Harvey Milk - "A Small Turn of Human Kindness"

Harvey Milk

"A Small Turn of Human Kindness"

(2010)

Hydra Head

Georgia's Harvey Milk may be wickedly brilliant, tectonically huge, and caustically hilarious, but they don't seem all that happy about any of it. Still their ever-present grimace has never felt quite as fixed as it does on their latest, A Small Turn of Human Kindness. Many longtime fans found 2008's Life... The Best Game in Town, which played at times like a sampler of Milk's many past successes, neither weird nor challenging enough, and Small Turn is a sharp shift towards the slow, somber, and fucking bleak. These are moods they've explored plenty in the past, but never with such a single-minded dedication to the downcast.

Small Turn airs its grievances to the tune of near-funereal doom metal; tempos crawl, chords hang in the air like stink, riffs unfurl over many minutes, and frontman Creston Spiers' yowl reaches untold heights of lowness. This sort of grimy dirge-metal isn't new to the Milk lexicon but before, there was at least a glint of levity to offset the withering stare. Nothing about Small Turn suggests anyone is kidding around.

The album is nothing if not deliberate; its musical arc, from the listless ebb of its first third to the more dynamic midsection through to the stirring, hard-fought climax of its last couple of tracks, feels as unified as the record's bearish, behemoth sound. Valleys abound, but there are few peaks. Indeed, this monochromatic record can seem like 45 cheerless minutes all in a row, but the meticulous structure starts to show itself after a few listens, and its most decrepit bits verging on thrilling once you're familiar with them. The album's most electrifying segment comes at the end of half an hour of clamber, when a delicate piano line replaces the bleary guitars and Spiers' voice finally drops from a bellow to a whisper before letting the growl go yet again. For as unshowy and willfully acrimonious as Small Turn gets, there is a level of mastery here that is easy to respect even when it's a little hard to love.

Small Turn's greatest strength is also its primary flaw; they do this particular sort of downtrodden as well as anybody, but given all they're capable of, it's a shame that they limit themselves to such a small sonic palette. Still, it's yet another curiously strong record from one of today's most interesting bands, a worthy successor to their downtrodden pre-hiatus LPs, and one hell of a buzzkill. -P.T.

Download the Full LP HERE

For More Harvey Milk Check HERE

Truckfighters "Gravity X"

Truckfighters

"Gravity X"

(2005)

These Guys Play Stoner Rock Right, with Fuzz Galore and Spaced Out Textures and Trippy Atmospheres that Can Only Be Fully Appreciated Upon a Non-stop Voyage Through the Outer Limits of Gravity X. You've Gotta Really Sit Back and Tune Out When You Listen to this Stuff, as Only Then Will You Really Get Sucked in for the Ride. From the Catchy, Kyuss-flavored Opener "Desert Cruiser" to the Moody, Absurdly Melodic Trippiness of "Momentum" to the Qotsa-like Rolling Barrage of "Freewheelin" to Album Hilite "Manhattan Project" with It's Superb Hooks and Melodies (Another Distant Ode to Qotsa in a Way) and Catchy Guitar Lead Truckfighters is an Instant Stoner Rock Classic.

Download "Gravity X" HERE

Check Out More Truckfighters HERE

If you like it...  BUY IT!!

Another Helping of DOOM... Black Pyramid Enters The Glove

Black Pyramid

"Black Pyramid"

(2009)

This is ALL YOU, PLUMBER!!  Your style of Doom vocals.  Remember.... This GREAT band is one of the "Headliners" of the Doom Fest in Kenosha next year!  I'm getting you ready early. Wow...this post is turning into a joke. 

download the LP HERE

And hows abouts a video for your viewing/listening pleasure...

Check out their sound HERE

Kool Keith - "Matthew"

Kool Keith

"Matthew"

2000

This is a personal favorite of mine.  Hilarity ensues throughout the entire record!  Instant classic in my opinion.  Just let him speak to you...

HERE You Go!  Enjoy.

TORCHE "Songs For Singles" (2010)

Torche

"Songs For Singles"

(2010)

Hydra Head

This is an exclusive advance of the latest Torche EP, "Songs For Singles", due out on 9/21/10.  It is a collection of singles that were previously unreleased.  It's Torche!  You love them! So...Go see them along with, HIGH ON FIRE and KYLESA @ Turner Hall on October 6th, 2010. 

CHEERS!

download "Songs For Singles" HERE

New Tweak Bird LP OUT NOW ON VOLCOM

Tweak Bird

"Tweak Bird"

(2010)

NOT... What I expected.  That's NOT necessarily a bad thing in this case.  Read on...

Everything about the cover art of Tweak Bird‘s eponymous début album screams “hipster rock”. Late seventies/early eighties retro typography? Check. Topless dudes having fun on black and white film (or at least a digital image processed to look like such) while sporting beards and glasses which I’m sure belonged to my father around the time I started primary school? Check. This could be heaven or this could be hell, as The Eagles once sang.

