and-release, riff-repeats of ‘Gladstone‘, the chilled-out Monster Magnet-esque drift and rapid wah-wah pedal pneumatics of instrumental ‘One Last Shelter‘ and the dull battery of ‘No. 227‘ we alight on the heart of the album where the band begin to find their soul.

There’s the ripped choral lick on ‘BC Trucker’, thick, dirty and moreishly addictive and ‘Arvonia‘ with its Fu Manchu wall of fuzz and dark, brooding undertones so reminiscent of All Hail The Yeti. Deeper in and there’s the sinister backwoods edge of ‘The Canfield’, the no-frills swagger and bluesy grunt of ‘Straight To The North‘ and creepy, energized panic that so engenders ‘Twin Souls‘. None of these though can compare to the simple, tender luminosity of ‘The Little Sparrow‘. It is the first true glimpse of what lies beneath the bluster – heartfelt emotion. In this case, that emotion is fear. Pure, cold sweat-inducing, neurotic fear.

Undoubtedly, there is a good helping of monotonous, atonal filler here and an infuriating paucity of texture or flavour in a scene so dependent upon small deviations in delivery. However, there is also a more subtle connection to the sordid underbelly that lurks beneath the glossy veneer of so much modern music. Here, you can taste the blood, sweat and tears.

Maybe, if Cold Was The Ground was a painting it would be a Rothko – probably one from his Black-Form series. And like Rothko’s minimalist art, it will have its admirers.

Also online @ Heavy Blog Is Heavy = http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2015/03/18/the-midnight-ghost-train-cold-was-the-ground/

Album Review: All Hail The Yeti – All Hail The Yeti

These Sasquatch-obsessed metalheads are based in sunny Los Angeles rather than the wilds of some wintry country and that is, indeed, rather baffling. Only a mug would believe these songs were written on the beach and their PR blurb leads me to think I’m probably right, labelling them as “the band that turned their backs on their Hollywood homes”. Naturally, there’s still a tendency to assume this monstering about is just all a gimmick to garner attention but the band stick to their subject with dedication and go about their frightful task with plenty of enthusiasm.

They switch between referring to the beast himself in both the third-person (to great effect) and the first-person, and manage to ramp up the tension by digging up and relaying the fables that follow the sightings. There are plaintive roars, chunky riffs and barked lyrics like “Nothing human could be that fast / Was it the monster that crossed the path?” (from the bludgeoning opener “Deep Creek”), “Don’t turn around!” and “He’s come back to take what’s his (your head)” (from the stoner riff worship of “Axe Murder Hollow”) or “Fee-fi-fo-fum / I smell the blood of everyone” (from the pounding thrasher “Suicide Woods”).

The switch up from shoulder-roll to chugfest, which (when you think about it) was always going to lead inexorably towards a wholesome, fist-pumping groove, is magnetic. By hook or by crook, the source of their mojo lies somewhere between the balls-out, whisky-swigging, rock-a-doodle doo antics of Hellyeah, the stoned Southern wallowing of Down, the malignant metalcore of Unearth and the monstrous sludge that Eyehategod sling about.

When they’re not swinging on the lighter, grungier choruses of “When The Sky Falls” and “I Am Wendigod” (presumably they are there as a tool to shuffle the pack), they are digging down into your most primal of fears by mixing in a few meaningful samples, including the spookiest of cinematic scenes across “The Weak And Wounded…” or slowing the pace for its soul-mate “After The Great Fire”. Those cleaner vocals do give the album added dimension, yet, as they stand, they detract from the overal impact. Listen to the opposing vocal forces within “Bloodguilt” (trying to marry Connor Garritty’s impressive, unhinged roars to anything else must be an impossible task), or even the subject matter of “Ruby Ridge…” though and suddenly you’ll realise they are more than just a one-dimensional, flash-in-the-pan act.

They still manage to grasp hold of that combination of morbid fascination and crushing fear, those emotions which walk hand-in-hand with the unknown, by beginning and ending fast and hard. However, for a while, they lose it mid-album, finding that fight-or-flight pressure point slipping through their fingers. This is a debut, remember, so I’d imagine that they still have plenty left in the tank; bigger fish to fry, as it were, than we’ve heard so far, and they have plenty of time left to iron out those creases (like that bizarre, interminable and frankly ludicrous 15-minute swamp and campfire loop at the end of “Jesus Cradle”). Do keep your eyes peeled for All Hail The Yeti – they have the talent to stick around like the tales of the mystical creature they so idolise.

Also online (with extras) @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2012/08/all-hail-the-yeti-all-hail-the-yeti-afm-records/