BIRNAM WOOD ~ WARLORD EP

Question; What do you get if you mix the blues based heavy metal of Black Sabbath with the grooving on a riff stoner doom of Sleep?
Answer; Birnam Wood.

Birnam Wood are a four guys from Boston, Massachusetts who in 2014 released a killer, self titled, album packed full of heavy riff based stoner metal tinged with elements of both trad metal and psych. If it had not been for the albums late December release Birnam Wood (the album) would of almost certainly have made many peoples Best Of.. lists for that year. Well, bloggers, journalists and fans get those pens ready for this years lists because Birnam Wood (the band) have just released a new EP "Warlord".

"Warlord" continues Birnam Wood's story with four songs of absolutely essential stoner doom sprinkled with traces of psych, hard rock and good old metal. Heavily down tuned riffage combined with thick solid thunderous rhythms form a bedrock of deliciously addictive doom into which intricate and scintillating solos and licks are woven and over which are laid clean throaty vocals.
The bands sound has been described as the missing link between Sleep and Sabbath and no more is this evident than on the EP's longest track "Wizards Bleed" its dark eerie psych intro building until exploding into a series of differing time signatures and riffs, traditional metal grooves sitting side by side with those of a more stoner dynamic its vocals swinging between clean melodic and throaty bellow.
A good EP is not defined by one song though and "Two Ravens", "The Forge" and title track "Warlord" all show the same levels of quality song writing and musicianship making this EP essential listening for anyone who likes their stoner/doom grooves dark intense but not overly brutal.

PASTOR ~ EVOKE..... Heavy Austrian Rock!

Those of us of a certain age will remember when, in the late 60's, things started to get HEAVY! Musicians started pushing their sound through bigger and louder amps, experimenting with different effects and in doing so paved a way for the rock music we listen to today.
Austrian band Pastor are not of that certain age but on the evidence of their latest album "Evoke" it would seem they spent a lot of time listening to their parents album collections.

"Evoke" is an album that takes the heavy blues and hard rock of the late 60's and early70's and "stonerizes" them by adding elements of the doom, stoner and psych of today's underground scene.
The album begins by channelling the spirits of Cream and Mountain on opener "Voodoo", its riff/lick/riff motif overlaid with clean powerful vocals and underpinned by strong solid rhythm work.
"Drowning Thoughts" continues in the same vein, bluesy proto-metal grooves interspersed with scorching guitar solos, great vocals and driven by powerful drum and bass rhythms.
"Wolf Vein" sees a slight shift in musical direction by once again referencing Cream but throwing a curveball into proceedings by blatantly ripping off Black Sabbath's "Hand Of Doom" riff and melody, mid song, and adding their own lyrics. It's a blatant case of grand theft audio but works a treat.
"Wicked Whisper" finds the band in early doom territory, this time though they move into the realm of  Britain's nwobhm doomsters Pagan Altar.
The next three songs "Moving On", "Devils Reef" and "Evoke" all beg borrow and steal from Pastor's influences but are all equally well written and performed. Once again though Pastor stamp their own identity throughout.

If any of you young stoners, doomers reading this want to hear what rock sounded like in the early years of metal and can't be asked to trawl through endless videos on youtube then check out Pastor's "Evoke" because it's all here!

88 MILE TRIP ~ THROUGH THE THICKEST HAZE.....album review

Vancouver's 88 Mile Trip first came to my notice about a year and a half ago when I chanced upon their self titled EP, over at Bandcamp, and was blown away by their catchy stoner /desert grooves and intrigued by the unique quirky bellow of their vocalist. It's been two years since that EP was released and apart from releasing a live EP " Live In The DTES" nothing much has been heard from the band. Well that all changed this month with the release of the bands first full length album "Through The Thickest Haze"

"Through The Thickest Haze" continues the 88 Mile Trip story with an album full to the brim with fuzzy catchy riffs, hard driving angular rhythms and of course those superb slightly off-kilter vocals.
Within the nine songs of "Through The Thickest Haze" the listener will find elements of stoner, classic hard rock, psych, punk and good old rock'n'roll, all blended together under a glorious blanket of fuzz and distortion. As the band said in an interview with MetalTitans.com "We aren’t here to reinvent the wheel because the wheel works just fine".
88 Mile Trip play foot to the floor stoner/desert rock of the kind made famous by Kyuss and Fu Manchu, albeit with  slightly less orthodox vocals, it's not gonna change the world and why should we want it to, let's just enjoy the fun of it.

