Shredification: Sleep at the Regency Ballroom 9/12, 9/13
September 10, 2010
I always thought Sleep was one of those bands that I would just never get to see, like Zeppelin, or the real Guns ‘n’ Roses. The members disbanded in 1995, fed up with the intractability of their label, London Records, which refused to release Dopesmoker, the band’s hour-long stoner metal odyssey of an album — the sort of artistic endeavor that the phrase “magnum opus” was invented to describe.
The members moved on to other projects — guitarist Matt Pike to High on Fire; bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Haikus to Om. For fans of the doom genre, even for those who had the opportunity to see the band in its heyday, Sleep entered the realm of myth, its progress hastened by a brief lifespan and the mind-bending, uncompromising nature of its final creative act. Exerting a powerful influence from beyond the grave, its specter hung benevolently over future fuzzed-out efforts like a particularly tenacious bong hit. Acolytes were initiated into the cult, their ignorance of the band’s seminal work greeted with innumerable half-exasperated, half-excited shouts of “Duuuuuude!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkFs9_kytAg
Sleep began in the garages of Silicon Valley, lurching out of San Jose with two albums (Volume One and Volume Two) that pre-dated their classic trio line-up. 1992′s Holy Mountain was a triumph of demented Sabbath-worship and St. Vitus-style madness, establishing the band’s burgeoning renown and greasing the wheels for their ultimately unsuccessful deal with London. Combining Pike’s explosive riffing, Cisneros’ hypnotic bass lines and incantatory vocals, and Haikus behind-the-beat stomp, the album was praised to the rafters. A cover of “Snowblind” for an Earache Records Sabbath tribute album won opprobrium from the Prince of Fuckin’ Darkness himself.
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Shredification: Floating Goat Double Up
August 15, 2010
Local outfit Floating Goat is bobbing up and down in the metal ocean, somewhere in the vicinity of its tenth anniversary. Usually a fixture of San Francisco’s sweat-stained stages, their raucous jams and distinctive, steer-horned drumset have been absent lately, but with good reason – time not spent onstage has been spent in dark lairs around the Bay, crafting Spawn of Poseidon/Suburban Anxiety, an ambitious new double LP.
The ten-year milestone can be a dubious distinction, especially when a long shelf-life leads to frustration or musical calcification. For Floating Goat, the opposite is true: the songs on the new album represent strides forward in technique, songwriting, and furor, all of which abet the album’s epic scope.
As its title suggests, Spawn of Poseidon falls more fully in the headbanger wheelhouse, hinging on references to metaphysical spooks and an arsenal of snarling, pissed-off riffs. Opener “Get Out of the Way” features vocals that veer surprisingly close to strident hardcore for a band with such well-established stoner rock pedigrees. This iconoclastic ability to blend subgenres in the name of speed surfaces throughout the record.
Next up is the title track, whose thundering tribal toms evoke the ocean god’s tidal fury with traditionalist aplomb, before revving up into a screaming solo. Ominous, vaguely Middle Eastern melodies kick off “Smoke Rising” before giving way into a classic fuzzy shuffle groove. Guitarist Chris Corona’s playing, honed no doubt by a busy schedule (he is also a member of Orb of Confusion and Hazzard’s Cure, among other local projects) sounds better than ever. While he can be justifiably proud of his leadwork, the way he settles into the churning triplets on “Smoke Rising” is particularly satisfying.
Floating Goat – “Spawn of Poseidon”
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Shredification: Saviours Two-song EP in the Bag?
July 19, 2010
Local lushes The Saviours have been gone all summer, conquering Europe like some sort of tatted-up, four-headed George Patton. The band are a remarkable feel-good story for these Ke$haful times, surmounting each successive challenge with enviable ease. Hard to believe it’s been 5 years since Warship (Level Plane Records) first slid out of the drydock.
After a full slate of massive outdoor festivals in the Old World and a late-summer junket on Ozzfest, the hesher quartet will return to the Bay, ten steps closer to being a headbanger household name. An Ozzfest off-date at Slim’s August 10th clashes tragicomically with one of the best metal tickets of all time: the epic Animosity-era Corrosion of Conformity/Goatsnake show at DNA Lounge the same night. 11th st. will be transformed into a whirlpool of leather, hair, beer, and weed.
