INTERVIEW: TRAVEL VLOGGER ELLA ERANTHIS

The transcendental, transformative mystique of road tripping is alive and well in America. Popularized by Jack Kerouac and the Beats, the lure of the road and thrill of being a stranger in a strange place still inspires wanderlust to this day. Vlogger Ella Eranthis was kind enough to take some time to discuss her series of videos with me, and answer some questions about her documented adventures. Read on for her thoughts on hauntings, extra-terrestrial life, and her Jurassic Park survival tactics:

Mister Growl: For those unfamiliar with your work, how would you describe your travel videos and vlog?

Ella Eranthis: A very colorful compilation of travel sights, hopefully with a feeling of actually being there for anyone who watches.

Mister Growl: I described your videos to a friend as No Reservations (with Anthony Bourdain) meets Green Porno (with Isabella Rosselini), with the trippy camerawork of a Darren Aronofsky film. Who are some of your creative inspirations?

Ella Eranthis: I love your description, thank you! For as long as I can remember Brigitte Bardot was my inspiration. I am drawn to her love for animals and life in general. Some things she says I don’t agree with, but I love her movies. Other than that I watch Youtube videos all the time - I think online video is a completely different medium and will eventually become as powerful as movies and TV, but will always be different.

Mister Growl: In your most recent video you visited a supposedly haunted hotel in New Orleans. Did anyone at the hotel share a backstory on the hauntings?

Ella Eranthis: I was creating my video all the time and did not speak to anyone, only when ordering room service. If I ever stay there again I must ask someone. I have my own experience - I definitely sensed something different there, and some strange energy all the time.

Mister Growl: New Orleans happens to be the home of some of my favorite bands (such as Eyehategod, Acid Bath, Goatwhore, and Soilent Green), but I’ve never visited before. Did you get a chance to see much more of the city, and what were you thoughts?

Ella Eranthis: I have Acid Bath’s “Scream of the Butterfly” on my iPod and it is hauntingly beautiful ...must check out the other bands. I saw a lot of New Orleans and filmed almost entire French Quarter and Canal Street. This video will be posted soon. Some of the footage looks gothic and haunted, it’s all dark with lanterns. I was amazed at the beauty of this city. I want to go back there and film some more! What I noticed is that people are incredibly sharp in New Orleans; very intuitive. They figure out quickly what you might want to buy or order and it’s so right on. They are less pragmatic, more intuitive.

Mister Growl: Another video of your Louisiana trip showed you cuddling with a baby alligator, and you later shoot footage of watching sharks in an aquarium. Do you have pets of your own, and are they deadly predators?

Ella Eranthis: Not at the moment because I travel so much. If I wanted one it would probably be a dog or a cat or both. But I love all animals and am very curious about creatures who live in the water. The experience of holding the alligator was unusual. I was surprised how much I connected with it. I held it in my arms and it looked into my eyes and I felt a connection. The alligator had strange, surprisingly soulful eyes and was vulnerable and friendly and I felt it was up to me to take care of it.

Mister Growl: You had previously stayed in another hotel with some suspicious, possibly supernatural occurrences. Are you just a ghost magnet, and have you had prior experiences with phantoms?

Ella Eranthis: Ha ha! I would love to be a ghost magnet; the videos I could make then! But my experiences were very mild compared to what other people described when describing paranormal experiences. Well... it was a little weird when the elevator button switched on its own.... but I would have to say – no, I am still waiting for that ghost...

Mister Growl: My favorite videos were focused on Area 51, sharing another instance of your fascination with the unknown. Do you personally think there are other life forms waiting for us in space, or possibly living amongst us on Earth?

Ella Eranthis: I really don't know. We have Earth and here we have life so it is possible there are other planets with life – the universe is huge. Many people reported seeing strange things and I believe them. But the first thought that came to me when I read your question was: It would be sad if aliens were living on our planet because what that would mean their own planet is unlivable. If that is the case we humans need to watch what we do to our planet.

