C’mon
The Mountain
Yeah Right! Records

The Mountain, the new four-song 10″ from C’mon, Canada’s premiere bleary-eyed bastards of fuzz, kicks off with the longest, most ambitious song the band has ever laid down. Until now, the seven-minute track “Fortress of the Night” from 2010′s Beyond the Pale Horse held that distinction, but this here title track, which commands all of side A, clocks in just shy of 12 minutes, and reaches an epic and dangerous precipice the band had only previously admired from afar. C’mon has built an outstanding reputation as a band that can move a mountain by sheer rawk force alone, but this time they do us one better and scale the entire fucking thing in a burnt-out van, blowing dirty exhaust the entire way, planting their tattered flag at the top when they land. What they unleash on the world below is a spacey rumble of arena bravado and prog-crunch, a steady build-up of monolithic metal like a giant analog amp rising up from behind the fires of the sun. Musically, “The Mountain” is more dense and layered than anything C’mon has done in the past* and that kind of studio presence/trickery continues as the band bounds on down the back side in its usual muddy-riffed fashion, turning thrusters on high and heavy with “It’s Alright,” the wonky instrumental “The Grunge,” and a cover of The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses,” a pretty weird beard song to begin with that is given a special kind of supercharged Blurtonian treatment here. Okay, I know you’re waiting for me to say it, so here it is: C’mon does it again.

*Singer/guitarist Ian Blurton has said in an interview that at one point in the song there are two versions of the band playing against each other, so two drum kits, two basses, and about 25 guitars, which he called a tribute to Voivod’s Piggy and Thin Lizzy’s Gary Moore.

Listen to “The Grudge” from The Mountain!

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!

Lecherous Gaze
Lecherous Gaze
Tee Pee

Fresh off their split with Danava and Earthless (review here), Oakland’s Lecherous Gaze take a less-than-fresh approach in re-releasing their 2010 four-song EP, Audio Testament, as a self-titled Tee Pee debut. A re-release usually means better production and mixing, but, much to the band’s credit, there’s not too much evidence of that found here because these songs still sound like they were recorded in a room full of tin garbage cans and shag carpeting. Lecherous Gaze contains the kind of kick-out-the-jams fuzz n’ roll that could only be made by flophouse orphans who spent their wasted youth picking scabs, bumming cigarettes, flipping through muscle car magazines and the thick-bushed pages of Playboys from the early 70s, and listening to AC/DC, The Ramones, MC5, and Thin Lizzy records. Of course, that’s probably due in large part to the fact that singer Lakis Panagiotopulos blows into the mic like Joey Ramone or Phil Lynott with dying batteries, and that the groovy punk rock riffs on “Phaze,” “Sold,” and “R’n'R Lust” are so raw, sweaty, and delicious you can practically taste ‘em (the ones on “Graveyard” are so bluesy you can practically feel ‘em), but then what good is an electric cock sandwich if it’s not smothered in classic righteous sauce, huh? The whole thing is damn downright dirty and four songs just isn’t enough. I want more and you will too.

Listen to “Phaze” from Lecherous Gaze!