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: OXXEN - S/T EP

Oxxen, a Tennessean doom/sludge trio, sounds like the Chattanooga Choo Choo has derailed at the stroke of midnight and plowed through forests filled with man-eating black bears and haunted oak trees, leaving behind a wreckage of splintered wooden limbs, bones, and fur. While the band’s name reminds me of ill-fated computer expeditions along the Oregon Trail (I always had at least two oxen drown when I chose to ford a river), the music evokes everything from the hardest-partying stoner rock to the murkiest grunge in Seattle’s days of pre-exploitation.

Their self-titled EP kicks off with “This Shit Ain’t Exactly Thunderdome.” This shit is, however, heavy enough to give Tony Iommi a boner from a continent away. When the distortion hits it can collapse weak hearts, and there’s a punk energy in this music that spits blood and teeth into the crowd. When the songs reach mid-to-uptempo they feel like they’d be right at home playing with Black Tusk, Red Fang, or Orange Goblin. (Editor’s note: Just checked the band’s gig history and it looks like they have played, or will play, with Black Tusk. Solid.)

“Stoic Men Under Ancient Lord” swaggers with reckless grunge intensity, taking the heaviest moments of Nirvana’s Bleach and the Melvins’ Houdini and dressing them up with armor and a battle axe. It features Bill Robinson's best lead guitar work on the album, whose voice sounds how I’d imagine Kurt Cobain would sound if he was still alive. The same hoarse shout, tone deepened from years of drinking cocaine and snorting whiskey, only occasionally concerned with weak shit like pitch and melody.

Oxxen close with the album’s highlight, the 10+ minute “Riddle of Steel.” This song revs its engines as loudly as the best biker metal out there before slowing to a Cathedral crawl until the seventh minute, where they return to the punk riffing and gruff aggression that propelled the EP’s opener. Oxxen’s roots may reach into traditional doom and the spirit of Sabbath and Pentagram, but there is a fist-pumping, binge-drinking sense of immediacy and toughness to this release that gives me the hunch these dudes are a totally killer live band. Just because you can flatten a forest with your slowest riffs doesn’t mean you can’t chop the keg open with an axe and party sometimes.

This EP is currently FREE on Bandcamp, so check it out and throw them some bones if you enjoy it as much as I do:  http://oxxen.bandcamp.com/album/oxxen

And follow them on Facebook for future news on gigs and merch:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxxen

REVIEW: BISON B.C. - LOVELESSNESS

Bison B.C.’s “Primal Emptiness of Outer Space,” the opening track on their album Quiet Earth, is a song that I could still listen to everyday, regardless of the scenario. Pumping myself up before a job interview, dicing peppers to make sloppy joe sauce, inspirational music for a  kickboxing training montage... there just isn’t a situation where that song wouldn’t make the moment appropriately bad ass. I saw them play at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn when the venue was still a plump, delicious little newborn and they had absolutely contagious energy, flashing grins and splashing sweat all over the monitors while playing for a modest crowd. It was the type of performance with less-than-ideal attendance that shows you that a band would be having this much fun even if it was just them and a few forties in a cellar somewhere.

The Vancouver band’s newest release, Lovelessness, was their final album before being released by Metal Blade Records this past January. It’s truly unfortunate that they ended their relationship on this note, as this release is a step backwards, mildly retreating from the energy and immediacy that sent me flapping madly towards their music like a drunken moth to a boiler-lighting Zippo.

Thematically the album definitely departs from the pulpy sci-f/fantasy adventure territory of previous releases, where no fewer than three songs were written about the Wendigo. The songs all burn with familiar rage heard in prior Bison B.C. material, but this time around the music seems weighed down by it, as opposed to unleashing the songs to breathe and explore. While some fans may champion this as a more “mature” approach to songwriting, one that tries to milk the most out of each gargantuan riff and patiently constructs songs approaching ten minutes in length, I never felt that Bison B.C. needed ten minutes to work out their ideas. With James Farwell and Dan And’s ferocious guitar work driving the great Bison forward they always wrote concise, brawny songs that punch holes through prison walls and incite jail breaks. There really isn’t a bad performance to be found on this album, as Matt Wood remains one of my favorite (and criminally unheralded) drummers. But whatever this “mature” direction is, I want to spray it with silly string and tell it poop jokes to bring it back down to my level of stunted growth.

“Clozapine Dream” feels like vintage Bison B.C., snarling and rampaging across frozen tundra in a four-person herd. Still, even that song would rank among the least memorable on any of their prior albums. Here it’s a reminder of the more confrontational rock foundation they built their sound on. This album still boasts a collection of meaty riffs, from the fuzzy, stampeding gallop in the middle of “Last and First Things” (which sounds like Orange Goblin playing at their fastest), to the dirty-jeans classic rock jamming closing out the album on “Finally Asleep.” The real problem for me was just the relentless sorrow in this album. When Bison B.C. thrives it’s while they’re smiling through the aggression, not “desperately puking out psalms of suffering” as they wrote in their promotional material. I just want to give Lovelessness-era Bison B.C. a collective bear hug and take them out to a titty bar to get them out of their funk.

I have to say that Bison B.C. seemed like great dudes when I briefly met them at their merch table and it bums me out that they’re dealing with this change. That said, they did offer an optimistic press release after receiving the news, ending with, “Thanks to everyone at Metal Blade for trying to help us polish this turd." If that closing phrase is any indication, hopefully Bison B.C. can abandon some of the maturity while retaining their considerable songwriting-chops and trample us with a stronger release next time around, because there’s no denying the talent is there.

Check out the album streaming over at Bandcamp here:  http://bison.bandcamp.com/

And follow their post-Metal Blade journey over on their Facebook page at:   https://www.facebook.com/bisonbc