Despite their chosen name, Death Metal Pope aren’t a death metal band. Some of their vocal choices are towards the extreme in places and there are occasions where the riffs step into the fast and intense sphere of extreme metal but, for the bulk of their material, these three Long Islanders love it slow and heavy. At least three quarter’s of 2016’s ‘Harvest’ is a stoner metal fan’s dream. They mightn’t score many points for originality, especially since the clean end of the vocal more than resembles Phil Anselmo in places and the music is very Down-centric, but, make no mistake, the results come close to stoner perfection.
Monthly Archives: November 2016
TAKE TURNS – Crytomnesia Crept
On the 2014 EP ‘Animal Fat‘, Take Turns recycled many parts of 90s alt-rock and grunge, serving up cheeky nostalgia by the dustcart load, leaving behind a half dozen Pavement-esque gold sounds guaranteed to please listeners hitting those tricky forties at the time of release. The Leeds slackers brought back youth and exuberance aplenty, showed they could wield a guitar and distortion pedal with the best of ’em, but above all – and this being very much the clincher – never sounded lazy when doing so. The love for those whom influenced Take Turns cut through almost every note, making the release seem as if constructed from more than just dusty hand-me-downs
GÉVAUDAN – Litost
With bands like Kurokuma and Allfather making some very heavy waves, the underground doom scene in the UK found itself in a very healthy state moving into the close of 2016, perhaps more properous than it had been in a long while. There seemed to be new doom and sludge bands oozing through the woodwork on a weekly basis, but since the fashion for slow and heavy never gets old, the ever expanding scene had more than enough room to accommodate…and, this, obviously could only be a good thing.
BARROW WIGHT – Kings In Sauron’s Service
Over the years, the Lord of the Rings trilogy has been a fairly popular inspiration for concept albums. Even before Peter Jackson’s world dominating, award winning film adaptations, rock bands were looking to Tolkien for lyrical themes. Magnum‘s Bob Catley released an entire album of Middle Earth based songs back at the turn of the millennium; Blind Guardian released a full album of Tolkien tales two years previously. It could be said that many prog, power metal and battle metal bands are obsessed, but few have taken Tolkien to heavier places than Barrow Wight.
HANZO – Hanzo EP
Aside from a brief spell in the early 80s when Stray Cats, The Jets and The Polecats managed to break into the UK top forty singles chart, rockabilly has never truly been in fashion. That said, it’s never been out of fashion, either; over the decades, it’s retro and surprisingly enduring style has caught the ears of many, often providing a genuine alternative to the relative mainstream of punk. Rockabilly’s undying spirit has rarely been captured in better form than on The Long Tall Texans’ 2014 release ‘The Devil Made Us Do It‘ – a record that showed how a band three decades into a career could still sound vibrant and how the attitudes of rockabilly had such potential to cross into punk audiences. When done well, rockabilly can be thrilling; when missing the mark, it can sound too predictable to the point of tiredness, but whatever the outcome, the constituent elements are often the same: hefty rattling basslines; walking grooves from the reverbed guitars and a flippant and sometimes edgy voice.