Mister Growl: How did you first become interested in travel, and what was your first vacation?

Ella Eranthis: My first vacation took place when I was only few months old - literally an infant - my parents took a car trip through Europe. It’s probably not recommended for infants, but somehow here I am addicted to it today. I wake up every day and want to go somewhere to experience something new.

Mister Growl: In most of the videos you’re traveling alone. Do you think people experience a place more completely when they experience it without others?

Ella Eranthis: I think it depends on a person. We are all different. Some people see more while talking to others and some are more observant when alone. For me, yes - I like to travel on my own, I really do what I want to then, and it’s also a journey within, and I have more focus because there is no company to distract. But in a way I do not completely travel alone; I make videos and post them and read all the feedback and observations of others, and it isn’t a completely isolated experience then. I think maybe an answer is good balance - do some sightseeing on your own when you travel with someone or a group would be my advice.

Mister Growl: I noticed you rented Jurassic Park when you were visiting Area 51, and obviously you would travel to the island to see the dinosaurs if you could. Do you think you’d survive Jurassic Park, or would you be a Tyrannosaurus snack?

Ella Eranthis: LOL! I would survive! I have very good intuition.

Mister Growl: If you could visit any place tomorrow where would you go and what would you do?

Ella Eranthis: To Hawaii to scuba dive with dolphins and to film them underwater.

Mister Growl: You mention that Hollywood is “a place where a lot of weird people make a lot of money by pretending to be somebody else.” Who would play Ella Eranthis in a Hollywood film?

Ella Eranthis: Someone who can imitate my very weird not-belonging-to-any-country accent.

Mister Growl: On your Youtube channel you mention that you have a special holiday video on the way. What are your goals for the future, and what else can your fans expect in 2014?

Ella Eranthis: They can expect plenty more adventure. I will travel to many more places in 2014 and to other continents. My goal is to put more places in videos and show the beauty of this planet and hopefully inspire someone out there to take a trip too and to be more adventurous about life!

Many thanks to Ella for taking the time and giving us insight into her travels. Plus, she has Acid Bath on her iPod, how could the metal community not support her? With multiple experiences with hauntings, a hunger for exploration, and an appreciation for Dax Riggs’ sultry voice, she is the exact sort of modern-day adventurer metalheads can identify with and learn from.

Visit Ella's Youtube channel here and watch all of her videos: http://www.youtube.com/ella4tv

And follow her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/EllaEranthis

REVIEW: HOLLOW LEG - ABYSMAL

Sometimes I forget I’m considered a music critic, because I’m really just a fan boy lucky enough to occasionally be paid for my opinions. But critics LOVE when an album/movie/book title can be used as a simple headline; let’s say, for example, the Seymour Hoffman/DeNiro film Flawless (Not quite Flawless, LOLOLOLOL!). Here we have an album named Abysmal, from Hollow Leg, a band from northern Florida that has an “affinity for the roots of American blues music and English metal,” so says their promo material. ‘Abysmal’ just happens to be one of those beautiful words that can be used to both praise and reprimand a piece of art; abysmal most often refers to something of poor quality, but can also describe something that is limitless and deeply profound. Boasting powerful performances from each musician, and offering eight tracks of zero-horseshit, Sabbath-informed sludge (is there any other kind?), Abysmal is built on a solid blues rock foundation with hardcore intensity and addresses themes that may not reach profundity, but are absolutely universal.

I first need to mention that in the second song, “8 Dead (in a Mobile Home),” I heard Scott Angelacos’ howl and immediately thought, “Oh shit, how did it take me a full song to realize this is the Junior Bruce vocalist?” He has one of those instantly recognizable voices that can’t be unheard. I say this more as a warning for non-metalheads: You will be haunted by the voice of Angelacos, which is strong enough to tattoo pentagrams in your ear canal. For metal fans: Rejoice, because his delivery is singularly awesome.