OLD STOVE ~ #1 ....Heavy stoner grooves from Brazil

Back in Brazil again for some heavy desert/stoner grooves from Aracaju natives Old Stove and their butt-kicking new release "#1".

"#1" is a heavy album in more respects than one. Putting aside the immense wall of stoner/desert fuzzed riffage and heavy rhythmic pulses that are present throughout the six songs that make up "#1" there is also a dark heavy intensity running through the albums dark grooves.
"Place Pigalle" kicks things off in grand style,  Marcela Dias (bass) and Vinicius Macedo-(drums) laying down a solid storm of percussive thunder and four string majesty over which João Gabriel lays guitar and vocals, his guitar tone thick and fuzz drenched, his voice clean, warm and darkly smooth, delivering lines like "Beware the bright red light at night, just stay on the roof, keep calm" with effortless power and phrasing.

It is Gabriel's warm velvet tones, set against a dark musical maelstrom of fuzz and distortion, that sets Old Stove apart from other bands in the stoner/desert genre. More grunge than stoner, with an ever so slight Kurt Cobain rasp, Gabriel's voice adds a certain gravitas to the cryptic lyrics of "#1", injecting a worldly weariness into songs like "This Side Of Paradise" and the excellent "Gloria" that might have been lost had they been delivered in a more roared throaty stoner rock style. "#1" is a stunning album that is well written, superbly performed and one that i will fully expect to be seeing on a few best of lists at the end of the year.

SAHARA SURFERS...new album HIGH LANDS

Austria may be known for their delicious desserts but the country is not really known for its deserts. This little fact has not, however, stopped Austria's Sahara Surfers from releasing a series of albums containing some of the best desert grooves not to come out of a desert! If you need proof of this check out the bands latest album "High Lands".

Sahara Surfers will not be unknown to a lot of the seasoned stoners who frequent the scenes numerous blogs, forums etc. as their two previous releases "Spaceship On a Paper Plane" (2010) and "Sonar Pilot"(2011) were both received with warm reviews from both stoner rock fans and the underground music press. "High Lands" continues where those two albums left off by mixing elements of alt.rock, metal and psych and nailing them to deliciously sandy desert grooves that are then embellished with smooth, super cool female vocals.
"Traces" gets the ball rolling with a Colour Haze type vibe, Hans-Peter Ganner's bass and Michael Steingress' drums creating a warm groovy bedrock for Andreas Knapp to add little touches of six-sting colour and texture one minute and full on stoner fuzz the next. Over this mixture of krautrock vibes and stoner psych funkiness Julia Überbacher delivers a vocal that is clean, rich and has a warm melodic power, her voice wrapping around you rather than bludgeoning you to death.
Second track "Feels Like Riding" starts off a little funky before kicking into a dirty Kyuss-like riff  over which Überbacher sings "What did he say? Did the ground stand up, You gotta starve your pain, I hear you" a line that written down does not mean much but I guarantee you, that line will be going round and round in your head all day.
"Grey Spring" sees Sahara Surfers mix it up with deeply distorted riffs and rhythms set against a highly infectious verse/chorus/verse. The band even inject a little stoner doom to proceedings when at the 02:03 mark Knapp, Ganner and Steingress hit on a chugging metal groove before going back into the songs main riff, its only a moment but it's a stroke of genius.
"Charma"is up next, the songs shifting dynamics lending themselves to a more progressive/psych rock feel than previous tracks and sees Ganner and Steingress stepping up to the plate with some excellent rhythm work. "Charma" also showcases Knapp's guitar chops, his tastefully picked arpeggios sitting next to throat ripping riffage and burning solos, filling in the gaps between Überbacher's sublime vocals with stunning fretwork.
"Ghost" is a monster track that once again sees the band stepping out of their desert rock comfort zone into more prog/psych areas. Kicking off with an exquisite bass and drum intro the track slowly builds before collapsing down again when the the verse is introduced.only to build again for the chorus. As in "Traces" there are elements of Colour Haze's krautrock psych but this time married to the bombastic stoner  groove of Rhode Island's Elder, at 10:31 it's the album longest track and its best.
Final track "The Thief" drops things down a little, gentle and mellow, Überbacher's vocal is backed by gently picked acoustic guitars and occasional vocal harmonies It is in complete contrast to the fuzz and psych of the rest of "High Lands" but sits nicely on the end as a reminder that there is more to this band than first meets the eye, or ear in this case.

