There are times — not many, but a few — when I sit down to write about an album and know I’m not going to need to pull out my gonzo rock n’ roll thesaurus in order to spin my praise. This is one of those times. As one friend recently stated, “Mark Lanegan has no peers,” and, really, what more needs to be said? The musician’s work with The Screaming Trees, Gutter Twins, Isobel Campbell, Soulsavers, and others is well documented, but the landscape he’s laid out with his solo work is incredibly gorgeous and virtually untouchable. The majority of his recorded solo material is deep, dark, and gracefully tortured, but where the albums he’s released as just Mark Lanegan present it in a softer form, the Mark Lanegan Band turns it up and wraps it in a whole bunch of grit, fuzz, and noise. It’s been eight years since their only other album, 2004′s Bubblegum, but Blues Funeral picks right up where that one left off, turning drum machine chaos, savory sequencing, bluesy rhythms, and a malady of melody into something emotionally gripping and powerfully rock n’ roll. Of course, as with anything Lanegan does, it’s his voice that is the star, and Blues Funeral is no exception. His voice could sell me my own death and I’d buy it. And at least I’d be at peace knowing I’ve got an amazing soundtrack for the long, slow walk down. No one does it better.
Check out the video for “The Gravedigger’s Song” from Blues Funeral!
Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction We Are Volsung
SPV/Steamhammer
Dripping with pure gonzo rock action, Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction have endured decades of decadence, befouling the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll idiom with a more dangerous brand of sex, far deadlier drugs, and a nastier, sleazier style of rock n’ roll. Led by the tattooed beat messiah himself, Mark Manning, artist, wordsmith, and debauched raconteur, and guitarist Cobalt Stargazer, the Duffy to Manning’s Astbury, Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction have earned a cult following by pushing a larger than life libido up the tailpipe of any teenage runaway (girl or boy…they don’t discriminate) hungry for a backseat education. We Are Volsung then, the band’s sixth full-length, is every bit the riff riot you’ve come to expect from these vaudeville villains, liquor-drenched, leather-chapped viking rock, hard charging and chest thumping, with more of a nod to Norse mythology than back alley hi-jinx. Man, with classic, unbeatable songs like the title track, “Stark Von Oben,” “We Ride,” and “White Trash,” as well as the mean-boned rattlesnake slide of “Kill A Mockingbird,” who cares if Turbonegro ever gets their shit sorted out. And if you’re worried that Manning and Stargazer might be getting long in the tooth, don’t, because they continue to surround themselves with young destroyers with names like Jack Shitt and The Cat, and they can still sink each one of their pearly switchblades deep into your flesh and make you love every minute of it.
I don’t know if Gozu got their name from the bizarro Japanese film or not but I’m just gonna go ahead and assume they did because it makes ‘em that much better, brother. Grand theater of perversion and fear? You better believe it. Some of the song titles on Locust Season, their Small Stone debut, read like a ransom note cut from a 1980s TV Guide (“Regal Beagle,” “Kam Fong As Chin Ho,” and “Jan-Michael Vincent”) while some could be contents found in any serial killer’s tickle trunk (“Meth Cowboy,” “Jamaican Luau,” and “Meat Charger”). They might as well be singing about Yakuza attack dogs or bottles of breast milk or a soup ladle up the ass is what I’m getting at here, man, and with the lo-desert chicanery blasting away behind it all, I feel like all four walls are closing in on me fast and hard. The whole damn deal is raw, reeks of rancid rubber, and is as rough n’ tumble as a Boston bar brawl. Imagine a heavier Queens of the Stone Age with the sun-kissed flavour of Fu Manchu, the motorcycle madness of Valis, and the time traveling blues of Orange Goblin, and you’ve got yourself the gonzo glory of Gozu. A dope album in every sense of the word.
Mark Lanegan Band
Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction
Gozu