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: JUNIOR BRUCE - THE BURDEN EP

I just received a beautiful neon green vinyl copy of Junior Bruce’s LP The Headless King this past week and sought out their newest material, the recently released EP The Burden. In an old interview, vocalist Scott Angelacos explained the idea of their LP’s title, saying, “Other than a general feeling of unrest, we wanted the album to feel like an uprising. A headless king has nowhere to place his crown.” That same sense of defiance surfaces in The Burden, though there’s also a streak of melancholia in both songs. But Junior Bruce’s sound doesn’t wallow in solemnity, it uses the somber platform as a launching pad to meaner, heavier riffs that pound at the gates of each song, threatening to burst through.

The EP’s title track commences with haunting guitar work teamed with Tom Crowther’s growling bass that stomps into morose hardcore before building a groove layer by layer that feels like the song is regenerating rhino skin. Angelacos’ voice has extra grit on this effort, like he’s been gargling with bathtub whiskey and alligator teeth since The Headless King’s recording sessions. It’s a great song executed with confidence and powerfully projected emotion.

“The Ocean’s Daughter” opens with a creeping riff that feels like vintage Candlemass before abandoning the dirge in favor of melodic ruminations over a backbone of mid-tempo distortion. Jeff McAlear sounds like Bill Ward on this song, with frantic fills injecting energy into the slower moments while kicking the song forward with a persistent bass drum pulse. Three quarters of the way through the song a guitar lead soars over the droning main riff and leads the song to its downtrodden conclusion.

Junior Bruce (named after a character from the original Death Race 2000) is a great band on the fantastic A389 Recordings label and these new songs verify that they’re headed in an exciting direction that develops melody without sacrificing aggression. These two songs are a great teaser of what’s to come from this Floridian outfit and definitely promises that there is more quality heaviness waiting to obliterate us in the future. It may not be the brutal soundtrack a Death Race driver would listen to in his car while tallying a high body count on the blood-slick roads, but it certainly fits the soundtrack of a post-Death Race wrestle with colossal guilt and shattered morality. And hey, that’s brutal in its own way.

The Burden is currently available as a FREE download over at Bandcamp, with links to Junior Bruce’s Facebook page as well: http://juniorbrucefl.bandcamp.com/

This is also the band’s first release since the unfortunate passing of drummer Brett Tanner. If you’d like to donate to cancer research in his name it would be a great gesture.

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/