Well, maybe the Western Australian rockers aren’t crossing the line here, unless it’s the line between what is a stoner rock video and what isn’t. Not much question which side of that line they’re on. The clip features footage from the 1978 film Cosy Cool, full of wheelies and biker dudes and a little bit of cultish violence at the end there for good measure. Can’t leave that out.

The song, “Broken White Line,” is also catchy as hell, and one of the most memorable from The Devil Rides Out‘s The Heart and the Crown, which was reviewed earlier this year. Dig it and the subsequent PR wire informations:

The genesis of the clip came about when a member of the band won a beat up old VHS copy of the 1970s Australian biker flick Cosy Cool at a local cult video night. Coming across this vintage grindhouse obscurity felt like destiny somehow and the band set about scouring the internet in search of the filmmakers — not easy some 35 years later. They eventually managed to track down Gary Young, the director/star of the film, who was initially reluctant to licence the film for a video clip but was won over when he received a copy of the song.

The resulting video is an affectionately grimey tribute to a bygone drive-in era of “ozploitation” cinema, backed by a high-octane soundtrack courtesy of The Devil Rides Out. Among other things it features a cameo appearance from the Commanchero Motorcycle Club — many of whom would end up either deceased, injured or in prison several years later in the wake of the infamous Milperra Massacre.

The Devil Rides Out are currently holed up over the southern summer, writing material for album number two, set for release in the second half of 2012. They support Dead Meadow (US) and Pink Mountaintops in Perth on Saturday, April 7, at The Bakery.

Australian three-piece Looking Glass made their debut in 2006 with a self-titled offering of heavy riffs and low-bottom grooves. It was a solid first showing, had some potential, and was ultimately up-front in what it was trying to achieve – riffing out, tossing in some psych. The follow-up, 2007’s 2, was also self-released and expanded greatly the psychedelic flourishes, pushing to the fore a jammed sensibility that the first outing didn’t have. It too was more a showing of potential, though, and listening to this year’s III, it seems as though Looking Glass – guitarist/vocalist Marcus de Pasquale, bassist/vocalist/keyboardist Lachlan Paine and drummer Clinton Paine – have spent the last four years making sure the potential they showed their last two times out started paying off. In short, it worked. III – the switch to Roman numerals being evident in the digipak artwork – blends the approaches of Looking Glass’ two prior releases, focusing in its earlier tracks on riffy drive and rhythmic crunch, and then gradually shifting into more spacious and expansive elements, more than doubling the runtime of songs like the catchy “Electric Mistress” or “Child of Vertigo” with the massive closing duo “Wizard of the Skull” (12:05) and “The King in Yellow” (11:07).

But for the smoothness of the transition by which that shift takes place, III would almost certainly be following a vinyl structure. Rather, it seems to be that rare thing these days: a CD actually meant to be a CD. The 49 minutes have a linear pattern, so that as “Child of Vertigo” (4:46) gives way to the transitional “Spiral Altar” (8:47), there’s less of a jump than there might be if, say, you were meant to flip a record from one side to the other. That said, the last two tracks are just about two minutes shorter than the five preceding, and that time can be largely accounted for in the acoustic interlude “Shores of Carcosa,” which divides opener “Heavy on the Hook” and “Electric Mistress” from “Child of Vertigo” and “Spiral Altar,” so maybe it could go either way. In any case, Looking Glass do well with the compact disc structure, and the progression of their songs is carried across without sounding forced or losing the momentum built by the first several tracks. To that end, “Heavy on the Hook” lives up to its name as the launch for III. Undeniably riff-based, it finds Marcus shouting far back in the mix behind Clinton’s propulsive drumming and righteously thick fills from Lachlan. At about halfway through, the groove opens up, Lachlan hits the wah and things go full-stoner, which serves as a solid lead-in for “Electric Mistress,” which is III’s best chorus and most classic jam. Marcus unrepentantly noodles through a solo and Sabbathian transitions smoothly executed by the Paines lead the way back into the song’s inevitable finish. By the time “Shores of Carcosa” comes on with a bit of finger, the breather is appreciated.