Most groups would be content to bask in the rewards (chemical or otherwise) of such a jam-packed touring schedule, but Saviours had a different plan: they settled down in Den Haag with producer and psychedelic maven Guy Tavares, steward of the cult Motorwolf label. The band has long espoused a love for old-school recording techniques, and Tavares was able to give them the “16 track, 1″ tape, no punch-ins, edits or automation” experience they craved. Their official blog promises a two-track EP, featuring two versions of the same song — a normal version, and a 21-minute psychedelic alternate freakout fever dream version, which might well hearken back to the doomier sound of the earliest Saviours records. Expect it to accelerate your living.
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Shredification: Washington State of Affairs
June 14, 2010
Music writers are suckers for geography. Tying up groups of bands in neat little localized bows makes for easy copy, with the added benefit that once you pigeonhole a bunch of quasi-related groups — the “Seattle Sound,” say — you have that touchstone to deploy next time you feel like phoning in some cheap comparisons.
Seattle bands are the order of the day today, though the comparisons will hopefully be hewn from finer stuff. Specifically, two Seattle bands that have recently released new records: The Melvins, and Black Breath.
Black Breath – “Children of the Horn”
The traditional route here would be to slap these two groups down side by side and make a bunch of comparisons — to bands they both sound like, or to the way the weather in Seattle (rainy, natch) informs their interpollinated styles. In this case, that’s totally impossible. Though they both fall under the general aegis of metal, and play music that is down-tuned, loud, and heavy, the similarities end there. When you put Black Breath and The Melvins side-by-side, all you see is contrasts.
For one thing, The Melvins are roughly six times older. Formed in the early 80′s, the band is now something of a hard rock institution, weathering a generation of music and still out-rocking many of the bands they influenced. A pre-Nirvana Kurt Cobain famously auditioned on guitar, but botched it — a bad case of nerves made him temporarily forget all the songs. Though generally a trio, in 2006 the band absorbed both members of the cult metal duo Big Business, taking the stage with two drummers (right- and left-handed) and a bolstered vocal attack.
Though the music is still built around muscular, inventive drumming and guitarist Buzz Osbourne’s bottom-heavy riffs, the band’s maturation has seen them become increasingly digressive. More and more, they flex their musical muscle during wild excursions into the bizarre and sometimes borderline self-indulgent outer reaches. New release The Bride Screamed Murder features some plutonium-heavy sections that recall the band’s classic material, along with the ever-listenable percussion prowess of drummers Dale Crover and Jared Coady, but it’s hard to wrap your mind around the drill sergeant chanting in “The Water Glass,” the squeaky balloon solo at the end of “Hospital Up,” or the impressionistic “My Generation” cover.
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Shredification: The Sword returns with Warp Riders
May 16, 2010
The Sword takes a lot of stick in certain quarters of the metal community, mostly for having committed that cardinal indie sin of getting too big, too fast. The Austin, TX band was an overnight sensation thanks to debut LP Age of Winters, which blazed onto the scene full of fuzzy Orange amps, epic, martial lyrics, and titanic, bong-water-rippling riffs. A plum deal with hipper-than-thou NYC label Kemado was the first detail that rankled the ranks of forum-trolling purists, and press photos depicting four fresh-faced youths fresh from Texas’ hippest municipality were ripe for the metal grist mill, which preferred its retro battle-Sabbath performed by grizzled road warriors with paunches and ugly tattoos.
The band was a perspicacious early adopter of Guitar Hero (with “Freya” appearing in Guitar Hero II), and they were quickly able to reach a broader audience, abetted by a high profile tour in support of Metallica, whose drummer, the diminutive Dane Lars Ulrich, declared them his favorite metal band in existence. Nothing gets a close-minded headbanger’s goat like a dilettante at the mall sporting his one and only heavy metal t-shirt – nothing except for Lars Ulrich running his big mouth, that is.
Thankfully, the music cut through all the chattering and posturing. The Sword have never seemed particularly concerned with their lot in the metal life, instead focusing on crafting thunderous anthems of medieval combat and blood-soaked fantasy. 2008′s Gods of the Earth picked up where their first album left off, charging out of the gates with furious aplomb and gratuitous references to George R.R. Martin’s cult series A Song of Ice and Fire. The disc charted at #102 on the Billboard chart, and their star rose even higher.
