Some updates are about tours, some updates are about videos, but it takes some real overachievers to give an update that’s about both a video and a tour. Leave it to Atlanta sludge upstarts Sons of Tonatiuh to go the extra mile. Sometimes one just isn’t enough.

Here’s the video for “Consumed,” followed by some into that’s maybe cooled off, but still fresh from the PR wire:

Atlanta-based sludge collective, Sons of Tonatiuh, recently unleashed a video for “Consumed,” the third track off their self-titled debut full-length. The video was produced by Apocalypse Productions on their home turf.

Commented drummer Tim Genius: “Do yourself a favor: When making a video, don’t choose the longest possible song you might have…. unless you plan to test your audience’s attention span. That said, we are pleased to announce that our new video for ‘Consumed’ turned out rather awesome. It’s minimalistic and we like it that way. At the very least, it’s now more clear that a Sons of Tonatiuh show does not involve little children and traditional Mexican folk-dance — not always, anyway. Mission accomplished!”

In related news, the band is set to embark on a stretch of spring and summer shows. Confirmed dates thus far include:

05/13 Drunken Unicorn Atlanta, GA w/ Primate, Javelina
05/27 Memphis Hates You Fest @ Hi Tone Memphis, TN
05/28 TBA Jackson, MS
06/02 529 Atlanta, GA w/ Black Skies, Royal Thunder
06/24 Little Hamilton Nashville, TN w/ Across Tundras
06/25 Gutfest Jackson, TN

The band is also working on new tunes for their as-yet-untitled, sure to be pulverizing next full-length which is tentatively slated to be recorded in Athens, Georgia courtesy of Harvey Milk’s resident drum bludgeoner/knob tweaker, Kyle Spence.

Said Genius: “It’s sure to be our best yet! Rest assured that while Kyle is conjuring the ghost of John Bonham, we will be bringing our best Keith Moon to the fine folks of Athens.”

Subtle only when it comes to revealing their lineup info (their Facebook page refers to them as “some dudes”), Atlanta, Georgia, five-piece Wizard Smoke emit caustic riff-driven sludge underscored with elements of guitar psych and more extreme metal. They made their debut with 2009’s giveaway EP, Live Rock in Hell (review here), and they now follow that with their first full-length cassette/vinyl/download, The Speed of Smoke. In case you’re wondering, smoke moves pretty slow for the most part, and so do Wizard Smoke, who explore familiarly riffy and familiarly Southern ground on these six mostly-extended tracks (the shortest is “Butcher” at 5:29). Fans of Weedeater will recognize a lot of the band’s tonality – Orange and Hiwatt amps put to good use – but the vocals, rather than a sludgy scream, are far back and echoed in a kind of black metal cackle that sets Wizard Smoke apart from the scores of other newcomers to the genre. The parts of The Speed of Smoke that are more directly culled from the band’s influences are still interesting and well done enough to make them worth paying attention to, and with formidable rumble underscoring the dirty guitars and throat-wrenching vocals, there’s plenty about Wizard Smoke that’s their own as well.

It’s a vinyl and cassette release, so naturally The Speed of Smoke is broken into halves with three tracks on each side. “Dead Wood” opens the record and sets the tone of heavy groove and extreme vocals that much of the rest follows. The guitars have a grit to them that’s less fuzzy than some of what’s to come, most particularly on “Butcher,” the next cut, but a few Geezer Butler-style fills add charm and thickness that would otherwise be very much absent from the recording. It’s a rudimentary production, but for a self-release, I’m not going to hold that against Wizard Smoke. Mostly it’s an issue with the snare drum, which cuts through the mix too high while the cymbals don’t sound so much open and vibrant as they do buried behind the guitars. A mixing thing. It comes out more with headphones, but even through speakers, the same applies. It wouldn’t be a problem at all but that it distracts from the riff, which especially in “Butcher” is clearly what we listening are supposed to be following. After “Dead Wood” and “Butcher,” one might thing Wizard Smoke don’t have much in store change-wise, or that The Speed of Smoke is bound for redundancy, but the eight-minute Side A closer “Weakling” puts clean vocals through a vocoder for several verses and it not only shifts the sound, but changes the momentum of the whole album. Screams are included, of course, but even just by moving away as they do from that approach for a while, Wizard Smoke show they’re not going for a Bongzilla-type single-mindedness, and it goes a long way.

Plus, it’s way stoner, which – if the name Wizard Smoke or the album title The Speed of Smoke didn’t already tell you – the band are too. So it works on that level as well. Which is nice.

Read more »

According to that great purveyor of all interwebular knowledge whose name I don’t even need to mention because you all know it, it’s at least 12 hours in a car to get from Gainesville, Georgia, to Chicago, Illinois. Taking into account that that’s the trip drummer Mike Duffy had to make every time he wanted to show up to band practice, it’s kind of understandable why it’s taken American Heritage six years to issue Sedentary, the follow up to their 2005 Translation Loss debut, Millenarian.