Most of the album feels like Iron Monkey accidentally stumbled into slightly gentler melodies. “Ride to Ruin” introduces a fuzzy higher-register lead to join Tom Crowther’s burly bass tones, and will be my motorcycle soundtrack when I’m eventually an outlaw biker with an eight-foot long beard. Brent Lynch provides some memorable riffs here, with “Blissful Nothing” syphoning Eyehategod’s groove and capturing the slow-motion sense of a day passing sluggishly on hashish, and “Cry Havoc” trapping the listener in an alligator death-roll as drummer Tim Creter goes in for the kill after some Big Black-era Orange Goblin goodness.

While the mixing on both “The Dog” and “Lord Annihilation” feels a little flat, lacking contrast and punch despite some great hooks and well-built tension, Abysmal is an album that’s the middle sprinter in a relay race, taking the baton from the UK’s best doom bands and handing it off to the crusty, lice-scalped troublemakers of the sludge scene. Though the song structures are closely related to 90s hardcore, this album will lead riff-worshipping fanatics of the slow and heavy into the exceptionally loud, wolf-infested abyss. And that, right there, is as close to a title-related catchphrase as I get.

Check out Abysmal over on bandcamp and get yourself the album on vinyl, or by instant download:  http://hollowleg666.bandcamp.com/

And check out Hollow Leg over on Facebook, and maybe some day they will answer what they would hide in a prosthetic limb:  https://www.facebook.com/hollowlegfl

REVIEW: SERVANTS OF THE MIST - SUICIDE SEX PACT

Tampa, FL may not seem like the doom capital of the world, with their sunshine and delicious oranges and all that, but then a band like Servants of the Mist comes along with Suicide Sex Pact, an EP so bleak and filthy that it blocks the light traveling from dying stars and rots fruit from the trees.

From the opening uneasy clean singing of a passage from “Jesus Loves Me,” which captures the same creepy melancholia as Harvey Milk’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong,” Servants of the Mist create a world where light is long-extinct and hope’s been violently snuffed. Album opener “Absence” introduces their scorched funeral doom, which sounds like the aural equivalent of finger painting with urn ash on a canvas of stretched skin torn from a dead priest’s back. This sort of pitch-black doom inspires thoughts of Bongripper and Cough, mixed with the drama of early My Dying Bride.

“Behind the Curtain” continues the band’s glacial determination with uncompromising heaviness. I wasn’t able to truly conceive of canyons being carved by icy structures until I heard the riff in this song. It feels a little like Evoken, if their songs were trapped in endless hallucinogen-fueled night terrors. The lead guitar in this song and album closer “Suicide Sex Pact” didn’t feel totally committed, with wavering hints of bluesy groove that fizzle instead of sizzle. This is the only aspect of the latter two songs that make me question if they totally earn the song length (none of the songs are briefer than 9 minutes). Fortunately, I’m willing to forgive 2 minutes among 30 when the rest of the album features guitar fuzz thicker than a blanket used to smother plague victims in their sleep. Richard Smyth Jr.’s vocals could scrape muscle from bone like an autopsy instrument, with curdling shrieks and meaty growls that give way to a no-wave gothic chant about 25 minutes into the album for a brief reprieve from ferocity. The breakdown of slow motion death rock slams back into relentless tomb-smashing doom before the feedback lifts like smoke and dust, revealing a pile of lifeless nude bodies.

With audio collage work reminiscent of Eyehategod’s more experimental passages and a muscular, bass-heavy attack that invokes Primitive Man and Conan, Suicide Sex Pact should interest fans of the loud, mean, and ugly. Maybe those aren’t adjectives I’d use on a dating profile, but when it comes to extreme metal, that’s love at first sight.

Go check out Servants of the Mist on Facebook and follow their updates as release information surfaces for Suicide Sex Pact:  https://www.facebook.com/servantsofthemist

Check out a preview of the title track over here: https://soundcloud.com/hbnbm/servants-of-the-mist-suicide

RIP: JOEY LaCAZE

Last night I was informed with great sadness that Joey LaCaze, drummer for Eyehategod and Outlaw Order, passed away. In the coming days details will undoubtedly be released, but none of it matters more than this: He was a massively talented performer whose contributions were crucial in making Eyehategod one of the most influential bands in the realm of heavy music.

