Electric Wizard at Myspace

Electric Wizard’s latest album ‘Witchcraft Today’ is a definite return to form after the disappointing ‘We Live’. There were two main problems with ‘We Live’ – It was too technical and the production was too clean. This problem is rectified with ‘Witchcult Today’, with the evidence being clear to hear from the titular first track which has the ambience of a loosely-improvised jam session dating back to the early 70s, a feel mostly due to the experience of capturing the vintage sound of producer Liam Watson, most famous for producing indie stalwarts The White Stripes’ album, Elephant.

The second problem with ‘We Live’ is that it was meandering, but not in a positive sense. The spacey drugged-up Electric Wizard classics such as ‘Come My Fanatics’ and ‘Dopethrone’ meandered in a marvellously dishevelled galactic way that added to the cosmic bong-driven atmosphere that made Electric Wizard’s reputation. ‘We Live’ meandered meaninglessly and tediously. Probably as a reaction to this, the songs on ‘Witchcult Today’, despite being on average around eight minutes long, are cut of all excess fat and baggage, meaning that every second of riffage counts in Electric Wizard’s effort to create a sonic drugstorm of a record. Apart from the pointless and mind-staggeringly needless and dull instrumental tracks, which thankfully don’t take up much of the records content, every moment on this album is vital and it seems that Electric Wizard have finally made a record that is at least the equal to Dopethrone, and maybe even better than that seemingly unbeatable masterpiece.

Taint at Myspace

Taint are a British Stoner band with progressive and epic tendencies despite on average, the songs on this their sophomore album being around the 4 or 5 minute mark. These are songs in which something is always happening and yet the hash fried groove still remains as gloriously delirious trippy as ever. Think members of Mastodon and Baroness smoking top quality weed for twelve hours straight whilst listening to Cathedral, Sleep and ‘Masters of Reality’-era Black Sabbath and you are nearly on top of how splendid this record is.

Lolloping riffs interplay with hillbillies on ganja-style psychedelic guitar leads all the while keeping within an intoxicating almost funky in a Clutch sort-of-way Groove. The groove on this record is immense; the songs change speed, density and direction regularly but each song’s distinct groove remains constant as the centrepiece of each track and indeed Taint’s entire sound. Highlights include the frantic bass solo on ‘Goddamn This City’ and the appearance of Circulus flutist Will Summers on ‘What the Raven Saw’.

The aforementioned track begins as a piece of neo-medieval folk rock, before transforming into an ethereal and haunting piece of Sabbathian hard rock with the final change coming four and a half minutes in when some spiffing surf-cum-stoner guitar leads duel off against Summers Flute in a segment that sounds like Boris dueling with Jethro Tull. Vocalist Jimbob’s intriguing vocal style make these moments even more terrific, with his plaintive barks and croons sounding not like a more impassioned and soulful version of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds. If you like your stoner metal to be of the highest quality and hate the idea of repetition in music then it would be a good idea to check this release out.

The Freezing Fog at Myspace

One would not expect that a traditional heavy metal album would come from the same plectrums of the same people who gave you Converge-approved metalcore heroes Beecher, despite the fact that Beecher themselves were originally conceived as a doom metal band, but rest assured if you absolutely hate metalcore (if you don’t then check out Beecher’s “This Elegy, His Autopsy”) you’ll probably be interested to check this out. Apart from the mark of mid-period Cathedral, there’s not a single influence that’s later than 1976. The riffs of Sabbath, the twin guitar attacks of Thin Lizzy, the stomp of Budgie, the genius of Deep Purple, the muddy power of Blue Cheer, the progressive bent of Hawkwind yadda yadda yadda. Basically this is the sound of heavy metal before Judas Priest and Motorhead got their hands on it, revisited through a stoner prism.

The lead guitar work by one “Charles Edward Godby” (like Beecher they insist on using their middle names in the time honoured serial killer fashion) shows an immense sense of power and rhythm, as vast riffage collides with soulful and psychedelic leads. The songs are expertly structured with many different variations on 70’s heavy metal ebbing and flowing in a natural and delightful fashion with the spacey Jimmy Page meets Kyuss solos being an obvious highlight. David William Hopkinson’s soaring masculine yet distinctly Lancastrian vocals bring a passionate and forceful resonance to the music, somewhere between a lower pitched version of Budgie’s Burke Shelley and a hell of a lot more tuneful Lee Dorrian!

This is the perfect album for chilling out, drinking a few beers and smoking the odd joint (a subject visited by the band themselves in their stoner hobbit epic “No Light, No Smoke”) to on a summer’s day. If this band had been around in 1974 they would have been legends, as it is in 2008 it’s a godamn awesome piece of trad metal heavier than fiat punto full of hambeasts, with not a growl, scream, or a trace of punk rock in sight. Although released in the United Kingdom by Roadkill records late last year, this record is being re-released worldwide in August this year by Dental records with 2 bonus tracks, so I would take some marks off for some Roadrunner-esque tactics there, but it’s hard to stay mad at these stoners for long with such quality guitar work on display.

Deep Blue at Myspace

If there’s one continent mysteriously underrepresented in the metal world, it’s Antarctica. It should be a metal paradise – cold, brutal, isolated, and so mythic. Hell, if you go down there to have a jam session, your sound waves will cause all sorts of mayhem – you’ll crack ice, cause avalanches, and scare polar bears. On the other hand, Deep Blue apparently want a haven from the restrictive drug laws of the rest of the world. I mean, who doesn’t want to smoke doobies with their friends in a bleak, primordial world?

I don’t know if Deep Blue aspire to much more than that. Antarctic Abyss is a short little album, comprised of two 13-minute songs. You know the drill – fuzzy guitars playing slow, psychedelic riffs throughout. The riffs are gigantic, lasting 45 seconds before they start repeating. And they’re kind of cool, but neither of the main riffs is cool enough to merit 13 minutes of devotion. They might be saved by some interesting accompaniment, be it sweet solos or brutal lyrics, but instead we only get the occasional wah-laden guitar flourish and lyrics about how damn cold it is. They’re lucky ‘deep’ kind of rhymes with ‘freeze’, or they’d have nothing to say at all.

Now, when I’m getting blazed, I like a little stoner metal, but I’d rather hear fast, fancy riffs that would send the average stoney baloney running for the hills. But the bands I do like (Sleep, Bongripper, Earth, etc) are repetitive, yet still keep me intrigued throughout. This gets a lot of comparisons to Sleep, but it ain’t the real thing.