The Kings of Frog Island
III
Elektrohasch

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.

Listen to “A Cruel Wind Blows” from III!

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.

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#4 Mastodon – Crack the Skye

Are Mastodon the best heavy metal band in the ’00s? Maybe. Just maybe. If not, they’re definitely right up there and all these “new wave” metal bands that I listen to today have certainly taken some cues from the mighty Mastodon. They bring it all to the table: power, technique, melody, riffage, beard, and unholy mountain madness. They’ve never faltered, never failed — not for one album, not for one song. Where previous efforts saw the band taking giant, crushing strides over land and sea, Crack the Skye is a cosmic hellfire, an astral, spiritual journey right into the centre of oblivion. Mastodon’s long, strange tales have conquered every plane and this, their last release of the decade, proves once again that they also conquer the metal world.

Check out the video for “Oblivion” from Crack the Skye!

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