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Noise-infected Aussie five-piece Whitehorse specialize in the kind of death/doom that’s so lurching and massive in its brown metal tonality that it sounds slow even on the few occasions the band decides to speed things up. The Melbourne, Victoria, group have released enough live albums and EPs since 2005 to be called prolific, but the sludge-grooving Progression (Sweat Lung Records) is only their second full-length in that time, following a 2007 self-titled released by 20 Buck Spin. At a vinyl-ready 38 minutes, Progression is preceded in 2011 by the Document: 250407 EP, and a split with Rhode Island avant doomers The Body has already followed, but the album was clearly made to stand on its own, and it does, inflicting its dreary, darkened atmospherics well beyond the point of oppression. Whitehorse – guitarist Adrian Naudi (ex-The Berzerker), bassist Pete McLean, drummer Dan McKay, noise-maker David Coen and vocalist Peter Hyde – delve into the depths of viciousness, the ultra-slow riffing providing some groove that, again, is more prominent in the faster stretches, but still holds firm to some doom-based ideals and sets a firm ground for Hyde to launch his all-out brutal vocal assault in the forms of death growls and blackened metal screams that play well off each other on songs like the later “Time Worm Regression.”

Nothing polarizes quite like harsh vocals. Some people just can’t take it. I’m not one of them. If you can scream or growl effectively, fit with the rhythm and the atmosphere set by the music, then I’m all for it, and as far as that goes, Hyde has a handle on both technique and presentation. His growls echo over McKay’s crashes and the thudding riffs of Naudi and McLean, sounding disenfranchised and inhuman at the same time. Given Australia’s history of death/doom (dISEMBOWELMENT walks by and waves), Whitehorse aren’t exactly innovative, but they do what they do well, and Coen’s added noises and electronics do much to distinguish the band from others of their ilk. At their heart, they are unrelentingly heavy, and as the five tracks of Progression – “Mechanical Disintegration,” “Progression,” “Control, Annihilate,” “Time Worn Regression” and “Remains Unknown” – play out, Whitehorse’s blend of sludge and death/doom becomes even more effective, until finally the same plodding drums that introduced “Mechanical Disintegration” lead the way out of the 10:45 “Remains Unknown.” Hyde is a big part of that heaviness, since he never wavers in the filthiness of his approach, but each member of the band plays a part, including Coen, whose presence is immediately felt on the opener, playing off McKay’s drums with echoing rhythmically-timed noises of his own. There is a sense of foreboding about the opening of Progression, and Coen is a big factor in it.

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A death/doom outfit in the gloomy and mournful tradition, Subterranean Disposition (website here) is comprised of one man: Terry Vainoras. The Melbourne, Australia, native has played in acts like Insomnius Dei and The Eternal, and with Subterranean Disposition (one can only assume someone out there calls the band SubDis, whether it’s Terry himself or not), he explores the sorrowful aspects of European-style metallic melodrama.

Very European-style, actually. The song Vainoras has uploaded to Subterranean Disposition’s SoundCloud page shows a heavy My Dying Bride influence, particularly in the vocals, which in their spoken parts are more acted out than sung. Ranging musically from heavy thuds and expressions of an Iliad of woes to the open space that sampled ocean waves provide, the song “The Most Subtle of Storms” moves deftly between its parts and offers a considerable taste of what Vainoras has to offer.

Helping the song in that respect is that it’s almost 15 minutes long. Taken from Subterranean Disposition’s upcoming self-titled full-length, it’s rougher production-wise than most Eurodoom these days (one generally thinks of something lush and elaborate, and Vainoras isn’t there yet), which gives it a feel tossing back to the ’90s earlier days of the genre sound-wise with the complexity of the modern style. There are some kinks yet to be worked out in terms of the mix (at least until the saxophone kicks in; it’s smooth sailing from there), but here’s “The Most Subtle of Storms” from Subterranean Disposition’s Subterranean Disposition:

Priding themselves on their genre-blending approach, all-caps double-guitar Aussie four-piece AVER start off psychedelic on their self-titled, self-released full-length. Don’t be fooled, though: it’s not long before they’re kicking into some riff-driven grunge, vocalist/guitarist Burdt digging in deep and coming out with Nirvana-style vocals and the occasional well-placed scream. The sound resulting is vaguely stoner — if the first Snail album was, anyway — and cuts like “Real Eyes” set the varying elements of their sound directly against each other without coming off like an indiscernible mash.