Not only that, but the then-three members of the band — Duffy and guitarists Scott Shellhammer and Adam Norden — also had to deal with the issue of a bassist. As in, they didn’t have one. Most bands would either hit up Craigslist or go without, but perhaps in an effort to contradict the album’s title, American Heritage decided to call upon a host of players, from Bill Kelliher of Mastodon to Sanford Parker, who also recorded the bulk of the record.

So on top of their drummer’s hellacious commute, they wound up with the task of chasing down a bass player for each track on Sedentary, while also recruiting Erik Bocek to fill the role full-time. Oh, and Norden — who also handles vocals — completely reinvented the way he sings, moving from gruff hardcore growls to a semi-melodic cleaner approach, still rooted in shouting, but infinitely more decipherable than on the last album.

Come to think of it, maybe six years between releases isn’t that bad. I’d go on about the record, but you can read the review here if you’re so inclined. Better to get right to the Q&A with Norden, since there was a lot to talk about, including the lyrical thematics at play on the songs and the roots of the band’s choice of Sedentary as the album’s title, the sonic changes American Heritage has undergone in the last six years, the process of rounding up all those bassists and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

Atlanta‘s extra-capital-letter-fied MonstrO (who were On the Radar’ed just over a year ago, if you’ll recall) have signed with Vagrant Records, the label responsible for such stoner rock gems as Senses Fail and Thrice. Yeah, I know Vagrant‘s grown up a bit in the last couple years (putting out the likes of Murder by Death and… Rammstein?), but it’s still kind of a surprise to see MonstrO — featuring Juan Montoya, ex-Floor/Torche, and former members of bloodsimple — get picked up by them.

Whatever. More importantly, MonstrO‘s new album is due out late in the summer and will be produced by William DuVall from Alice in Chains. Should be interesting. I guess you never know what the PR wire will bring on a given Wednesday afternoon:

MonstrO, the highly pedigreed atmospheric hard rock four-piece from Atlanta, Georgia, have signed with Vagrant Records to release their debut album. Formed in early 2009, MonstrO is bassist Kyle Sanders (bloodsimple), drummer Bevan Davies (bloodsimple, Danzig), guitarist Juan Montoya (Torche) and vocalist/guitarist Charlie Suarez.

MonstrO entered a studio in Atlanta earlier this week with producer (and Alice in Chains vocalist) William DuVall.

“We’ve been collectively writing and recording for two years now and thanks to Vagrant we’re finally recording our first proper full-length,” said Sanders. “We’ll be locked up for the next month recording and mixing with our good friend William DuVall at the helm. These songs have taken on a life of their own and we’re all extremely thrilled to lay them all down and begin the journey.”

I don’t remember the last time I looked forward to a tour the way I looked forward to the Irving Plaza, NYC, stop of Metalliance. Usually, I’ll get down with a couple bands on a bill, maybe even three or four on a great night, but this lineup was insane. Helmet playing Meantime, Crowbar, Saint Vitus, Kylesa, Red Fang, Howl and The Atlas Moth. Even the bands I was ambivalent about seeing I wanted to see. It’s been a while since that was the case for a single show.

The difference, I suppose, is that Metalliance is essentially a traveling festival. That means shorter sets — 20 minutes each for The Atlas Moth, Howl and Red Fang, then gradually more for Kylesa, Vitus, Crowbar and Helmet — but still, the thought of seeing this many bands on one bill made the show an absolute must. It’s been on my calendar for months. Whatever else happens, Metalliance.

There was a meet and greet before doors and I was invited for that, so I went and chatted awkwardly for a couple minutes with the bands, mostly the dudes in Red Fang about bassist/vocalist Bryan Giles‘ recent interview, but also got my picture taken with Wino, which was cool despite the lengths at which I’ll protest about hating that kind of thing (both having my picture taken and my picture taken with dudes in bands). The conversation steadily fizzled and everyone, myself included, went about their business. I grabbed the first of the evening’s several $8 Guinnesses, made my way upstairs to stake out a spot. It’s Irving Plaza instinct. I’ve seen more shows from that balcony than I can remember to count.

It was early, though. The Atlas Moth didn’t go on for maybe another 20 minutes, and the place was still basically empty, so the beer went fast. When they took the stage, I went downstairs to take the first of the evening’s many, many photos, and check out their set. I had been served a digital promo of their Candlelight Records debut, A Glorified Piece of Blue Sky, when it came out, but it must have slipped through the cracks. They were post-metal, and apparently down one of their three guitarists, but not terrible. They said from the stage that they’ll have a new album out in the fall. Maybe I won’t have my head up my ass about it this time. No promises, but it could happen.

