Hailing from what seems to be the most magical of all rock n’ roll boroughs right now, Brooklyn, Hull represent that geographical body’s brute Hulk force, and one run through their sophomore album, Beyond the Lightless Sky, will leave you wondering how there are any buildings left standing at all in Kings County. Indeed, Hull’s dense, triple-guitar punishment can reduce anything to rubble, but it is amidst the dust and debris that Hull emerges to capture our collective astonishment by drawing us into their more kindly tempered, idyllic post-rock bosom. Of course, we soon realize it’s all a fantastic ruse, the promise of proximate peace nothing more than a lie designed to get us close enough to crush, and sludgy blows rain down upon us once more. Apparently Beyond the Lightless Sky is some sort of concept album about Mayan brothers, so I’ll just go ahead and assume that’s what all the dudes in the band are screaming about, but what does it for me is the way Hull mixes the massiveness of Omega Massif with the lumbering pace of Harvey Milk and then tosses in some mystical solos for good measure. Beyond heavy, man.
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.
Hull
Elks
Bad Dream