The moody “Retreat to Space” is underscored by far-back drumming and ambient guitar lines before picking up into one of AVER‘s more potent grooves, and the payoff in the later “Stoneage Wasteland” proves to be worth the wait of the build prior. Their ’90s feel might be the most cohesive element in AVER‘s sound — right down to the mostly-unplugged closer “Phantom Limb” — since everything else they do comes across as building off that, but the blend is most definitely their own, and as a fan of rock from corners of the planet far from my own, it was a thrill to have them reach out and ask me to take a listen.

And since I’m digging their tunes this afternoon, I thought you might as well. They have some songs streaming on their Thee Facebooks page, but I hit up their Soundcloud and came back with this:

Wow. I guess if you don’t read this site regularly, that headline makes no fucking sense whatsoever. So be it. Mysterious headlines are totally tr00 kvlt.

Aussie rockers Buffalo issued one of the great underground classics of the heavy ’70s in the form of 1973′s Volcanic Rock. They were never huge in their day, they put out a couple records and lost members, put out a couple more records, and then broke up. Pretty much the story of every band ever. But if you’re a fan of early Black Sabbath and you don’t check out Volcanic Rock, you’re missing out.

It’s another one of those records that I’d had my eye on for what feels like an eternity before I finally gave in and picked it up from eBay. The version I got — a silver-disc in a full jewel case with professionally printed artwork — is nonetheless almost certainly a bootleg. There’s no label information on any of the art, but the disc says “SM The CD Label” and lists its country of origin as West Germany. Cold War boots. Awesome.

Whatever. Unlike every other edition of Volcanic Rock I could find in the wide intertubular expanse, this one was reasonably priced, so no regrets. It’s hard to pick a favorite track among the five killer bluesy, heavy riffing cuts, but I think “Freedom” might just be it. The bassline is too awesome to go ignored, and though opener “Sunrise (Come My Way)” is catchy, the preaching in “The Prophet” is top notch and the riff from “Shylock” is so “Symptom of the Universe” it makes my head want to explode that I didn’t buy this record sooner, there’s a doomed groove to “Freedom” that trumps all.

In the long run, Buffalo‘s second album is probably more known for its artwork — the skull-faced androgyne on top of a lava-menstruating volcano holding aloft a penis-shaped rock — than the music itself, but these songs flat-out rule. I’m glad as hell that I didn’t make a heavy ’70s podcast before picking this one up. Good shit, highly recommended for riff historians and those who, like me, weren’t there the first time around.

Here I was, wondering when someone would make a song that included — nay, featured — the line “Cryogenics won’t mend a broken heart,” when along comes weirdo Aussie four-piece Van Cleef with the song “Dalek Gulch” to impart that very knowledge. Ask and ye shall rock.

The track comes off the Adelaide outfit’s self-released (I think) full-length debut, Where the River Meets the Rock, which was issued in December and is available now and for a limited time on Van Cleef‘s Bandcamp page as a pay-what-you-want-including-nothing download. The video — which rules, as you’ll see if you haven’t yet pressed play — was made completely by the band with no outside directors or anything like that. Good on them and their video editing skills. As vocalist Lord GordNords (yup, really) says in the song, “Science: It can be your friend.”

So yeah, bring on the Devo comparisons. I think this stuff is fun.

The recently-reviewed Hotel Wrecking City Traders and Gary Arce collaborative 12″ is available for pre-order now. If you missed it, the two-song, 20-minute release will ship at the end of June from Bro Fidelity Records, the label imprint of Hotel Wrecking City Traders, whose crunchy Aussie noise rock is surprisingly well-complemented by Arce‘s wide-ranging guitar sound, known best as heard in Yawning Man, Ten East and a host of other projects.

