Beastly Georgian trio, Blacktusk, bring hell’s hammers down heavy on their sophomore effort, Taste the Sin, like they’re taking out a whole bushel of rotten peaches in one abominable swing, splattering black juice and insidious worms all over the goddamn place. Baizley wrapped and disastrously brackish, Taste the Sin picks up where ‘08’s debut, Passage Through Purgatory, left off by heaping a whole mess of redneck rage onto the sludge metal artistry of bands like Baroness and Torche. The angry, pounding riffs burn like fire on the surface of an oily swamp and every one of the album’s 11 songs seethe and foam like acid on an open wound. Imagine the Cancer Bats with longer teeth or Zoroaster with shorter songs and you’ve got the Southern stoner death thrash of Blacktusk.
Note: I’ve seen the band’s name written several different ways, including Black Tusk and BlackTusk, but I have opted for Blacktusk. If any of the fellas in the band would like to offer up the official spelling of the band’s name, please drop me a line. Until then, I will stick with the one word, lower case ‘t’ version. For better or worse.
Yeah, that’s right, Vancouver’s Bison B.C.’s new album, Dark Ages, kicks off with horns, and I’m not just talking about goat horns or Devil horns, son. No, I’m talking about French horns and trumpets, and if you think that kind of high brow musicianship seems unusual coming from a stoner metal band, you’d be right. Here’s the thing, though. Bison B.C. don’t sound like a stoner metal band so much anymore and that bit with the horns is just their way of channeling the war cry of a battle hymn and the death and darkness of a funeral dirge into a growling, seven song assault of angry riffs and underworld anarchy. Where Earthbound and Quiet Earth held us on this particular plane in the raw n’ strong grip of a thick-chested, heavy-bearded mountain man, Dark Ages now binds our hands and feet with snakes and drags us down into the ash and brimstone of Hell’s half acre so we can do Satan’s evil bidding. As heavy and black as this album is, however, it’s still the product of slackers (I mean that in the best possible way), and as such it’s not without its tongue-in-cheek moments (“Melody, This is For You”), its alcoholic allegiance (“Two-Day Booze”), and the continuation of the Wendigo saga (“Wendigo Pt. 3 [Let Him Burn]”). So, yeah, it’s a bit of a dark departure for Bison B.C. this time around, but that just means they now sound like High on Fire with twin guitars, and that’s pretty fucking awesome.
Listen to/watch a not-so-great sounding version of “Two-Day Booze” from Dark Ages!
Blacktusk
Bison B.C.