Invernal, the fourth full-length from Bay Area duo Black Cobra, is every bit the cracked teeth, world swallowing, gaping Hell mouth I expected it to be, but the urgency and desire with which I have embraced its festering lips and drank in its putrid stench has surprised even me. The visceral battery of sludge Rafa Martinez (drums) and Jason Landrian (guitar and vocals) unleash sounds like Matt Pike taking a rusty-chained whipping from Kerry King and Tom Araya — and there’s only two of ‘em! Whether it’s Kurt Ballou’s production work or the band’s overwhelming desire to harness the force of charging thunder into suffocating black riffs, Invernal pounds out eight cuts of unrelenting rotten roll much braver, louder, and nastier than any Black Cobra album that’s come before. This here is proof that sludge doesn’t have to be prosaic, that it can attack you like a zombie ape and bite your fucking head off.
The brothers Bird, the oft-shirtless duo from Illinois or outer-space, I can’t remember which, have returned with a proper full-length (as opposed to 2008′s seven-song Reservations), self-titled and much ado about everything. The knotty fuzz Tweak Bird is able to strangle out of drums and a baritone guitar is impressively grotesque; pair that with gamma ray vocals, some saxophone and flute, an appropriate obsession with Marc Bolan, and the knob-noodlin’ skills of the Deaf Nephews (Dale Crover of Melvins and Toshi Kasai of Big Business) and you get ten heavy, spacey, progressive pop blasts influenced by all the necessary evils. Tweak Bird’s design is such that they eliminate the need to linger, spoof glam over jam, and even though they offer two of their longest songs to date (“A Sun/Ahh Ahh” and “Distant Airways”), they still microwave the hell out of the stoner mandate and stomp all over the stardust. This album is as weird as it is wonderful — an outlier, a rare breed.
Check out the videos for “Lights in Lines” and “A Sun/Ahh Ahh” from Tweak Bird!
Throned in Blood, Jucifer’s seventh album, sees married, nomadic duo Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood at what is perhaps their most savage, which is really something when you consider the sheer amount of LOUD these two volume dealer’s put into everything they do. I mean, this one is utterly UNHOLY, dude, as close as they’ve come to making a black metal album, really, and makes ’08′s L’Autrichienne sound like an afternoon tea party. Christ, any one of their six albums prior to this one had a handful of graceful, and I dare say pretty, moments, but this one is just ruthless and barbaric (don’t let the album’s last track, “Armageddon,” fool you, it may be soft but it’s still barbaric). If you ever thought Jucifer had a tendency to sound like the Melvins, just listen to a song like “Hiroshima” (or any of ‘em, hell) because now they sound like the Melvins on a more nuclear scale. If I didn’t already know that Amber is capable of softening things up every now and then I would assume she received a throat transplant courtesy of the Devil himself and is now abusing that vocal prowess like it owes her six months rent…and its first born. Jucifer is a multiple ear plug band on the best of days, but with Throned in Blood you’re going to want to encase your head in cement and pray that the boiling, rotten, and AWESOME energy pouring out of this one doesn’t penetrate your cold, grey fortress of solitude and disintegrate your fucking skull.
Black Cobra
Tweak Bird
Jucifer