Topped off with beautiful artwork from Exotic Corpse and text from Ben Matthews (aka Ben Wrecker of HWCT), the pre-order comes with an exclusive t-shirt and of course the record itself, which is heavyweight blue vinyl and limited to 300 copies.

Hotel Wrecking City Traders and Gary Arce (I’ve been referring to the project as HWCTARCE and you’re more than welcome to as well, I suppose) have posted the track “Coventina’s Crusade” for streaming and were kind enough to offer to let me host. Please enjoy it on the player below.

Also of note, Hotel Wrecking City Traders have set up an Indie Go-Go page and are taking donations to help raise the recording costs to put together their next 12″ release. You can see how it’s going and donate here. Arce‘s next release is a split 12″ between his collaboration with British proggers Sons of Alpha Centauri — dubbed Yawning Sons — and a project he has started with Mario Lalli and Tony Tornay of Fatso Jetson (the former also of Yawning Man) called Waterways. More to come on both.

When done right, stoner/doom riffage and brutal vocals can be a lethal combination. Melbourne plodders Clagg go out on a limb to prove the idea again on their third full-length, Lord of the Deep. The album, which was originally released as five-tracks in 2009 and issued again in 2011 with closing Iron Monkey cover “Big Loader” added on Obsidian Records, is an unrepentantly filthy monster of huge sonic proportions. If nothing else, it proves the double-guitar Aussie five-piece know what they’re talking about. The band, which formed in 2002, chose the album’s name, imagery and thematics well. They’re not the first to marry gargantuan tones with oceanic imagery, but damn if they don’t do it well.

That’s pretty much the story with the whole album, as it happens. Lord of the Deep runs the better part of 66 minutes, spread across the already-noted six tracks, and I’ll say flat-out that there’s nothing revolutionary happening here. I’ll add to that, however, that I don’t think there should be. The dark, dense and pummeling atmosphere Clagg is able to affect through their songs is potent enough that it puts you in a headspace where you care less about what’s being broken down and remade than you do about where your next beer is coming from and how hard you can actually thrust it in the air before spilling any. The first three songs of Lord of the Deep – “Carrion,” “Lord of the Deep” (which has two parts subtitled “They Dream Fire” and “At the Rising of the Storm”) and “Buried” comprise over 40 minutes’ worth of material alone, and though there are a few breaks in the action here and there, moments to catch your breath before the next wave hits, etc., Clagg never stray too far from the brutality. Even as fourth cut “The Harvest” works some clean singing from Scotty (it’s a first-name-only deal across the board), the music is dementedly heavy behind, and the sense is that the throat-searing isn’t over. And indeed it isn’t. In its back half, “The Harvest” (a mere seven minutes long, as opposed to the first three tracks, which are all over 11 minutes, or the first two, over 15) has some of Lord of the Deep’s most brutal growling. We’re talking Cephalic Carnage-style. Real deal.

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It’s a cross-continental collision of sounds, and aside from being into both the Aussie noisemaking brotherly duo Hotel Wrecking City Traders and the work of landmark desert guitarist Gary Arce of Yawning Man, what most drew me in to the idea of their collaborative studio project was how different the two sides are. Hotel Wrecking City Traders, who’ve been releasing music on drummer Ben Matthews’ Bro Fidelity Records since 2007, are a fittingly tight unit. The sounds on their Black Yolk full-length and follow-up Somer/Wantok 12” were rife with intensity and an impatient mathematical feel. By contrast, Gary Arce is considered one of the founding figures of desert rock. His laid back, airy tone and improvisatory will have been a key inspiration for bands literally all over the world, and when it comes to jams, there are few guitarists out there who can add as much personality to a piece of music as he can. It’s not like one’s playing polka and the other death metal (although I hear those go together nowadays too), but it’s a short list of commonalities between Arce and Hotel Wrecking City Traders. Apart from working instrumentally, they seem to be driven by completely different musical ideals.

