Orange Goblin
A Eulogy for the Damned
Candlelight Records

If you’ve got a beard, own a bong, or ride a bike, chances are this year’s most anticipated release for you is Orange Goblin’s A Eulogy for the Damned. And why not? The band released its first six albums in ten years, and its now been damn near five years since 2007′s Healing Through Fire, so chances are you’ve got one hell of an itch to take to the starry highway to hit up OG’s cosmic dope show once again. But where the UK quartet was once raw and bloozy it is now cooked and mean, and the smoky caravan kitsch it once proudly boasted in its space-brewed riffs has given way to a prouder, louder form. In fact, aside from vocalist Ben Ward’s chain-link preaching, the Southern boogie doom of “Save Me From Myself” or the bold groove of “Return to Mars,” there’s very little left in the way of OG’s former scuzzy self, and what stands before you today is a tyrant fifteen stories tall, an angry world-eater with a heavy metal law to lay the fuck down. And this is a metal album in many ways thanks to songs like “Red Tide Rising,” “Acid Trial,” “The Fog,” “Death of Aquarius,” and “Bishop’s Wolf,” which is not something you could have really said about any past OG album. It is also very much a statement album, the aforementioned songs leaving the deepest cut, but even OG’s familiar stoner rock fare, like the melodic “Stand For Something” and “The Filthy and the Few” contain a demented edge to ‘em, and the acoustic-psych intro on closer “A Eulogy To The Damned” points to OG’s dark, force-fueled approach to making this record. If you’ve ever hoped that Orange Goblin would one day step up and make a power move, that they’d drop all that whiskey-soaked astro-noodling and put some steel and muscle into their tunes, A Eulogy for the Damned is your hope come true.

Listen to “Red Tide Rising” from A Eulogy for the Damned!

Hazzard’s Cure
Hazzard’s Cure
Self-Released

On their self-titled full-length debut, San Francisco’s Hazzard’s Cure bruise and belch their way through a fungal-covered forest on the backs of corpse boars, spears poised to strike the life from those they pursue. Their rabid, sporadic approach to the hunt is propelled by a steady stream of heavy metal buggery; bastard forms of sludge, hardcore, death, doom, speed, and thrash not only occupy the album as a whole but often appear within the same song, and the songs themselves (which range from three to ten minutes in length) run together like the warm blood of their prey. This kind of unfocused racket is often the battle cry of the drunk and stoned, and there’s no doubt that’s the case here, but while songs like “Meet Me at the Mountain” and “Great Dishonor” were born in the bottom of bongs and bottles, “Psilocybin” and “Wolves’ Banquet” are pure mosh pit fodder. But then there’s “Tossed and Dethroned,” “Clashing of Hordes,” and “Prayer of the Hunted,” all of which sound like Mastodon, Black Breath, and Viking Skull trading riffs inside a burning church, and you decide once and for all that there’s no use trying to figure it out because it’s just plain ol’ fucking metal.

Listen to Hazzard’s Cure right here!

“Merlin wasn’t real.”
“Fuck you Merlin wasn’t real.”
“It’s a story.”
“Merlin was part of King Henry’s court and he fucking won all the wars for him ’cause he cast spells. Fuck you, man. That shit’s real.”
“He was part of King Arthur, not King Henry…”
“Yeah, it’s a fable. A fable is history.”

Ah, FUBAR. Amazing. But you know something? Deaner got it absolutely right. A fable is history. The divide between truth and fiction has long since vanished and wizards walk — or, rather, rock — amongst us. I know. So what you’re about to read, everything I’m about to tell you of the outlaw Gideon Smith and his court of motorcycle madmen, The Dixie Damned, may sound like pure cowboy fantasy, a Southern-fried fairy tale full of tumbleweed, rattlers, whiskey, blood, dust, ghosts, and backwoods psychedelia, but it’s simply this: the narcotic we desire most.

Gideon, the Charlotte, North Carolina native, began life as a wizard when he apprenticed at the faithful and frenzied school of Destructo Maximus as a roadie while under the bloody-faced tutelage of Jeff Clayton and his band of wrestlin’ lovin’ murder junkies, ANTiSEEN. The years he spent in that chaotic foxhole, surrounded by barb wire and explosives, arm in arm with the Confederacy of Scum, would spark in him a desire to branch out on his own. So, in 1997, Gideon took that giant leap into outlaw territory with some former Animal Bag members, now dubbed The Dixie Damned.

Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned spin a swampy brand of blues-infused doom rock, a heavy dose of Southern boogie n’ groove with a hairy chest and meat cleavers for hands. They mix the super-sized spirituality of The Cult with the chain gang riffs of Circus of Power and end up with a shamanistic brand of trippy, bad-ass, redneck biker rock. Gideon’s vocals might be some of the most recognizable in all of rock n’ roll, rolling out of his diaphragm like they’re coming up from the bottom of a well, where Elvis’ bloated carcass floats face down in bong water. The band released a self-titled EP some time after forming, but it wasn’t until 2004′s full-length, Southern Gentlemen, that word came down that there was a new wizard in town.

But, like a wizard is wont to do, Gideon vanished for a few years, appearing only on various tribute albums and compilations. He spent his years in exile dealing with death and cultivating is outlaw way of life, recording some spoken word/poetry stuff on such themes as paganism, the occult, the power of positive thinking, beauty, creativity, and strength, and writing his manifesto, Way of the Outlaw Spirit. Gideon Smith & The Dixie Damned returned to the fold with a six-song EP, Dealin’ Decks, and their second full-length in 2008, South Side of the Moon.

So, what’s Gideon up to now? How goes it in the world of this particular wizard, this rock n’ roll outlaw? What bearded mischief has he been up to? Well, I take council with the man himself, my brother in both wizardry and beard, and we discuss such epic matters as his new album, what it means to be an outlaw, what it means to be a wizard (and how we can’t actually discuss anything to do with wizardry because it’s all top secret), and, of course, beards. There’s even an uncomfortable moment when I mention something about a girl and some chains. This is the stuff you crave, my friend. This is the fable of truth.

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