Set the Dial is the fourth full length from Savannah metal heads Black Tusk, and if you’ve had the pleasure of hearing either of their latter two, Passage Through Purgatory or Taste the Sin, you know exactly the kind of sludge covered punk you’re about to receive (John Dyer Baizley artwork and all). You see, like its predecessors, Set the Dial rumbles its way through murky swamp and crusty gutter to get to where you feel most safe and comfortable only to heap a hell of a lot of petulance and abrasive screams onto you. That being said though, as crumbling, noise-driven attacks, Black Tusk’s earlier efforts thrived on destruction, where Set the Dial‘s objective seems to be one aimed at rebuilding, at harnessing the rust-stained chaos in order to rise to loftier heights. They do this through the coy use of groove, which lays in wait on table-setter “Brewing the Storm” and then busts through the muck and mire to take over songs like “Mass Devotion,” “Set the Dial to Your Doom,” “Resistor,” and “This Time is Divine,” making Set the Dial‘s riff-driven focus the main, albeit subtle, point of difference. At the end of the day though, it’s another grease-charged album of Georgian origin, and one could spend an entire month getting filthy, high, and in trouble listening to Black Tusk and their mates of state, Zoroaster, Kylesa, Mastodon, and Baroness.
Just a year and a half after releasing the awesome Static Tensions, Kylesa is back with Spiral Shadow, a layered and darker take on their three-headed, four-armed, crossover brand of Savannah sludge metal. Bulldozing stoner rock convention with an alt-psych approach to riffing that swirls around you like a tempest of exotic head winds, the eleven songs on Spiral Shadow contain calculated Mastodon-like breakdowns, Torche-minded melodies, and a pure, state-sanctioned heaviness also shared by fellow Georgians Zoroaster and Blacktusk. Five albums in and Kylesa seem to be hitting their meteoric stride, and Spiral Shadow is as chaotic, complex, current, and crucial as they come.
Like an ancient call from deep within the foggy halls of some floating, forgotten, and fervent cosmic temple of metallurgy, the songs on Zoroaster’s third full-length, Matador, swim between sludge-drenched doom, nerve-rattling drone, and psych-metal mayhem, creating one bastard of a heavy, hypnotic ride. This isn’t just music you hear, buddy, this is music you see. It pulses and surges like a snake swallowing a beehive, it moves in nocturnal, amphibious rhythms, it explodes and flows like an active volcano. On previous efforts, Dog Magic and Voice of Saturn, Zoroaster stayed the low-end course of doom, rarely varying from the path of heaviest resistance, but Matador sees the Atlanta trio free-forming their way through meditative expanses of earth-swallowing sound and noise. Dig the title track, “D.N.R.,” “Odyssey” and “Old World” for the freakiest, Om meets Kyuss examples, while the songs “Ancient Ones,” “Trident,” and “Black Hole” spit out those classic Zoroaster riffs, which sound like High on Fire wallowing in a tub of fuzz. This is a potent, mesmerizing, and audacious heavy metal album, my friends, and tailor-made for anyone with a beard.
Black Tusk
Kylesa
Zoroaster