YETI ~RITUAL... Album Review

Finland not only shares a border with Sweden it also shares a knack for turning out good music, especially when it comes to bands from the alternative and underground scene.
Yeti hail from Yemi, Finland and play a heady mix of stoner and doom sprinkled with folk melodies creating a sound and vibe that is quite unique as evidenced by their brand new album Ritual.

Ritual is an album that falls into that grey area between the stoner and doom genres that we now refer to as "occult" and like a lot of bands populating this niche (Purson, Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony) Yeti are fronted by female vocals. Antti Miettunen (guitar), Mikko Rintala (bass) and Joonas Jäntti (drums) create a deliciously dense fuzz drenched barrage of noise over which the sensuous and slightly folkish tones of vocalist Kaisa Kari float and flow. Kari's voice, pitched somewhere between Blood Ceremony's Alia O'Brien and Curved Air's 70's acid/prog goddess Sonja Kristina, adds a fragile edge to Yeti's doom laden grooves that is both delightful and refreshing.

Yeti are no one trick ponies though and over the course of the six songs that make up Ritual the band cover all bases, "Fools Hope", "Inferno", "Forsaken" and "Soloman" lay down the doom with varying degrees of dynamics and pace, dirty riffs, scorching solos and dark edgy rhythms all topped with Kari's creamy vocal tones. "She" brings in a whole new vibe to the proceedings, mellow  and with an almost medieval folk groove its gentle use of acoustics and what sounds like a fairground barrel organ combined with Kari's sometimes sung, sometimes spoken vocal creates a groove that is as sinister as it is beautiful. The final song, and the one that gives the album its name "Ritual" is nine minutes and twenty seven seconds of glorious OTT psych doom in which Kari wails her vocal banshee like over a dark swirling circular riff that only lets up when Miettunen  rips into his guitar to produce an absolute face melting solo. Brillantly executed, menacingly dark, the song ends the album on a wonderfully high note and shows why you, the reader should check these guys out!

MOCHO DIABLO ~ MONOCHROME...second album from Brazil's grungy stoners.

I've been featuring a few bands from Brazil lately, not because I have gone out of my way to seek bands from that country, no,its been more of a case of them finding me really! The latest band from the land of carnivals and rainforests to assail my riff battered ears goes by the name of Mocho Diablo and they have just released their second album Monochrome.

Gui Klaussner (vocals/ theremin); Murilo Silva (bass/backing vocals); Mauricio Peruche(guitar) and Thiago Pinho (drums) are the four guys who make up Mocho Diablo and together they have created an album that blends grungy dynamics with stoner/hard rock grooves dusted with a little South American flamboyance.

 

Monochrome begins with "Intro", a gentle, laid back eclectic mix of acoustic guitar, theremin and latin percussions, it's both charming and beautiful but in no way prepares you for the thunderstorm that is about to explode from your speakers when ,second track, "Sink The Black Swan" kicks in.  Klaussner dominates "Sink The black Swan" his clean slightly throaty vocals roaring and sermonising over a backdrop of fast, full on riffage and percussive fury. Lyrics such as "You can jump into a bucket of mice and climb back like a dizzy cockroach" might not win a Pulitzer Prize but when sang with Klaussner's gusto and passion and delivered atop a wall of delicious stoner fuzz,. well.... they just seem to work.

"My Enemy" and " Silent Mass" follow, the former an out and out rock'n'roll romp that delights with its thrashy attack and the latter a deep groove laden riff vehicle with a slight Monster Magnet vibe.

"Me And The Devil Walking Side By Side" sees Mocho Diablo discovering their mojo, bluesy (in a sort of White Stripes way) and big sounding ,it boasts a chorus that will be going around in your head a week after the song ends.

"19 Maniacs" is next to spin, with Silva and Pinho laying down excellent drum and bass work over which Peruche delivers  inspired riffs,solos and licks. Klaussner's vocal here is a masterclass of controlled aggression and power, you can almost feel the spittle hitting you as he sings about "Rusty machetes in captivity"

The best is left to last with the excellent "Hispaniola". Silva comes in to his own here, his slinky funky bass line locking in with Pinho's heavy percussive onslaught giving the tune a slight Indian raga feel over which  Klaussner's voice and theremin go toe to toe with Peruche's furious fretwork.

It's a glorious track and great way to close an album that proves not only can grunge and stoner live side by side but they can also live quite happily together.