That’s it. You’ve convinced me, Brooklyn. You are now thee number one spot in the world for heavy, weird, fuzzy, psychedelic music. Okay? Hull, Elks, Bad Dream, Weird Owl, Children…and now Bezoar. I’m sure there’s plenty more rats crawling around in the sewers there that I’m not even aware of, but as far as I’m concerned right now, none of ‘em are bigger — or carry more diseases — than Bezoar. I mean, even their name invokes images of a mythical beast from children’s fables, and this three-headed varmint more than lives up to the hairy, red eye scares it promises. Expounding doom-infused wyt noize, Bezoar’s debut full-length, Wyt Deth, is a lumbering mess of feedback and mildewy riffs, a witchy, warbling deth-psych album that’s definitely hard to listen to, but surely impossible to turn off. Whether it’s the short and sweet allure of songs like “Burn Everything” and “Nikola” or the long and devastating hold of songs like “We Are Not Alone” and “Knight,” the whole damn thing is nauseously enchanting, and you might think it sounds like a dungeon full of hungry, dying prisoners moaning for sunlight, water, and mercy, but that’s just Sara Palmquist (bass/vocals), Tyler Villard (guitar), and Justin Sherrell (drums) laying down the most mystical stoner metal you’re likely to hear all year. Awesome stuff.
You know the kind of bat-shit fury Kvelertak stirred up last year when they jammed everyone’s radar with their maniacal Norwegian death punk? Well, this year’s ‘Holy-fuck-these-guys-are-my-new-favourite-band!’ band is Elks. The Brooklyn quartet light up the skies with their six-song debut, Destined for the Sun, a cosmic metal racket that shamelessly picks off select parts of a great handful of heavy music genres with a precision laser guiding system manned by a drunk galactic warrior. Those righteously ragged parts are then collected and fused into one 22-minute static mess of ballsy glory, the mere sound of which will fill you with the same excitement you felt when you first heard The Number of the Beast or Reign in Blood or Blues for the Red Sun or Remission. From their northern-inspired, horned mammal moniker to their spacey, void-voyaging concept, Elks are nothing if not a beard’s wet dream, and the fact that they hail from the same place that currently boasts the spawning rights to Children, Weird Owl, and Bad Dream puts ‘em in elite company. A company, mind you, these young riff-wielding upstarts ought to own outright very soon. It’s okay to lose your mind, friends. I am and so is everyone else.
Listening to Brooklyn trio Bad Dream is like being picked up on the side of the road by a bunch of bleary-eyed strangers in a black van who just stare at you the whole hazy ride, numb to their new friend, while you’re gripping your jeans, mistaking the flash of passing headlights for the glint of a hunting knife. It’s a heavy kind of nervous energy, a fuzzy psych-doom that spins thick webs in your head, and each of the songs on this 7″ drip with sacrificial wax. Side A’s “Black Blizzard” is a carry over from their Demonstration EP, but it sounds considerably more evil this time around, while side B’s “1134″ tortures you with its medieval riffs. Bad Dream might be a tad more psychedelic than Electric Wizard but they come from the same soul-frying school, that’s for sure, and will no doubt please all the dope fiends and (bad) dreamers out there.
Note: That’s not exactly the proper cover; there’s all sorts of different coloured covers, which you can see here. I got myself the purple swirl cover on white vinyl, number 129/300. Oh, one more thing about Bad Dream…they have the best prices for merch. I got this 7″, a poster, a t-shirt, and some patches all for like $15. And that included shipping. You’d be crazy not to send ‘em some money.
Listen to “Black Blizzard”! This is actually the version from the Demonstration EP because it was all I could find, but you get the idea.
Bezoar
Elks
Bad Dream