INTERVIEW: MOUNT SALEM

Three weeks ago I reviewed Endless, the crushing debut album from Chicago’s psychedelic doom-crooners Mount Salem. They were just about to open for Howl and blindsided me with melody and ginormous riffs. After seeking more information about the band I noticed there was a strange internet void where an interview should be. Until recently even finding names of the members was impossible for all but psychics and the most determined stalkers. I’m about as lazy a stalker as possible, so I reached out to the band and asked a few questions to enlighten us all about the mysterious majesty of Mount Salem. They were kind enough to answer while traveling in the middle of their tour in a haunted van. Read ahead for motorcycles, bacon, and rock’n’roll:

Mister Growl: There isn't much information available on the members of your band. Could you introduce yourselves and how the band formed?

Mount Salem: We have all ridden motorcycles and traveled together for years so when Cody (Davidson) and Emily (Kopplin) moved to Chicago last summer it was pretty easy to start the band since we were all already friends.

Mister Growl: You're about to start a 10 day tour this coming week. When planning a tour what resources do you use?

Mount Salem: We are actually half way through the tour, currently on our way to Texas. This is our first tour so booking it was kinda interesting. Really we just reached out to bands and venues in different cities and figured it all out as we went. There were a couple dates that took forever to book but we ended up getting all the dates we needed.

Mister Growl: You have four different tour dates in Texas. Do you have a connection to that state or have you had a larger response from fans there?

Mount Salem: The whole tour started by our friend Dan "Bacon" Carr asking us to play at his annual chopper party which is in Temple, TX. We figured if we could book a tour around it then it would work. We reached out to the band "Mothership" through mutual friends and they were more than happy to help us out. We have been talking to those dudes the past couple of months and we are really looking forward to partying with them starting tonight!

Mister Growl: What's the local Chicago music scene like at this time?

Mount Salem: Chicago is an awesome place to be. There are so many good musicians and bands so there is a cool show to go to every week. Plenty of rehearsal spaces and venues for bands to play at and the crowd is always down to party. Chicago is a city that never sleeps.

Mister Growl: Despite the heaviness of your album what about your own music do you think also connects with non-metal fans?

Mount Salem:  I think Emily's vocals help a lot in this department. We all like heavy music but listen to a lot of rock and roll. Also I think the elements and structures of the music are also a big help to not sound just like a metal band. I feel like we all take from our influences, which are all different, and it helps appeal to fans of heavy music and rock and roll in general.

Mister Growl: How long did it take to write and record the songs on "Endless"? What’s the band's songwriting process?

Mount Salem: We took about 6 months to write and record the songs on endless. There were a couple other songs that didn't make the cut. All in all I think the 6 songs that we used are a good representation of us. We write the songs together and usually start with one thing, whether it’s a riff, organ part, or drum beat, and then collectively build from there. When we are writing we usually pick up an extra practice during the week to make sure we don't forget stuff and to just be productive.

Mister Growl: There's a retro-horror vibe in your music and promo artwork. What are some horror films that influenced your aesthetic?

Mount Salem: Oddly enough no one in the band is a hard core horror movie buff. The imagery we've used and aesthetic have all kind of come from the music we've made together. I think the four of us with so many similar and opposite influences from every member just kind of came out as what it is. We weren't really going for any certain style or feel. It just kind of happened to be the music we can all vibe on together.

Mister Growl: What other non-musical forces inspired the songs on "Endless"?

Mount Salem: Lyrically speaking, we like to create a sort of dark fantasy realm that puts the listener in a different state of mind. It's about stepping outside the normal psyche and into a more provocative nightmarish story.

Mister Growl: Are the members of Mount Salem in side projects as well?

Mount Salem: Mark (Hewitt), our bass player, plays drums in a band called Dirthog. They are a 3 piece southern style punk influenced sludge band. You can check them out at www.dirthog.bandcamp.com

Mister Growl: What do you have planned for the band after the tour's conclusion?

Mount Salem: We have two new songs that we are going to record pretty soon for a split with our friends Moon Curse from Milwaukee. Once that is done we are going to go on tour again sometime in late summer and then write for a full length throughout the winter.

New music and a summer tour: That’s good news all around, troublemakers. Many thanks to Kyle for his time. If you haven’t yet heard Endless, drop whatever work you’re doing or baby you’re holding and listen to it now/buy it for only $6 at:  http://mountsalem.bandcamp.com/album/endless

Photo credit: Josh Kurpius

REVIEW: BONGRIPPER / CONAN - SPLIT

Warning, this may be the first and last time Anne Hathaway has been referenced in a doom metal review. While AMC theaters were pushing promo hype for Les Miserables this past year I must have seen their 7 minute making-of featurette twenty times. It really didn’t matter what sort of movie I was seeing, AMC felt it was an appropriate regardless of genre. Nothing pumps you up for a bloody action flick or a supernatural chiller quite like Russell Crowe in a Napoleon hat. As much as I resented being forced to see this promo video so many times there was one line from Hathaway describing her ill-fated character that came to mind while listening to the Bongripper/Conan split album: “She's literally at the bottom of a hole and realizing she's never going to climb out of this.”