And maybe that’s what makes their joint Hotel Wrecking City Traders and Gary Arce 12” (released on limited 180gram vinyl via Bro Fidelity and Cobraside Distribution, who also put out Yawning Man’s 2010 album, Nomadic Pursuits) so damned interesting. The two-song, 20-minute release combines the disparate elements at work in the total three players involved for a double-guitar brew that’s based as much on improvisational noodling as it is on noisy crunch. It works, too, which is the miracle of the thing. The first track, “Coventina’s Cascade” (10:19) is content to wander in its midsection, Ben providing pulsing bassdrum kicks while his brother Toby Matthews adds to the build on guitar and Arce spaces out for what’s probably the busiest payoff on the release. Hotel Wrecking City Traders showed off some atmospheric tendencies on Somer/Wantok, but Arce takes it to do a different level entirely. One can hear during a break about seven minutes in how the duo constructed the track before sending it to Arce to add his guitar lines, but that’s not at all to discount the flow of what the collective trio come out with as a result. As he does in Hotel Wrecking City Traders proper, Matthews proves capable of holding down a rhythm section, and Toby wisely leaves room to allow for interplay with Arce – who also contributes bass to both cuts, adding further dimensionality to both sides A and B.

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Aussie bruisers The Devil Rides Out touch on a lot of familiar stoner rock elements without ever completely giving themselves over to them. The Perth four-piece follow a trio of EPs with The Heart and the Crown, their full-length debut, on Impedance Records (MVD distro in the US), and at 53 minutes, the album manages to reference the well-trod paths of fuzz and still wind up neither redundant nor completely cliché. A big part of the credit for that has to go to vocalist Joey K, whose gruff (still clean) delivery separates The Devil Rides Out from their heavier influences. The overall affect is that The Heart and the Crown has parts that will unquestionably remind the experienced listener of other bands, but enough personality in both the music and the singing to still come out of it with a sound of their own.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of The Heart and the Crown my first couple listens through. Even for the novelty of it being Australian and the band’s being part of the growing scene there, I couldn’t get past my initial impression that it was generic and even K’s vocals weren’t enough to set it apart from the scores of other throaty heavy rock bands out there. However, in further and further sessions, The Devil Rides Out – who take their name from a 1967 Hammer Horror film that starred, of course, Christopher Lee – make subtle tonal changes that reveal themselves more over time through the clean, crisp production. Andrew Ewing’s guitar pulls out über-fuzz on “Right Lane Man” (compare the opening riff to The Atomic Bitchwax’s cover of Core’s “Kiss the Sun” from 2005’s Boxriff), and “Gentlemen Prefer Bombs” moves from a Giraffes-style groove (thinking of “Honest Man” from 2008’s Prime Motivator) into driving, straight-ahead heaviness, but middle-cut “Phosphorous” has a slower, doomier feel, and late-album curveball “I Keep Secrets” – despite having the guitar too loud in the mix during the intro/choruses – shows a deft approach to Queens of the Stone Age’s six-string bounce. But even there, he’s not restrained by the fuzz or only bringing that to the table sonically. Bassist Brendan Ewing – since replaced by Scott Paterson – leads the way into that song and into a slower, more melancholy break on the title-track, not so disparate from what Brant Bjork did with “Somewhere Some Woman” on last year’s Gods and Goddesses.

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Australian noisemaking duo destructo Hotel Wrecking City Traders have put up a page at IndieGoGo.com (not an amateur stripping site, as it turns out) asking for donations to help them record their next full-length album. Now, the thing here is that in donating, you’re basically buying a copy of the album, because I don’t think Hotel Wrecking City Traders have a release out yet — they put out their own material through drummer Ben Wrecker‘s Bro Fidelity imprint — that they haven’t given away for free, either via their Bandcamp site or some other distribution channel.

So if you’re hesitant to donate, don’t think of it necessarily as giving away money so a band can hit the studio, just think of it as preordering a copy of the record before it’s put out on the 12″ vinyl. If past is any kind of prologue, Hotel Wrecking City Traders material is worth the investment, and you get the smug satisfaction of knowing you helped independent artists. That alone is easily worth the 10 bucks or however much you want to give either via Paypal or credit card.

