In the first movie, you’ve got these six chicks, all of ‘em adrenaline junkies, who take a vacation in the Appalachian Mountains to go cave diving. Although it’s more like cave crawling, because these are unexplored caves without much room, see, and since the goal of these movies, as much as I can gather, is to make you squirm one way or another, they lean heavily on the claustrophobic button. So there they are, crawling through rocky cracks deep in the Earth’s belly, in these unmarked, unexplored caves (because that’s more of a thrill despite the fact that no one knows where you are) with dust, debris, and water falling all around them. They don’t really know where the hell they’re going, so they just keep making their way deeper and deeper. Then there’s a mini avalanche of some sort and their only way out has just been cut off. The rocks also fell on one of their equipment bags; the one with the rope, so that’s a major setback. Anyway, this shit goes on for about an hour, and will only really make you uncomfortable if you hate the dark and have a major fear of being trapped in a small space. Or buried alive. For everyone else it’s 60 minutes of watching six women crawl around in caves. But then, finally, the cave monsters show up.
Ufomammut’s fifth album, Eve, is one chilling 45 minute possession separated into five movements, and its affection is wholly and shamelessly UNGODLY. When the music isn’t whispering to you in forked tongues and taunting you with an unnerving drone, it’s driving the heavy, black riff of DOOM right through your frayed soul. It’s a hellish soundscape of caverns and creatures in cloaks, punctuated by crimson spasms of cosmic catastrophe. What I’m getting at here is that this album is the aural equivalent of what would be going through your mind if you sliced open your inner thigh and watched the blood slowly drain out of your body until the darkness enveloped you, and should finally earn these evil Italians their own spot in the amp-worshiping cabal alongside monolithic motherfuckers like OM, Sunn O))), Earth, Boris, and the rest. Unkind stuff, man.
Yeah, that’s right, Vancouver’s Bison B.C.’s new album, Dark Ages, kicks off with horns, and I’m not just talking about goat horns or Devil horns, son. No, I’m talking about French horns and trumpets, and if you think that kind of high brow musicianship seems unusual coming from a stoner metal band, you’d be right. Here’s the thing, though. Bison B.C. don’t sound like a stoner metal band so much anymore and that bit with the horns is just their way of channeling the war cry of a battle hymn and the death and darkness of a funeral dirge into a growling, seven song assault of angry riffs and underworld anarchy. Where Earthbound and Quiet Earth held us on this particular plane in the raw n’ strong grip of a thick-chested, heavy-bearded mountain man, Dark Ages now binds our hands and feet with snakes and drags us down into the ash and brimstone of Hell’s half acre so we can do Satan’s evil bidding. As heavy and black as this album is, however, it’s still the product of slackers (I mean that in the best possible way), and as such it’s not without its tongue-in-cheek moments (“Melody, This is For You”), its alcoholic allegiance (“Two-Day Booze”), and the continuation of the Wendigo saga (“Wendigo Pt. 3 [Let Him Burn]”). So, yeah, it’s a bit of a dark departure for Bison B.C. this time around, but that just means they now sound like High on Fire with twin guitars, and that’s pretty fucking awesome.
Listen to/watch a not-so-great sounding version of “Two-Day Booze” from Dark Ages!
In the first movie, you’ve got these six chicks, all of ‘em adrenaline junkies, who take a vacation in the Appalachian Mountains to go cave diving. Although it’s more like cave crawling, because these are unexplored caves without much room, see, and since the goal of these movies, as much as I can gather, is to make you squirm one way or another, they lean heavily on the claustrophobic button. So there they are, crawling through rocky cracks deep in the Earth’s belly, in these unmarked, unexplored caves (because that’s more of a thrill despite the fact that no one knows where you are) with dust, debris, and water falling all around them. They don’t really know where the hell they’re going, so they just keep making their way deeper and deeper. Then there’s a mini avalanche of some sort and their only way out has just been cut off. The rocks also fell on one of their equipment bags; the one with the rope, so that’s a major setback. Anyway, this shit goes on for about an hour, and will only really make you uncomfortable if you hate the dark and have a major fear of being trapped in a small space. Or buried alive. For everyone else it’s 60 minutes of watching six women crawl around in caves. But then, finally, the cave monsters show up.
Ufomammut
Bison B.C.