There’s a prevailing sense of hopelessness in both of these tracks, but Bongripper’s Side B offering “Zero Talent” truly captures the horrific disintegration of joy. Even the song title feels like someone who has cut their own worth down to nothingness. The track begins with droning ambience, like a room-tone in some desolate futurescape of dilapidated office buildings filled with skeletons where the only sounds are the computers that keep eerily humming. Once the riffs drop from the sky they land with enough force to sink continents. The guitars are weighed down by suffocating pessimism, crawling forward through glass shards and rat shit through cobbled streets where the dreamless wait to die. “Zero Talent” also pops an upper late in the song and rampages at about a million times their normal speed, blasting forward and suddenly halting with a vicious stop-and-go pattern that bruises brains like slapping the listener’s skulls against a truck windshield. It’s a nasty slab of grimy depression that should be the bright spot in every doom fan’s year.

Conon’s track, titled “Beheaded,” also plows through the muck at a frighteningly low speed, tasting the sewage as it shuffles deeper into a steaming fecal swamp. There was once a moment when I saw Winter play and felt like the distortion seeping from the towering speakers was crushing me into the ground. It was like the gravity in the venue was exponentially increasing each minute, threatening to flatten me across the cement floor and squeeze the precious fluids from my skin. Conan’s entire discography reproduces that feeling. If you’re looking for pure, unrelenting heaviness, the type of sound that feels like the widening anvil shadow right before impact, then Conan is your lethargic jam. While I usually think of decapitation as a swift punishment this song feels like someone is just pulling their enemy’s head off with their bare hands, working at it patiently with fingernails and brute strength. The song doesn’t offer much in riff ingenuity or tempo shifts, but it does transport listeners into a slow-motion world painted with dried blood and fresh shit. It’s not pretty or clean, but there are people who will feel completely at home there.

I also want to mention here that both of these bands will be terrorizing audiences in Conan’s home country, commencing a nine day tour towards the end of the month. If you can check out these bands and survive without feeling like their bass guitars laid a demon egg in your stomach I commend you.
 

Listen to Bongripper’s track here: http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/03/exclusive-song-stream-bongripper-zero-talent/

And the Conan track is streaming yonder:  http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/15163-conan-beheaded/

And pre-order from Holy Roar Records over here: http://holyroarrecords.com/album.php?id=2010&shop=1

REVIEW: MOUNT SALEM - ENDLESS

 

 

Somewhere in or around Chicago (my gut tells me Ravenswood) there is a coven of witches with impeccable musical taste who conjured Mount Salem from a smoking cauldron of black water. There is very little information available about the members of Mount Salem but the music they’ve created on Endless feels supernatural and triggers my overactive imagination. I’m not sure of the exact recipe the coven used, but it goes something like this: A heavy broth base of massive doom riffs, healthy doses of doped-up Muddy Waters electric Chicago blues, a splash of garage rock (from the darkest imaginable garage, built on an old burial ground), and a hallucinogenic pinch of occult rock psychadelia. And eye of newt, of course. Somewhere there’s a very sad pack of blind newts swimming aimlessly in a bog.

From the opening quote on “Good Times,” provided by none other than Charles Manson, Endless exists on a twisted, ethereal plain anchored by metallic heaviness while supporting the soothing vocals of their female lead singer. A minute into the song there’s already mention of burned churches, and with this musical accompaniment you can picture someone walking through the ashes enjoying the fragrance like floral incense. This is music that creates images, demands attention, and engages all senses. Endless is also accessible in the best of ways: It does not betray its heaviness with catchiness and melody. The riffs that carry these songs on their backs compare favorably to some of the best work by Sleep and Electric Wizard and feel like gentle giants: Huge in size and sound, but displaying soul.

Every song on this album is essential. Even “Mescaline,” the mid-album instrumental intermission, now a staple within the doom genre, is the perfect somber, dreamy departure from the heavy crunch of the rest of the record. Mount Salem has also already perfected what I call “psychedelic dirges,” where the keyboards and vocals dance slyly, even seductively, over ominous, heavily distorted breakdowns. It has all the same mystery and beauty of a Dario Argento horror scene, complete with the stylized bloodletting. Endless ironically concludes with “The End,” perhaps the best example of musicianship on the album, including every element of their signature sound, from smoky, goth blues to brutally loud, fuzzy stoner rock. This song will be my lullaby for a long time.

Endless feels like it’s trapped in the nightmarish head-space of a psychic medium on a bad trip. This is another album that I feel I could play for diehard metalheads and curious rock fans who may be unfamiliar with doom and receive enthusiastic responses from both. While the vocalist may sing that “this is the end of everything,” as a fan of heavy music I will gladly delay the apocalypse for a few more albums from Mount Salem.

Listen to the album here and support the band on their merch page:  http://mountsalem.bandcamp.com/album/endless

And follow them on Facebook to learn more about their upcoming tour:  https://www.facebook.com/MountSalem