Big Business
Quadruple Single
Gold Metal

About three years ago the dastardly duo of Jared Warren and Coady Willis brought in Toshi Kasai on guitar to, I suppose, fill out the Big Business sound. Frankly, I didn’t think there was anything Big Business needed to do because the heavy racket created by the bass and drums of Warren and Willis, respectively, was colossally fuzzy and beyond reproach. Well, now they’ve added a second guitarist, Scott Martin (400 Blows, Crom), to the payroll, giving this hydra one more head, and while the implications are this makes the beast all the more ferocious, it’s not entirely the case. What the four songs on this new EP, Quadruple Single (released on their own Gold Metal Records label), offer are heightened dynamics and structure, which, when talking about Big Business, might not inspire much confidence. However, Big Business are, and always will be, ruthless ogres, and so long as Warren continues to sing like he’s gnawing on the skull of every sweaty, bleeding-ear drunkard in the front row, you won’t have reason to lose confidence in ‘em. The band is at their best when they’re pummeling you black and bruised with thick cudgels of sludge, and there’s plenty of that kind of low-end love on board here, especially on “City Ham” and “Guns” (‘Guns are better than everything else!’). If anything, all the fret-raping screeches and squeals take some getting used to, and while “Always Never Know When to Quit” contains a turbulently gorgeous melody and “Ice-Cold War” places an unusual emphasis on the riff, they don’t reach through the speakers and tear your head from your neck. Big Business songs used to do that. At least half of ‘em do here; the others just slap you around a bit.

Listen to “City Ham” from Quadruple Single!

Gentlemans Pistols
At Her Majesty’s Pleasure
Rise Above

The Gentlemans Pistols are stone cold rollers steeped thigh-high in the foggy bluster of ’72′s hullabaloo who, now four years removed from their self-titled full-length debut, have forged a grin-and-lick-it campaign aimed at monopolizing the gold-dusted, classic rock racket. This enterprise, known simply as At Her Majesty’s Request, is uproariously glorious, and you don’t so much as listen to it as you do walk into its dark and musty den and stare at all the trophy riffs mounted on the wall like 10 point bucks. The UK band’s powerful, hook-filled bombast has picked up a certain amount of intensity in the last few years, which is no doubt due to the addition of guitarist Bill Steer (of Carcass, Napalm Death, and Firebird fame), who joined the group in 2009 and has brought a ferocious emphasis to the Gentlemans’ twin guitar attack (bolstered on the other side by vocalist/guitarist James Atkinson), the likes of which I haven’t heard since I last listened to Pride Tiger or Tricky Woo. What I’m getting at here is that they slay it, plain and simple, and despite the fact that they leave behind a whole pile of incriminating evidence tying them to a conspiracy involving Cactus, Deep Purple, Captain Beyond, Thin Lizzy, and BANG (and, most certainly, booze, drugs, women, and Satan), they’re too good to get caught, and live to rock and flaunt the gaoler all night long.

Listen to “I Wouldn’t Let You” from At Her Majesty’s Pleasure!

Sons of Tonatiuh
Sons of Tonatiuh
Hydro Phonic Records

Real nasty spawn, these Sons of Tonatiuh, born under a bridge in the worst part of Atlanta, left to muckrake a miserable existence from wee hellions with pockets full of coal to teenage pariahs with duffel bags full of stolen goods, now barely alive, toothless and hungry, channeling their anti-social behaviour into a rent-by-the-hour racket. This here self-titled full-length debut is what happens when street urchins demand to be heard; ugly, crusty, disease-ridden doom that’s lost all sense of control and shoved a twisted scrap of sheet metal into your leg just to get at that moldy, half-eaten sandwich in your pocket. Socially morbid, squeegee-bleed, spastic death metal with the rank odor of sewer water, fetching flies and whores, holding dominion over the unseen, chemically ruined, appalling and bloated rot, lecherous companion to all kinds of Black Cobras, Weedeaters, and Scum. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Listen to “From Ashes” from Sons of Tonatiuh!