Yes, Rising’s To Solemn Ash was released last year overseas, but since this here is its North American release, I don’t feel tardy in telling you all about its sludgy goodness, dig? Following a four-song EP in 2009 and a 7″ single in 2010, To Solemn Ash finds the Danish trio finally putting a massive effort into a full-length, and oh what a monumental design it be. As though guardians of some Copenhagen castle, gargoyles perched high in the blackest of skies, Rising preside over the kingdom of heavy with a stony, melodic glare. The swirling storm that is To Solemn Ash swells with opener “Mausoleum,” its dark, corpse-painted intro-riffing eerily akin to Behemoth’s “Ov Fire and the Void,” but as the album thunders on, it comes to pass that Rising were not born of the extreme black, but that they are, in fact, doomed descendants of the Baroness bloodline. So they carry themselves accordingly throughout, beset by beasts both basilisk and sharp-toothed hound, themselves grotesque creatures commanding a thick rush of temper-metal weather and spreading brutally fancy dread.
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!
Sunday night, for most people, is a night reserved for honest, relaxed leisure. Perhaps you like to get your ducks in a row and prepare for the week ahead, or perhaps you like to enjoy a bowl of vanilla ice cream with raspberry topping and chocolate shavings, or perhaps you like to turn out the lights, curl up on the couch, and watch a movie. If you’re really lucky, there’s hardly any ducks to line up, the ice cream is extra tasty, and the movie you’ve decided to watch isn’t Taxidermia. That’s right — isn’t — because if it is, boy, your evening of honest, relaxed leisure has suddenly been cruelly disrupted by a movie so grotesque it’ll turn you off of Sunday nights for a long time to come. Hell, this 2006 Hungarian film by György Pálfi will turn you off of life for a long time to come if you decide to dance with it, so I guess my warning to you is this: If you care about your Sundays at all, watch It’s Complicated or The Young Victoria or something equally safe. But, if your beard craves the bizarre, if it desires depravity (and it doesn’t mind subtitles), then Taxidermia will gladly ruin the rest of your week…and then some.
Rising
Tweak Bird