Here’s the link to donate. Have at it.

My fascination with Aussie stoner and doom continues with the discovery of Adrift for Days, an unsigned doom/psychedelic blues five-piece from Sydney, whose debut album, The Lunar Maria, was released in August. The album is reportedly seven tracks/71 minutes long, and if the couple of songs the band has posted on their MySpace are any indication, it’s no small wonder. “Bury all That’s Chosen” alone is over 15 minutes, and it hardly feels like the band are stretching it on purpose to hit that mark. Seems like business as usual, in other words.

Going by “Bury all That’s Chosen” and the much shorter “The Leech” (a meager 4:59), what Adrift for Days excel at are the quiet, creepy moments of doom, the lone guitar ba-domp, ba-domps. They get a lot of their bluesy feel from that, Ron Prince and the aptly-monikered Lachlan R. Doomsdale handling riffs and solos throughout while the well-balanced bass of Matt Williams — I always feel like the bass never makes it through MySpace‘s audio compression, so to actually hear it is nice — and drums of Steve Kachoyan provide solid rhythmic foundation.

Mick Kaslik‘s vocals have some of that Anselmo/Down “hey whoa momma yeah” inflection that an entire generation of heavy singers seems to have adopted, but he changes it up on “Bury all That’s Chosen” with some Al Cisneros-style monotone that offsets the rest of the song well, and on “The Leech” there’s even a couple screams layered in, so he’s by no means limited to one approach.

Adrift for Days could just as easily be from Maryland as Australia, and with lumbering grooves and a capable showing of melody, they’ve managed to make a good case with these two tracks for keeping them on the radar. I’m sure they also made a few friends this past weekend when they played with Acid King, Pod People and others at the Doomsday Festival in their hometown, and I can only say I wish I’d been there to see it. Doom on, gentlemen.

Because I’m Mr. Has a Facebook Page now (and that would be here), I get to find out nifty stuff like that Australia‘s recently-reviewed Hotel Wrecking City Traders have posted their entire 2008 album, Black Yolk, on Bandcamp for your streaming pleasure. You can go to the page here, or just stream it in the even more immediate using the fancypants player below. Either way, enjoy the tunes and make sure to thank the band for giving away their hard work.

Originally self-released in 2009 in an edition of 100 copies, The Dead’s Ritual Executions now sees an issue 10 times its original breadth thanks to Diabolical Conquest Records, the label imprint of the extreme metal e-zine of the same name. The Brisbane, Australia, trio’s second album, Ritual Executions was remastered by Aphotic Mote of Portal and is a skillful blend of death and doom metal that has enough stoner groove in its riffing to satisfy the one end, and guttural so-called “Cookie Monster” vocals that’d make George “Corpsegrinder” Fischer or Glen Benton proud. It’s not death/doom in the European tradition, which would imply a My Dying Bride or early Paradise Lost kind of pacing and drama, but a rougher take that sews American-style metallic extremity to traditional stonerisms.

Ritual Executions opens with “Burn Your Dead,” a sort of mission statement for the zombie-obsessed The Dead that reaches over eight minutes and culls the aforementioned elements as smoothly as I’ve heard it done. Guitarist/bassist Adam Keleher riffs Electric Wizard-style, but the context for those riffs comes with Mike Yee’s low growling and Chris Morse’s heavy-footed double-kick, so it’s not like anything Electric Wizard has ever done. As the album proceeds, tracks like “Cannibal Abattoir” and “Centurion” up the death metal level, and album centerpiece “Born in a Grave,” opens up with some blast beats, seeming to approach the stoner/death thing from the other end until it locks in a ‘90s-ish groove in its verses. Yee’s vocals are unipolar. He screams high every now and then, but it’s death metal all the way, which for a release like Ritual Executions, is probably how it should be. Crooning over riffs as dirty as Keleher’s wouldn’t work anyway.

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