Saviours
Death’s Procession
Kemado

Saviours’ 2009 album, Accelerated Living, was one of the very first reviews I wrote after launching this blog. Now, almost two years and about 250 reviews later, the Oakland band is back with their fourth full-length, and when most bands at this point find a mature, polished groove in which to fit themselves, Saviours, quite unabashedly, are holding on to that ripped-jean, skate-or-die stoner metal sound like it was the last beer on Earth. The raw, basement-grade quality of Death’s Procession is the perfect platform for the dirge of riffs — both chugging and melodic — on display here; the red-eyed mix of NWOBHM mayhem and slacker thrash come together like an old school stink bomb thrown right into the Grim Reaper’s face. But Saviours only ride the traditional wave so far as the sludgy shore, at which point they stomp around in the wet sand, light a raging fire in some boozy deity’s name, and party all night amid a quagmire of bikers, broads, killers, dealers, and wizards. If we’re both around in another two years and 250 reviews, I guarantee it will be the same damn deplorable business, oh so excellent and brutally bad-ass, because Saviours know no other way in which to excel.

Check out the video for “Crete’n” from Death’s Procession!

Mothership
Eagle Soars Demo
Self-Released

Three-song demo from a Dallas family trio (that’s two bros and their dad!) who blast some low-pro mutton chop rock at you like filthy UFO exhaust. Full of deep woods boogie, bluesy fuzz n’ roll, chuggin’ Grand Funk-meets-AC/DC riffola, and play hard, party harder, get-ready-for-the-revolution lyrics, this demo panders to your inner basement hero; opener “City Nights” ought to incite barroom fuck-ups across the land into beating each other with their over-sized belt buckles, the title track delivers a choice cosmic metal groove, and “Mothership” barrels its way through rusty skies before giving in to the freak jam. Oh, there’s plenty of solos too, the kind that drove your mama crazy back in the day. Mothership might not be musical rocket science, but they do give up some good, honest, burly action.

Listen to “Eagle Soars” from the Eagle Soars Demo!

Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

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