REVIEW: SHROUD EATER - DEAD ENDS

I have fond memories of discovering Floridian doom trio Shroud Eater when I first became acquainted with Bandcamp, listening to their ThunderNoise album while my sanity was flaking away like dried mud during an overnight shift. Their newest release, Dead Ends, significantly raises the bar and blasts them into the elite class of the stoner/sludge/doom genres. I don’t consider this shit-talking, but this album sounds like what a lot of people hoped Kylesa would release this year.

From the first rumbles of “Cannibals,” Shroud Eater welcome the listener into their appropriately dim, muddy audiosphere, with Janette Valentine’s bass tuned so low it’s like a dog-whistle made just for Cthulu. The (mostly) instrumental song sounds like summoning a gigantic beast from the black waters of a deep-sea lair, or maybe a psalm for some stoner deity, pleading to rain LSD down into the smoke-exhaling mouths of an hallucinating tribe. Felipe Torres’ percussion provides feral energy and hypnotic groove as “Sudden Plague” prowls forward, sprinkling in some elegant melody that sits atop the back of the song’s enormous sound like a brightly feathered bird on some tusked beast.

The sound on Dead Ends is so full and projects nearly supernatural size with its monolithic riffs that it’s difficult comprehending only three humans making the noise. It feels like it would take a cyclops herd or a band of morose swamp giants to create music this massive. Valentine and guitarist Jean Saiz both share vocalist duties, often joining in ethereal harmonies that remind me of John Baizley’s bittersweet melodies. “Lord of the Sword” and “The Star and the Serpent” both imitate waves crashing harder and harder against a shore as the music builds to a storm, which is fitting since the album’s tremendous single is titled “Tempest.” “Tempest” is a head-banging cruise on a battered warship through razor-waved waters infested with fanged squids. The song’s in turns pummelling and entrancing, clearing the fog with mystically reverberating clean guitar before sinking back into the murk as the mist rolls back in. Despite my affection for doom I’ve never warmed up to drone, but Dead Ends expertly uses drone hypnosis to build a stage strong enough to support the Kongh-heavy riffs.

With flashes of psychedelic lightning to match their ear-punching thunder, this is one storm you wish would last longer than 28+ minutes. And for the ultimate irony, for an album called Dead Ends, this album absolutely feels more like a black-iron gateway to a thousand different paths. No matter which one Shroud Eater takes, we’re all in for future storms we can look forward to.

Stream Dead Ends over on Bandcamp here and see why I’m making such a huge fuss over this album:  http://shroudeater.bandcamp.com/album/dead-ends-2

And check out their official website, with gig/merch information:  http://www.shroudeaterrocks.com/

REVIEW: ANCIIENTS - HEART OF OAK

Sometimes potential legal battles over band names lead to the addition of “B.C.” or maybe the simple precursor “The.” In the case of Anciients it was an additional “I” smack-dab in the middle, assisting the logo’s symmetry. It was a worth-while modification for a band eager to avoid future conflict, especially when their material is so god damn good that anyone eager to suck the teet of the black-hearted cash cow might come running when this band explodes in the rock world. I don’t often think of albums in terms of future “Top Ten” list rankings but after finishing Anciient’s first full-length, Heart of Oak, I can say with as much confidence as a perpetually self-deprecating pessimist can muster that this album will be on a slew of end-of-year lists.

Heart of Oak is destined to be a word-of-mouth metal phenomenon, shared fan-to-fan with countless excited listeners anxious to blast this album into a friend’s ear with the opening plug, “If you dig [Insert Band Here] you are going to love this shit.” All band references within this review are not meant to say that Anciients are riding on coat-tails, impersonating, or even receiving inspiration from the mentioned acts, they are just the convenient reference points, the kind used when hyping a new album conversationally when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder at a bar, eager to talk about THAT album that kicked your butthole into a blackhole in the past month.

Anciients have brewed up a wily batch of songs on Heart of Oak that combine the earthy harmonies of Baroness, the slippery, progressive leanings of Opeth, and a meaty layer of metallic sludge like the blue-collar please-hold-the-horseshit crunch of Howl. Kenny Paul Cook’s clean singing sounds a bit sweeter than Baroness’ Baizley, like he gargles with honey straight from the comb. But when he screams it feels like his voice is a leaf curling in a fire, becoming this seared, gnarled pile of ash and organic membranes. He’s a fitting narrator for the expeditions detailed in Heart of Oak, where flanked by ominous acoustic passages and nimble aggression Anciients creates a world with inspiring vistas and lethal wastelands.