But you know what? Somehow, it works. They get NO PASS from me though.  They're from Chicago. Tweak Bird are a duo, one on drums and one on baritone guitar, and unlike a lot of American Apparel-wearing bands who claim to make “heavy pop music”, these guys really seem to be doing exactly that. It’s dumb and lumpen stuff, sure, but despite the prevailing fashion for deliberate ineptitude as an artistic statement, dumb music can be good fun when it’s done earnestly. Think of early Kyuss, for instance, which was about as heavy as anything else at the time, not to mention brazenly, shamelessly, shit-eating-grinningly dumb… but they pulled it off because they loved the thing they were sending up more than their sending up of it (if that makes any sense). What connects Tweak Bird and Kyuss is that very attitude, I think; rather than skulking about behind basic music skills masquerading as ironic cultural detachment,Tweak Bird are plainly just having a whole shit-load of fun writing daft loud Neanderthal guitar riffs and endearingly naïve and optimistic vocals. Inviting your mate in to doodle around on a saxophone for three minutes at a time (“A Sun / Ahh Ahh”, “Distant Airways”) is probably an added bonus.

YOU be the judge!

download the new Tweak Bird HERE

There's more Tweak Bird on the the bloody glove from a few months back if you need some sort of reference point. 

Black Mountain - "Wilderness Heart" (2010)

Black Mountain

"Wilderness Heart"

(2010)

Wilderness Heart, the new album by Black Mountain, is packed with succinct rock songs that pulse and pound with startling precision: it pummels you and you ask for more. This is arguably the band's tightest, most concentrated venture, but there's still plenty of raw rock energy at work. "It's our most metal and most folk oriented record so far," McBean says. "I'm not gonna say it's our best record or the album that we always dreamt of making 'cause that's what everyone says. It's all about where we were at the time the machines were rolling. You can't control the electricity or how your limbs were moving that day. You have to erase the visions and just go along for the ride."

A little over a year after releasing In The Future, their critically and commercially celebrated sophomore effort, Black Mountain started building Wilderness Heart on the west coast of America. With Randall Dunn at the helm (Sunn O))), Boris), London Bridge Studios in Seattle saw a portion of the construction with songs "Old Fangs," "Let Spirits Ride," and title track "Wilderness Heart" among others. The preponderance of recording was held with D. Sardy in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound, which has captured tracks from The Doors, Ringo Starr, the Rolling Stones, and more. L.A. – with its tacos and sunsets, starlets and hills and post-Deco kitsch – was a considerable inspiration. "Just being under the influence of one's surroundings, as we were while recording in L.A., had a tremendous impact on the process and the way we play. Consequently, the LA sessions have a free and summery vibe. The Seattle sessions, made in the grey, rainy environs that we're used to up there, have a chillier, more claustrophobic feeling," Wells explains.

"It's a Black Mountain pop record, which is to say it's nothing like pop at all," Wells says. "This was the fastest record we've ever made. We're used to spending a lot of time deliberating over the songs and spacing out recording sessions over years. Start to finish, this album was made in four months, which is something like a miracle for us. We've never worked with producers before and that was a challenge; for us to let go and let two outsiders into the process, D. Sardy and Randall Dunn – it took some growing for us to be truly open, but this album is all the better for it."

The band cites a slew of disparate influences – New Order, King Crimson, Studio 54, Alex Chilton, sunshine, Janis Joplin, Please Kill Me, Shirley Collins, Mickey Newbury, jalapeño salsa, Night of The Hunter, Cactus Taqueria, Funky16Corners podcasts, Dennis Wilson, the house blowing up in the desert at the end of Zabriskie Point – but, as Schmidt points out, "Who knows how these things connect with the holistic mix of often dissonant forces that become Black Mountain?"

Indeed: Listen and find out. 

Thanks to "JAGJAG" for the review!

"Wilderness Heart" Track Listing

1. The Hair Song
2. Old Fangs
3. Radiant Hearts
4. Rollercoaster
5. Let Spirit's Ride
6. Buried By The Blues
7. The Way To Gone
8. Wilderness Heart
9. The Space of Your Mind
10. Sadie

download "Wilderness Hearts" HERE

For Tour Dates With THE BLACK ANGELS and more... SEE HERE

Italian Radness. It's VERACRASH "11:11"

Veracrash

"11:11"

(2009)

Let me put this simple, this is the Italian Queens of The Stone Age, I mean, (the last QOTSA, Lullabies& Era Vulgaris) this sounds the a lot like that, well, I think, even better than Era Vulgaris...I'm Fucking blown away by this one..
Thanks Alodesert for sharing.. we got a strong candidate for the "Album of the Year".

Judge for yourself here... 11:11