The Heavy Eyes

Full-on Delta doom from these Heavy Eyes, whose debut full-length is dripping with enough Southern cough syrup to make you forget you’re listening to a stoner rock record. Between the tumbleweed riffs of songs like “Wax Apple” and “Where is Wilder” to the Memphis medicine of songs like “Iron Giants” and “It’s Been So long,” Heavy Eyes slides on through the smoke and takes a midnight sail down the winding river of groove. Of course, this is a stoner rock record, a real lid-dropper, and the fuzzy psych-blues of songs like “5%,” “Voytek,” and “Supermoon” play right into your floating hand, man. A real solid album, this one, and The Heavy Eyes do awfully well to treat you like the custodial prize in the landmark case of Cactus V. Clutch, presided over by judge Fu Manchu in the court of Sabbath. Hell, you just have to have an affinity for bands with ‘leaf’ in their name, and The Heavy Eyes will do right by you.

Listen to The Heavy Eyes’  Heavy Eyes right here!

Skraeckoedlan

There’s no use fighting it; I’m gonna have a new favourite Swedish stoner rock band just about every month. And why not? When a band like Skraeckoedlan (that’s Horror Lizard for those of you desperate for a translation) drops a planet-devouring full-length debut like this one, it’s perfectly reasonable to proclaim the coming of a new fuzzy messiah. You may recall that I was thoroughly impressed with Skraeckoedlan’s 2009 EP Flykten Från Tellus, describing the band at that time as “a trio of northern woodsmen from outer space” whose sound was “medieval, alien dopespeak urging on the psychedelic juggernaut of heavy fuzz that rolls over you like a cosmic tempest,” comparing them to Dozer, Asteroid, Kyuss, Valis, and Los Natas. Well, all of that still stands, but somewhere between now and then (during which time they released the three-track demo Världarnas Fall) the band has grown bolder and more confident, and their sound has progressed from a loose groove to a more precise bludgeoning (although it still grooves, man).  Äppelträdet (The Apple Tree) stands deep-rooted and thick-trunked, its branches offering  the sweet taste of mammoth melody, and each song you pick is bigger and juicer than the next. It’s an abundance of pure heavy, a bushel-full of bottomed-out riffs in which they cover many of the essential stoner sounds, including the green-smoked “Haven,” the space-fried “Doedaroedlan” and “Cactus,” the dual harsh/clean vocals of “Soluppgång,” and the muddy “Chronos,” which will remind you of a whole host of American sludge bands. They even treat us English-speaking weirdos to a few tunes in our native tongue this time around. You know, I kind of hope this month lasts for a really long time because I don’t want to get off Skraeckoedlan’s trip anytime soon. It’s that good.

Listen to “Doedaroedlan” from Äppelträdet!

Gentlemans Pistols

The Gentlemans Pistols are stone cold rollers steeped thigh-high in the foggy bluster of ’72′s hullabaloo who, now four years removed from their self-titled full-length debut, have forged a grin-and-lick-it campaign aimed at monopolizing the gold-dusted, classic rock racket. This enterprise, known simply as At Her Majesty’s Request, is uproariously glorious, and you don’t so much as listen to it as you do walk into its dark and musty den and stare at all the trophy riffs mounted on the wall like 10 point bucks. The UK band’s powerful, hook-filled bombast has picked up a certain amount of intensity in the last few years, which is no doubt due to the addition of guitarist Bill Steer (of Carcass, Napalm Death, and Firebird fame), who joined the group in 2009 and has brought a ferocious emphasis to the Gentlemans’ twin guitar attack (bolstered on the other side by vocalist/guitarist James Atkinson), the likes of which I haven’t heard since I last listened to Pride Tiger or Tricky Woo. What I’m getting at here is that they slay it, plain and simple, and despite the fact that they leave behind a whole pile of incriminating evidence tying them to a conspiracy involving Cactus, Deep Purple, Captain Beyond, Thin Lizzy, and BANG (and, most certainly, booze, drugs, women, and Satan), they’re too good to get caught, and live to rock and flaunt the gaoler all night long.

Listen to “I Wouldn’t Let You” from At Her Majesty’s Pleasure!

San Diego’s Dirty Sweet belong to an emerging group of rock n’ roll revolutionaries, gentlemen prospectors clad in suspenders and dirty boots, returning home from the Gold Rush where they successfully panned along the banks of the country blues river for brilliant Southern rock nuggets. Along with contemporaries The Parlor Mob, Priestbird, The Main Street Gospel, Weird Owl, and (on a popular scale) Kings of Leon, they take the same trail blazed by The Rolling Stones, Cactus, The Allman Brothers, and The Black Crowes to usher in a new wave of forty-niner dust n’ soul known simply as mustache rock. American Spiritual, Dirty Sweet’s second album, is a slice of electric Americana with its fuzzy sights set squarely on the life and times of a country on the tipping point. They’ve even ratcheted up the tension this time around; where the songs on their first album, Of Monarchs and Beggars, were more homely and laid back, the songs on American Spiritual are more aggressive and boss, and come at you like an outlaw posse at high noon (dig “Get Up, Get Out,” “Please Beware,” “Kill or Be Killed,” and “Crimson Cavalry” for the loudest examples). However, this album isn’t without its laid back moments, and songs like “Star-Spangled Glamour,” “An Empty Road,” and “You Don’t Try” are prime examples of Dirty Sweet’s mastery of the front porch, sun-drenched ballad, while the title track is a Gothic gospel number that will haunt you just right. Smile a toothless grin, my friends, because mustache rock lives.

Check out the video for “Marionette” from American Spiritual!

Hell, why stop there? Check out the video for “You’ve Been Warned” from American Spiritual as well!

The Brought Low
Third Record

It’s a rare and celebratory day when a new Brought Low album drops, so stop whatever it is you’re doing, dust off the ol’ beard, summon the buzzards, and grab a pint of glory. The obviously named Third Record is just that, and only in the last ten years, too. Christ, it’s like these fuckers live looser than a goose the day after Thanksgiving, only stumbling out of their Dudeist rock haze once every four or five years to lay a big, bad-ass, bloozy rock record on us. You’ve got to have a whole heap of respect for a band who rocks on THEIR terms, the same way you envy a fat cat sleeping in the sun on a dusty Sunday afternoon. Fuck, you say, I wish I could live/rock like that.

The Brought Low could easily be the undisputed Glam Boogie Kings of New York City if they wanted to be, but in a place where you’ve got to be seen to be somebody, there ain’t too many bright lights shining on the chicken coop of the slow roll. Their riffs flow like molasses, but glitter like stardust, and songs like “Everybody Loves a Whore” and “The Kelly Rose” drop out of the sky like thunder and lightning while others like “A Thousand Miles Away” and “Last Man Alive” float effortlessly on by like clouds in a prairie sky. I don’t know what these boys have been doing with all that time between albums, but they sure as shit haven’t been messing with their tired and true formula of Skynyrd n’ Stones riff n’ roll, of Crowes n’ Cactus rock n’ soul, that’s for damn sure. Internationally speaking, I’d compare them to Canada’s Lions in the Street or England’s The Thieves, but The Brought Low are an all-out, blue collar slice of Americana pleasure pie, and Third Record should fill you up for the next four or five years. I mean, it’s gonna have to, right?

Listen to “The Kelly Rose” from Third Record!

Buy Third Record from Small Stone (when it comes out in May)!