I’m not sure if I was too busy listening to the deluxe reissues of Wild Wonderful Purgatory and Almost Heathen or was convincing myself that Year Long Disaster was the new Karma to Burn, but I completely missed KTB’s return from a nine-year absence last year with their fourth album, Appalachian Incantation. Aside from sounding like the band never took a day off at all, that album just happened to feature the vocal duty of YLD’s Daniel Davies on the song “Waiting on the Western World,” an unusual direction for KTB who’ve taken to staying on that numbered, instrumental path (although they did it again on the limited edition bonus disc by bringing in John Garcia to sing on “Two Times”). Anyway, I think KTB is making up for lost time because just one year later the stoner rock band is back with their aptly-named fifth album, V, and the fact that Davies is also back again singing on three of the album’s eight songs certainly points to a merging of the two bands given that KTB’s Rich Mullins (bass), Will Mecum (guitar), and Rob Oswald (drums) are all part of YLD’s line-up.* Either way, this one’s got the smokin’ goat on the cover, which means it’s been branded a desert storm of punchy riffs and blood boiling grooves, and that’s exactly what you get from “47,” “48,” “49,” “50,” and “51,” in true KTB fashion. But it’s the Davies’ songs, those being “Cynics,” “Jimmy Dean,” and a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Never Say Die,” which stand out — for obvious reasons — like a rampaging giant in the land of the small, and prove that it can’t hurt to tweak a surefire formula every once in awhile, especially when you’re pretty much starting all over again. You know, since I missed it the first time, let me say this now: It’s great to have Karma to Burn back.
*It turns out that Davies is no longer a part of KTB, so they are once again a trio. I don’t know what this means for YLD, though.
Black Wizard Mountain Bitch b/w Jesus 7″
Evergreen Records
It’s not enough anymore to say that Black Wizard are emerging as one of my favourite Canadian bands because that’s an unfair limitation for such a colossal stink of a stoner rock band. The patterns of abject abhorrence displayed by these dirty pastors of pot make ‘em young leaders of wrong morals; the fervor of their foggy franchise gets its momentum from wonderfully sketchy influences, and the wheel is really starting to roll. A hefty sum of hyperbole, sure, but Black Wizard is, flat out, the million dollar beast you want to keep secret lest everyone get hip to its bankable savagery. Truth be told, though, I’m not sure how long the chains would hold. If I was smart, I’d start a label right now and put everything I had into ‘em. Last year’s self-released, self-titled debut was full of raw, thick-necked goodness, and really got me excited about what was to come. Well, as good as their debut was, this here seven inch is better. Its two songs, “Mountain Bitch” and its backside “Jesus,” are huge statements; heavy, high-flyin’ slabs of mature (gasp!) psych-doom that prove the band have found a retro-fuzz sound worth exploring and elevating. Now all that’s left for these dudes to do is ruin the freedom and reap the benefits that come with breaking out. Shouldn’t be long now.
Hot off last year’s remixed and remastered Sasquanaut, Lo-Pan waste very little time dropping a pulsing crate of new songs right on to the collective heads of the Small Stone/stoner rock faithful. That crate, ever heavy and dangerous, is stamped Salvador (go ahead, smile at the cover’s clever rebus), and as best as I can tell was a wartime leftover that once contained a shitload of trinitrotoluene. But like a bunch of fearless jackals, the Ohio quartet have gone and pilfered all that TNT, wrapped it in the blood and crust of last night’s good times, repacked it in atomic dust, and sealed it with a fist. Its demolishing power is off the charts. Its explosive energy knows no limits. Its massive, mind-fuck aplomb is cerebral, not dumb, and the band practically urges us to embrace Salvador‘s surreal shock. I mean, there’s gotta be a reason “Intro” is the sixth song in, right? Anyway, what Lo-Pan does, quite obviously, is destroy, and I’m impressed with their ability to bring Kyuss’ groundbreaking desert rock vibe into the 21st century via soaring, melodic vocals over top of mean, fuzzy, smoky riffs.
Karma to Burn
Black Wizard
Lo-Pan