In 2011 Leeds-based stoner metal merchants Black Moth unveiled their debut album ‘The Killing Jar’, an excellent riff-based affair that impressed on first listen and thrilled on each subsequent play. The result was one of the year’s best metal releases. With their US equivalent Ruby The Hatchet releasing a strong and similarly themed debut the following year and Earthless releasing a giant, sprawling double set ‘From The Ages’ in 2013, the standard for doom and stoner grooves remained at an impressive high, thus giving Black Moth much to live up to upon their return.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
W.A.S.P. – The Headless Children
After the release of three studio albums and a live record, by 1988 US shock-rockers W.A.S.P. had gained a loyal fan-base. However, thanks to their potentially objectionable songs and frontman Blackie Lawless’s larger-than-life attitude, the band had even more detractors. Since their stage show featured raw meat, torture racks and naked women and their albums were filled with more profanity and sexist material than most bands had dared to commit to plastic by that point on the time line of hard rock history, they made life-long enemies with Tipper Gore and her self-righteous band of moral guardians in the US.
LEVELLERS – Greatest Hits
In the 1970s greatest hits collections were a quick way for record companies to bundle together previously released material under the pretence that it was a celebration of a band’s career up to a particular point. These were not usually so much a celebration as a way to make a quick buck, but whatever the justification, such releases rarely troubled the more serious record buyer. In the late 80s, the game changed when record companies began to pad such collections out with two or three unreleased tracks, not only ensuring the collection of singles would sell to a more casual listener, but also hoping it would tempt the long term fan into that extra purchase. Such practice became common.
THROUGH THORN AND BRIER – Good Grief EP
Through Thorn and Brier is a band made up of four musicians from New Jersey who claim their key influences and interests are “pizza” and “filth”. Although billed as crust/hardcore punk, their music rarely takes the speedy grindcore or powerviolence route of their closer contemporaries. Where most are content with thrashing out minute long bursts of noise paying homage to the likes of Discharge and F-Minus, Through Thorn and Brier take far longer to get their point across, preferring instead to throw down long, grinding metallic riffs, served up with a slightly raw garage punk production value. On this EP, the mix of styles serves them well.
TRANSMANIACON – The Darkening Plain
Delivering four songs in approximately 47 minutes, the 2014 release from London-based doom/dark psych rockers Transmaniacon is not for the faint of heart. Housed in a sleeve depicting a desolate post-apocalyptic horizon dominated by robots (expertly conceived by artist Ian Miller), part epic hard rock, part concept album, ‘The Darkening Plain’ is a both a frightening and frighteningly grand work, especially aimed at those who love things from the fuzzier and (occasionally) less heavy end of the doom rock spectrum.