Thus begins the new series of Wino Wednesday posts celebrating the work of Scott “Wino” Weinrich on The Obelisk. I asked last week when I posted the new Premonition 13 clip if it should be a regular thing, and the response both on this site and Thee Facebooks was overwhelmingly yes, so here we are. I aim to please.

I probably could’ve gone back and found something older than the reunited Saint Vitus performing live earlier this year in Denver, Colorado, on the last night of the Metalliance Tour, but hell, the present is as good a place to start as anywhere, and “Born too Late” is one of doom’s greatest anthems. I figured no one would complain.

The song originally appeared on the 1986 album of the same name and was Wino‘s first album as Vitus‘ frontman, coming on following time in The Obsessed to replace Scott Reagers, who would later return to sing on 1995′s Die Healing. Note the Stone Axe shirt drummer Henry Vasquez is wearing in the video, because it rules.

Affected by thin Rocky Mountain air, Denver bashers Low Gravity come bursting out of the speakers with their self-titled, self-released five track EP. At 27 minutes, it’s more than a blip – I’ve heard shorter full-lengths – but its feel is less than a complete album, and I think the intent of the band was to give a sampling of what they’re about more than to execute an entire record, so we’ll go with that. EP it is.

They’re a two-guitar four-piece under the given monikers J. Ellis, A. Mullins, A. Williams, D. Ferguson, though who does what is a mystery. Listening to the Low Gravity EP, I keep thinking of Dozer’s first two records, how they took what Kyuss was doing in the desert and made it colder. Low Gravity seem to be doing something similar, though the vocals – mostly screamed, but not entirely without a sense of melody – are a point of departure between the two bands. Still, it’s a similar kind of guitar tone, groove and structure base, which isn’t a complaint at all. Interesting that a Kyuss influence would bounce off Sweden to get back to Colorado, like a cell phone signal going into space to get across a room, but stranger things have certainly happened.

“Manifesto” opens the EP in guitar-led fashion, though the drums and bass are more than just present in the mix, actively contributing to it. The production is clean and modern – I can see the tracks’ wave forms while I listen – but not unnatural. There’s nothing particularly complicated about the material, songs like “Two Queens” and the charmingly titled “Porklust” being straightforward fare that should be readily accessible for fans of stoner rock, but Low Gravity do it well and the angrier vocals give them an edge a lot of bands in their genre don’t have, lending an immediacy and urgency to the otherwise laid back and familiar vibes.

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The word that usually gets tossed around for the kind of music Denver, Colorado’s Black Sleep of Kali play is “apocalyptic,” and true enough, the first lyrics that show up on their Small Stone Records debut, Our Slow Decay, are “there is nothing to make it all better.” The crunching riffage and progressive angularity of the opening track, “There is Nothing” sets the tone to follow, and though we can all throw back our heads and exclaim how tired we are of post-metal, Black Sleep of Kali inject enough melody into their songwriting, particularly in the vocals of guitarist Taylor Williams, who founded the band after moving to Denver from Salt Lake City, to come out of it without sounding overly redundant.

If the phrases you picked out of that last paragraph were “Salt Lake City” and “Small Stone Records,” then you’re probably thinking of the band Iota, and indeed there is a connection. Andy Patterson from Iota recorded Our Slow Decay (he also recorded Iota’s excellent Small Stone debut, Tales), and Iota’s Joey Toscano donates a guitar solo to the Black Sleep of Kali cause. Joining Williams in the band are drummer Gordon Koch, heavy of hit, fleet of foot and large of sound, guitarist/backing vocalist Patrick Alberts, thick of tone, and bassist Austin Michel, lost of mix. Or lost in mix, rather. The guitars of Williams and Alberts, run though Orange heads, are practically a low end in and of themselves. As the bassist said when mixing, “More bass, please.”

Unlike a lot of today’s Orange-hued recordings, each twist and turn in the playing of Williams and Alberts is audible in the guitar, which makes me wonder just how much Patterson or Mad Oak Studios’ Benny Grotto, who mixed, had to compress them to make that possible. Nonetheless, the material on Our Slow Decay doesn’t sound unnatural, or at least anymore than it should for being what it is musically. For those looking for a comparison point within the label’s roster, Obiat is closer than Iota, though Black Sleep of Kali forgo any of Obiat’s quirky tendencies to keep their songs straightforward in a post-metal kind of way, the aforementioned vocal melody showing up quick in the style of Torche on “There is Nothing” and continuing through the album, making that track as well as “Eulogy” and “Big Sky” among the highlights of Our Slow Decay, although admittedly, the latter is much helped as well by a guitar solo rested on top of insistent Mastodon-type riffing that is a welcome change of pace late in the set.

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It is no small thing to begin a stoner metal song in this day and age with a sample of a motorcycle engine revving. If there is one thing that’s going to make your audience say, “Alright, this better be the best riff I’ve ever heard,” it’s that. Not only has it been so done to death throughout this genre, but so often the engine noise has been accompanied by road-ready barn-burner guitar lines, that to expect anything else is pointless. Yet, somehow, “Ape Parade,” the second song on Invisible Orange’s debut full-length, Iron Mountain (Gary the “Landlord” Records), begins with such a sample and goes into a mellow groove before kicking in.

I will say that despite this egregious error on the part of the band (the song ends with the same noise), opener “Run” left a completely different impression the first time I heard it. I don’t recall to what I was listening prior, but there was an out-loud declaration of, “Yes, that sounds about right,” that came with hearing the opening riff of Iron Mountain, so within the first two tracks of the record, we can already see it works both ways. The Denver, Colorado, four-piece run through an expected 10 tracks of ‘90s-inspired stoner metal, bearing heavy riffage from guitarist Adrian Moore and the from-the-stomach Garcia/Hetfield-isms of vocalist Donovan Breazeale with abundant energy and a self-sustained feel that’s definitely reliant on 21st Century production methods, but comes off as reasonably natural nonetheless.

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