It’s hard to imagine that the Tokyo Dragons, in their brief, two-album career, could have influenced anybody, but here come fellow UK’ers Black Spiders, swingin’ their hot nuts and givin’ me the fear like the Dragons used to do. Of course, it might make more sense to compare the Spiders’ explosive, hi-top arena rock to bands like KISS, AC/DC, and Motörhead (all of whom the band have referenced in their music by way of lyrics or cover songs), and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there’s a Soundgarden, Circus of Power, and Four Horsemen freak in their ranks too, but you know what I’m getting at here: this is music for keg parties, biker rallies, or any event where a hot tub and cocaine are present. Sons of the North is the band’s first full-length after a steady diet of EPs for the last two plus years (The St. Peter EP, Cinco Hombres [Diez Cojones], and No Goats in the Omen) and thumps its chest so loud and proud it bruises the heart deep inside. Old fans of the band will notice some familiar bite in the previously released songs “Stay Down,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “St. Peter”, but the way the album seamlessly weaves eye-lined sleaze rock excitement (“KISS Tried to Kill Me,” “Easy Peasy,” “What Good’s a Rock Without a Roll?”) with bearded stoner rock bullying (“Blood of the Kings,” “Man’s Ruin,” “Si, El Diablo”) is a mouthful of deliciously bloody meat you’ll want to feast on for a long time to come. Pull this one out at the next hot tub biker keg party rally you attend and you’ll find yourself fighting and fucking the night away, guaranteed.
Check out the video for “Just Like a Woman” from Sons of the North (even though this video was shot when they released the song on No Goats in the Omen)!
Those inevitable three year gaps that Electric Wizard puts between albums are always a heavy burden, man. There are very few bands I crave mind, beard, and soul, and England’s preeminent merchants of DOOM are one of ‘em, so when that seemingly infinite wait finally comes to an end, it’s a crushing exaltation. Thus Black Masses, the band’s seventh, has been received, and it doesn’t waste any time ripping into your psyche with the hyper-fuzzed “Black Mass” and Venus in Furs” before slowing down on “The Nightchild” to feast on what’s left of your mangled being. The rest of the album continues on in this relentlessly ritualistic, utterly dope, serpentine fashion, all while Jus Oborn faithfully wails away from some mid-level purgatory wasteland while tortured souls claw at his throat. It’s a brutally weird and noisy ensemble at times, punctuated by the unusually acid-fried “Turn Off Your Mind” and the thematic interplay with 2007’s Witchcult Today, courtesy of the album’s longest, most menacing song, “Satyr IX” (see “Saturnine”), and the stormy, brooding, frenzied feedback of “Crypt of Drugula” (see “Satanic Rites of Drugula”). It feels awfully good to be in the deathly embrace of the Wizard riff once again.
Refusing to pine over the recent demise of his old band, Josiah, Mat Bethancourt is back in action with his royal Frog Island cohorts, serving up another heavy spread of witchy stoner rock as though it’s a sumptuous feast for harlots, heathens, and anyone who celebrates the anarchy of heresy. The Kings have always preferred the power of a crooked staff in their hand to that of a sledgehammer, as evidenced by their strong, wizardly psych-rock leanings, but will on occasion drop some sinister fuzz on you like a bucket of hot oil, which they do here courtesy of “Glebe Street Whores” and “Bride of Suicide.” The rest of the time though it’s all macabre mysticism and serpentine slumbering, a cosmic soul n’ doom that’s as wide open and beautiful as it is thick and smoky, with the deliriously dichotic “More Than I Should Know,” “Ode to Baby Jane,” and “A Cruel Wind Blows” the best of the black sky ballads. III is utterly dope in its romanticism of death, and is music for the gallows so that the bodies can dance.
Black Spiders
Electric Wizard
The Kings of Frog Island