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Shredification: Orchid revs up hot riff time machine
April 11, 2010
I have been derelict in my duty. The Bay Bridged is a site dedicated to local Bay Area music, and this column, since its inception, has played host to a profusion of national acts, mere visitors upon our salty shores and vertiginous hills. Today l begin to redress that balance, and I couldn’t be more pleased to start by showcasing local doom metallers in Orchid.
The doom metal genre has undergone precious few changes since drop-tuning was pioneered by Tony Iommi’s missing fingertips, and though unsuccessful stems and seeds have occasionally percolated to the bottom, the ripe buds of the art form — mammoth, fuzzy minor chords; hard-hitting, groove-oriented drumming — always seem to smell the same.
(Photo by Raymond Ahner)
You only have to take a quick look at Orchid’s belled-out hemlines to see where they draw their inspiration. Singer Theo Mindell, guitarist Mark Thomas Baker, bassist Nickel, and drummer Carter Kennedy each have one foot planted firmly in a rock and roll past, and their tunes hearken back to the golden age of Sab and Zeppelin, evincing a near-religious affinity for that bluesy, hairy Land Before Reagan. Their recent EP Through the Devil’s Door (The Church Within Records) delivers exactly the kind of otherworldly sojourn its title suggests, a kind of metal The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, except that the Wardrobe is an Orange amp and the only talking goats involved sport pendulous bare breasts and owe allegiance to Satan.
orchid-01-into-the-sun.mp3
Orchid – “Into the Sun”
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Shredification: Spring Metal Preview
March 15, 2010
Spring is wending its way towards San Francisco, and the improved weather will be accompanied by an array of exciting metal albums and the tours that follow in their wake. Bands both local and national will have new wares on display — here are a few of the choicest to anticipate.
Jucifer – Throned in Blood (April 6th, 2010, Nomadic Fortress Records)
No matter how many times I enumerate Jucifer’s essential details, they’re still completely captivating. To wit, Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood are the world’s heaviest husband-and-wife team. As if that weren’t quirky-cool enough, they’re also officially nomadic, having no base of operations other than their rock and roll RV and a trailer full of amps — guitarist/singer Valentine plays the loudest, largest guitar rig I’ve ever experienced personally. When I saw them at Annie’s Social (RIP!) she had 11 cabs set up.
The music is an arresting blend of sludge, shoe-gaze, noise, stoner-metal, and thrash, and its played with an atavistic conviction that most bands can only dream about (In a recent interview, Valentine mentioned that her husband’s hands are frequently damaged, due to his habit of playing cymbals with his fists). Their previous release L’Autrichienne (Relapse, 2008) was a masterful concept album about the French Revolution, capturing the band at its versatile best. Judging from the cover art, the new LP has a similar historical bent; presumably they’ll play some of it live when they rumble Thee Parkside on March 18th.
jucifer-contempt.mp3
Jucifer – Contempt
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Shredification: Live and Undead
February 15, 2010
This coming Tuesday, the city of New Orleans will be subsumed under the boozy cloud of Mardi Gras. Those still recovering from the Saints’ feel-good Super Bowl win have just two more days to prepare themselves for a second helping of revelry and mayhem. Judging from the profusion of Saints-themed merchandise on their website, the members of Big Easy-based stoner metal supergroup Down are most likely part of this beleaguered, hangover-nursing group.
I became aware of the prevailing trends in Down swag while researching their forthcoming effort, a live CD/DVD (due 3/23) called Diary of a Mad Band (not to be confused with the Jodeci release of the same name). An incendiary live outfit, Down combines the sludgy heaviness endemic to their below-sea-level hometown with the limber, improvisatory tendencies gleaned from their southern rock influences. The 100 hours of live footage included are sure to be rife with amplified goodness, and at least 300 shots of drummer Jimmy Bower looking exactly like Animal on the Muppets.
Despite Down’s yeoman efforts, the live album is a curious commodity in today’s heavy music circles, more of a record label investiture than a labor of love. The well-known difficulties and risks involved in producing such recordings are well known, and bands tend to hew closely to a live-DVD format that features them recreating recorded material as closely as possible.
The profusion of these by-the-book cash-grabs is worrying, but counterbalanced by the small number of live releases in recent years that capture the urgency and creativity of a heavy band firing on all cylinders. Though by no means comprehensive, or in any particular order, the list below attempts to give credit to three bands whose live discs have done themselves and their fans justice.
