Saviours
Death’s Procession
Kemado

Saviours’ 2009 album, Accelerated Living, was one of the very first reviews I wrote after launching this blog. Now, almost two years and about 250 reviews later, the Oakland band is back with their fourth full-length, and when most bands at this point find a mature, polished groove in which to fit themselves, Saviours, quite unabashedly, are holding on to that ripped-jean, skate-or-die stoner metal sound like it was the last beer on Earth. The raw, basement-grade quality of Death’s Procession is the perfect platform for the dirge of riffs — both chugging and melodic — on display here; the red-eyed mix of NWOBHM mayhem and slacker thrash come together like an old school stink bomb thrown right into the Grim Reaper’s face. But Saviours only ride the traditional wave so far as the sludgy shore, at which point they stomp around in the wet sand, light a raging fire in some boozy deity’s name, and party all night amid a quagmire of bikers, broads, killers, dealers, and wizards. If we’re both around in another two years and 250 reviews, I guarantee it will be the same damn deplorable business, oh so excellent and brutally bad-ass, because Saviours know no other way in which to excel.

Check out the video for “Crete’n” from Death’s Procession!

This piece of shit movie is supposed to be about disenfranchised teens, the bonds of friendship, and sexual curiosity, blah blah, but I think it’s just an hour and a half of poorly acted, terribly scripted, rape. Or necrophilia, depending on how you want to look at it. First, I couldn’t get past the 20-something actors that are suppose to be high school kids.  It didn’t work on 90210 and it’s not working here. Second, given the averages laid out by this film, 100% of men — sorry, boys — who come across a bound and dead (or near dead) body of a woman aren’t going to try and help her, but are going to fuck her repeatedly. If only the girls at school would just spread their legs, then these guys wouldn’t have to fuck a living corpse, huh? I guess that’s another point this movie is trying to make, so pay attention ladies. And about this dead girl? Well, she’s not really dead in so much as she can’t die. Don’t even bother asking why or how she got that way because that kind of detail isn’t important. The important thing is, she’s naked and not really willing.

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Early Man
Death Potion
The End Records

I just got my wife to sew an Early Man patch on one of my jackets, which is some pinpoint timing, man, because here’s the long awaited new album from Conte & Co. And I do mean long. It’s been five years since their debut full-length, Closing In, and the only thing they’ve bothered to grace us with since that time is 2008′s four song EP, Beware the Circling Fin. But chances are you’re not going to find grace high on the Early Man priority list, especially when there’s a fistful o’ slacking, riffing, and thrashing to reign down on the masses. Death Potion, then, is a full-blooded metal album, the kind of nasty, skate or die, no life ’til leather, parking lot party you grew up puking to, and if I wasn’t losing my hair I’d immediately start growing it out just so I could shave it all off underneath (I believe it’s called “The Newsted”) and run around with balls full of toxic semen, smashing booze bottles and shaving cats. Every one of the twelve songs on the album spray havoc at you like a machine gun in the hands of a disgruntled classmate in a Megadeth shirt and Conte’s genuinely wretched, oft-shrill vox sounds like it’s pouring straight out of a Trans Am tape deck. Despite its obvious nostalgic power, Death Potion is still an anthem for today’s militia of misanthropic youth. That means YOU, Jack, ’cause I’m losing my hair, so go get wasted and blow something up.

Listen to “The Undertaker is Calling You” from Death Potion!