I first purchased Take as Needed for Pain when I was a high school freshman, drawn to the bizarre album imagery of mangled dental work and fake limbs as well as sensational titles that made me feel like Eyehategod may be some of the most dangerous dudes in the world. I was a dirt-poor teen at the end of the 90s with shitty dial-up internet and the information I had about the band was marginal, which just added to their “wanted poster” mystique. Still, at that age I was definitely in the “fast is good, faster is better” mindset, so Eyehategod’s revolutionary sludge wasn’t greeted that warmly upon my first listen. I spent the next few years committing irreparable damage to my spine while headbanging to Slayer’s Undisputed Attitude and early Napalm Death.

When I boxed up my CDs for my first trek to college I found my lone Eyehategod album, dusted it off, and played it during the long drive through a gray smear of small towns in central New York. I was ashamed at how long it had taken me to discover just how god damn catchy they were, how brilliantly they disguised bluesy rock’n’roll with gutter grime, whiskey-shredded vocals, and a sharp sense of self-consciously transgressive humor I failed to recognize upon first listen.

Drummers are often the unheralded backbone of a band, the heard but mostly unseen force providing the momentum, but tucked back in the shadows. And while I never had the pleasure of saying more than “great show” to him to find out for sure, Joey LaCaze did not seem like a person who minded the shadows, as long as the music he helped make threatened to punch holes in the venue’s roof and walls. He was a band drummer through and through, and despite considerable skill he was never a distraction, never a guy who propped up his ego as a musician with flourishes and technical excess. He played outlaw doom with swagger and busted-lip punk energy that suited the song and filled it with life. He took great songs and helped make them legendary.

For all their supposed bleakness, the arrests and addiction and hometown tragedy, I’ve rarely seen guys have as much fun playing live. I’m thankful for finding that dusty CD in my old bedroom, I’m thankful for each time I saw Eyehategod play with Joey LaCaze reliably sitting behind that kit, and I’m thankful for every time I banged my head to one of his cymbal crashes. I plan on spending the day honoring him the same way I think most of us in the metal community will: Listening to the records he helped create at frightening volume levels.

R.I.P.

REVIEW: BLACK SABBATH - 13

So it took me almost 3 weeks to listen to Black Sabbath’s new album, and I’m ashamed. I decided to head into listening to this album a few ticks before midnight, fittingly unsober, and live-Tweet my experience. Below are my streaming thoughts.

1. Here we go. "End of the Beginning." Sounds like the title track on Black Sabbath's self-titled. Just needs bell tolls.
2. Ozzy should have asked himself all of these questions when he was making that dirty MTV money.
3. Nice groovy riff reminds me of "Under the Sun." Entombed did a pretty crunchy cover of that I 1st heard as a "Same Difference" bonus track.
4. Iommi can play that solo over and over while I do any shitty chore and make it look awesome. Heavy metal dish washing, here I come.
5. Go get those higher register notes, Oz. Atta boy. Reminds me of when Tom Petty hit those "Freefallin" notes at the Super Bowl.

6. "God Is Dead?" Only song I've already heard already, but this time it's about 400 times louder and I'm considerably less sober.
7. This is really heavy, folks. And this vocal pattern is ultra catchy, even if Ozzy's voice has been fixed by robots.
8. I like the idea of God and Satan on his shoulders. Those angels are like God's interns, no power. Go straight to the top.
9. Forgot about this riff in the 6th minute. Makes me want to set myself on fire and ride a motorcycle to Hell's drive-in theater.
10. Pretty sure there are too many voices in Ozzy's head for him to hear what one specifically is saying.

