REVIEW: RED NECKLACE - S/T

The last time I heard from Bill Robinson it was a pleasant message of appreciation for reviewing an album by his other band from Chattanooga, Oxxen. Now snarling and blasting out dangerous feedback with Red Necklace as well, Robinson and Patrick Wilkey - who provides drums and “hellfire,” according to Facebook - carve out four songs from forty minutes of thick riffage and thundering drums.

Starting with the glacial crawl of  “Repression of the Snake,” Red Necklace’s eponymous debut album fuses the swampy danger of Primitive Man and the bombastic noise of Behoover, then covers it all with a wintery mix of muddy slush and ice. It’s entirely possible that I’m projecting my own brutal New York February onto these songs, but they possess glacial qualities, in my frostbitten mind. When it comes to doom duos, there’s usually an enormous responsibility on the drummer to punctuate riffs that, without percussive accompaniment, risk feeling like distortion swelling and flickering as a freeform passage. Wilkey particularly shines on “The Swarm,” guiding the song down smoky corridors in some frigid basement labyrinth with confident fills while strengthening structural integrity.

But doom’s success is eventually determined by the mood and attitude of its riffs. Red Necklace grazes various subgenres (Sleep’s bouncy, bong-worshipping stoner doom; the texture of Evoken’s foggy, funereal epics; the grimy sludge of NOLA’s various musical outlaws), but emerges from the album with their own stamp on a genre, matching impressive kineticism with riffs that never feel derivative. The songs occasionally thaw during gentler moments of morose tones and shimmering cymbals, but it’s really just spilled blood momentarily melting the ice. Robinson’s rasp and blackened blues riffs transform 40 minutes into an experience that builds upon well-known metallic foundations (hell, parts of “Repression of the Snake” even feel like “Enter Sandman” at times, if the Sandman was dressed in fresh pelts) and stomps forward with a black boot.

Check out Red Necklace over on their Facebook page, then pre-order their album over on Bandcamp: http://rednecklace.bandcamp.com/

Better yet, order the cassette from Failed Recordings and Inherent Records here: http://failedrecordings.storenvy.com/products/5439073-red-necklace-s-t-cassette

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