Between the doom-drenched lurch of “Falling in Line” and the suitably winding nine-minute highlight “The Longest River,” Anciients initiate you into the kaleidoscopic nature of their music and all the shifting shapes and colors it includes. Despite having a firm grasp on the enchanting power of melody they rarely stay in one place long, building and sustaining suspense, sort of like the movie monster who hides out of frame as long as possible as the body count grows. From the jagged black metal of “Faith and Oath” to the dope-smoking Summer of Love jam “For Lisa” (which totally sounds like they hail from Alabama instead of Vancouver), Anciients cover a lot of musical ground on Heart of Oak, and all of it with a natural, organic quality that feels excavated directly from the soil of some long-forgotten mass grave, now covered in poisonous mushrooms and moss. The energy does dip a bit in the second half of this album, but there is still so much technical prowess and songwriting skill from start to finish that this is a minor complaint. Not everything can be as symmetrical as that logo with those two gorgeous I’s.

This is the time to buy into Anciients. Support the band by seeing them on tour (on tour now, actually, on the DEATH TO ALL bill), purchasing their music and some of their beautiful merch (I’m seriously crushing on this album cover). Then, in a couple years when the trust-fund kids with hundred dollar haircuts are digging the band too, you can own the right to be smug about the fact you knew they were awesome first.

Listen to Heart of Oak over here at Bandcamp and see for yourself:  http://anciientriffs.bandcamp.com/

Then visit their page at Season of Mist and put some of your rainy day money down, ‘cause it’s raining somewhere:  http://season-of-mist.com/bands/anciients

GUEST REVIEW: EVOKEN - A CARESS OF THE VOID

Editor: So this is the first guest review from a non-metal fan, an occurrence I hope to make a bi-weekly staple. One of the reasons I created this site was to share heavy metal with a wider, reluctant (or maybe even suspicious) audience. I could have easily assigned a more approachable record (think: Baroness, Anciients, Mastodon), but our first guest writer encouraged me to give him something challenging and relentless. Jude Gullie is a corporate stooge, medicine man, John Candy connoisseur, and extremely talented chef. He was a vital part of the now-defunct folk crooners The Holy Crows and was one-third of the vaudevillian performance team The Broken Banjo Boys. Here is Jude’s take on A Caress of the Void, the latest album from New Jersey funeral doomsters Evoken. - MG

GUEST REVIEWER: JUDE GULLIE

When I heard that Mr. Growl wanted non-Metal fans to review albums for his blog I jumped at the opportunity.  I had been wanting to listen to some Metal ever since I had the pleasure of watching a gentleman (who was listening to what I believe was metal) violently air-drumming next to me on the L train.  Why should that guy be having all the fun?  

My first assignment was to review the “Funeral Doom” band Evoken’s A Caress of the Void.  I had never heard of “Funeral Doom” prior to this experience, but I will say that it piqued my interest.  If I have ever talked with you more than a few minutes you would probably know that I have a morbid fascination with the character of Pallbearer from 1980s and 1990s WWF fame. (Editor’s Note: R.I.P - MG) I was really hoping that the music might invoke images of that fat man with white caked on makeup holding an urn.  I was sorely mistaken.

I don’t know if it gets easier to understand this kind of music if you listen to it often, but I spent the majority of this album (all the parts with vocals) with my hand to my ear like an elderly man trying to listen to the soup specials being listed at a Friendly’s Restaurant.  I could understand words like “me” and I think I heard the phrase “delicious skittles” at one point, but I wouldn’t put money on my being correct.

The more I listened to the album the more the mental image of the lead singer burping into a microphone while trying to form words popped into my head.  That is how this type of music is made, right?

By around the fifth song “Descend the Lifeless Womb” I felt like I was in the groove of listening to the album, but the next song was thirteen minutes long!  I found myself getting distracted and watching an “Easter Toys” ad on the side of the Grooveshark website. I did end up listening to the whole album, but I would say that I was not swayed to start listening to more metal.

Editor: NOOOOO! We were one 13 minute doom opus away from claiming the soul of another non-metal fan! Here’s hoping Jude will sign on for another review in the future. Maybe a grindcore album with 15 songs in 13 minutes is more his (hyper)speed? Thanks again to Jude for participating and being a good sport. Next time we will capture your soul and keep it in Paul Bearer’s urn for eternity.

Form your own opinion by finding Evoken on Spotify and learn more about them at their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/evokendoom