11. "Loner" sounds like "Sweet Leaf" a little, huh? Like if they milked it of its swagger and made the guitars sound like RATM.
12. Speaking of Rage, Brad Wilk was a great choice for this album in theory, but so far it's been really uptight.
13. My top choices for drummers on this album: 1)Joe LaCazze/Eyehategod. 2)Kyle Spence/Harvey Milk. 3) Brad Wilk. And, oh yeah, Bill Ward.

14. "Zeitgeist." So far sounds like if Rick Rubin was ruining a Pink Floyd song.
15. This song would be so much better if Brooklyn band NAAM recorded it.

16. "Age Of Reason." Did someone tell Wilk to sever all of the personality out of his drumming? That dude's good, what's going on here?
17. Can hear a little of Edgar Winters' heavier stuff in this song. Makes me wish I was listening to "Frankenstein."
18. Half-way through the third minute this gets interesting. Flashes of hardcore, at least it's an influence past 1974.

19. "Live Forever." Depending on how you pronounce "live" it could also mean and endless concert.
20. Vocals wayyyyy high in the mix. Too bad because this heavy bluesy momentum is formidable.
21. When Ozzy says "Waiting for the rising of the moon" it made me picture him as a werewolf with round purple sunglasses.
22. The doomy part of this song makes me think of "I Want You "She's So Heavy" from The Beatles. Way underrated heavy riff.

23. "Damaged Soul." You should always buy shipping insurance before mailing a fragile soul. Common sense, Geezer.
24. Sounds like an "End of the Beginning" remix meant as a soundtrack for tongue kissing in a dark smoky room.
25. Most of these songs aren't bad, but Iommi is the only performer who sounds immortal on these record.
26. 6+ minutes in, and the harmonica finally makes sense. I wanna wear fabric torn from a priest's robe as a bandana and rock out.

27. "Dear Father." Lyrics sound serious, was hoping it was a letter penned in college asking daddy for drug money.
28. Sounds like Geezer is doing some cool stuff in that mix, but Rubin hid the bass. SEEN AND NOT HEARD, BASS LINE.
29. 4 minutes in the song grows balls, and then the vocals are so loud that they shrivel immediately.
30. FINALLY, WILK SHOWS UP. These are the sort of loose, flashy, mostly unnecessary fills that made Sabbath a real rock band. Nice ending.

31. “Methademic.” The intensity vanished for a little bit now, and this music would fit on Ghost's debut album, before they adopted BC.
32. Not among Iommi's best solos on this album. Sort of sounds tired, like maybe blood sugar is low and he needs some yogurt or a banana.
33. Song was crazy uneven, but a few of these moments are the hardest Sabbath has rocked on this album.

34. "Peace of Mind." I'll take "obvious wordplay" for $100. And "uninspiring riffs" for $200.
35. Another good Wilk performance at least, even though musically they sound more like Mr. Big than Black Sabbath right now.
36. They need to either Jethro Tull it up with a flute or Focus it up with rock'n'roll yodeling. Oh wait, Focus had flute too. FOCUS IT UP.

37. "Pariah." How dare Ozzy ever utter the words "addicted to sobriety," even if it's about someone else.
38. These riffs would have fit in with Kansas before they tried turning into shitty arena rock and changed their name to Black Kansas.
39. Clean guitar is only there to make the distortion sound heavier. It's like Bud Abbott to Lou Costello.
40. Rhyming "pariah" with "desire" deserves a high five and a hug.
41. ALBUM OVER. Inconsistent, but I had a good time. 6/10, would have a 7 if Rubin kept his beard out of everything.
42. Also, I like the album cover just for reminding me of the Nicolas Cage/Neil LaBute "Wicker Man" shitshow of a remake. #BlackSabbath

So 6/10 isn’t bad, right? As expected, moments of inspired rock’n’roll and some of their heaviest riffs to date, but revisiting their best work (either unintentionally or on the sly) and the frustrating production from Rick Rubin knocked off a few points. I’m not too upset by the whole enterprise, and I’m not even mourning how I spent a Friday night. Adequate job, guys. Adequate job.