If I’m not much familiar with The Atlas Moth, I’m a little more directly “take it or leave it” on Howl. The Rhode Islanders don’t really do it for me musically, but even they put on a good show, and I heard from several showgoers over the course of the night how much they enjoyed their set. They were heavier than I recalled them being, but just tipped to the far side of the doom/metal equation, and watching them made me feel old. Think I’d be used to that by now.

Part of my “meh” factor for Howl‘s set might also have stemmed from anticipation for Red Fang. Having never seen them before and so thoroughly dorked out over their forthcoming Murder the Mountains Relapse debut (second full-length overall), I was more or less dying to see their set. They opened with a couple tracks from their self-titled, and hit the new single “Wires” before closing with “Prehistoric Dog.” I felt justified in my excitement by their performance, as they more or less ripped through the material — not in the sense of rushing it — just making it all sound meatier and meaner. They were the first of the night’s several killer acts.

As I mentioned, with Kylesa, the set-times began to lengthen, but even a half-hour of stuff from them seemed short. Bathed half in darkness by the projected art of their Spiral Shadow album, the dually-drummed five-piece were also much heavier than the production on their record might lead you to believe. “Running Red,” from 2009′s Static Tensions, was a particularly welcome inclusion, and though the vocals were high in the mix, everything still came through well enough.

With the double-guitar/double-vocals of Laura Pleasants and Philip Cope, it’s probably really easy for some of Kylesa‘s complexity to become a wash in a live setting (I’ve seen them before but not yet on this touring cycle owing to January’s ridiculous snowfall) depending on who’s working the sound. I think they got a decent treatment at Irving Plaza and was glad to get the chance to have “Don’t Look Back” from Spiral Shadow injected straight into my head from the amps as opposed to the CD. I also got a new appreciation for bassist Corey Barhorst, who I think is a much bigger part of what makes Kylesa so damn heavy than anyone gives him credit for, myself included. I know they tour like bastards, but I was glad to see them this time around, especially after enjoying the album so much.

What can I possibly say about Saint Vitus? I felt like life was doing me a personal favor by their reuniting at Roadburn 2009, and I’ve seen them twice now since then, and I feel the same way. “Dying Inside,” “Born too Late,” “Clear Windowpane” — they were all fucking fantastic. The only challenge I had was trying to decide which I was most into (I finally settled on “Dying Inside”), but the whole set was earth-shakingly heavy. I don’t know how Crowbar felt about having to follow them, let alone Helmet, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to. They also played the new song “Blessed Night” from the impending whatever-they’ll-put-out, and it was even better in-person than on the YouberTubes clips of it I’ve seen.

I’ve done plenty of worshiping at the altar of Saint Vitus before, but it’s worth noting that even just in terms of the chemistry between the members of the band, they’ve got it down. Even since I saw this lineup — Scott “Wino” Weinrich, vocals; Dave Chandler, guitar; Mark Adams, bass; Henry Vasquez, drums — in Brooklyn late in 2009, their time on the road has made them tighter as a group, and the songs sounded all the more killer for it. Vasquez, who came aboard as a replacement for founding drummer Armando Acosta owing to the latter’s failing health (Acosta died last Thanksgiving), does an excellent job driving the material, and watching Adams, Chandler and Weinrich on stage is like calculating a geometrical proof to discover why the word “legendary” so often appears directly before the band’s name.

If they’d been the only band of the night, I still would have made the trip into the city for the show, but to then have Crowbar follow them was when things really got surreal at Metalliance. It’s like one of those “But wait — there’s more!” infomercials, except that instead of useless, easily-broken shit you get high-grade metal. Crowbar were in sludgy fashion, and the guitar sound, which I bemoaned after their set at the Championship Bar and Grill in Trenton this past December, was much improved coming through the Irving Plaza P.A. They ran through a smattering of the highlight cuts from their career, offering a post-”Planets Collide” mini-encore in the form of latest single “The Cemetery Angels,” from their first album in six years, Sever the Wicked Hand.

It was interesting to compare the Saint Vitus and Crowbar sets in that the two long-running (admittedly Vitus longer running than Crowbar) acts have very different stage presences. Crowbar guitarist Kirk Windstein is clearly the star of the show. It’s his band all the way through, he’s the last of the founding members, the only songwriter and not to disparage the contributions of his band, because they sounded good, but you could probably have any number of musicians up there filling those roles. In terms of presence, Chandler is one of two very strong focal points in Saint Vitus, the other being Wino. Bassist Mark Adams, while a founding member of the band, is overshadowed personality-wise by the guitarist, and from the look of it this past Friday, that suits him just fine, but still, Saint Vitus — even apart from the aura their decades of influence carries with it — are more of a total band experience, where with Crowbar, it’s Windstein‘s gig and everyone knows it.

What that rounds out to, at least as regards Metalliance, is two unmistakable, diverging roads leading to a killer set. The place cleared out a lot after Crowbar with Helmet still to go, but those who stayed were ultimately rewarded for their effort. The truly unfortunate thing about Helmet is how their dissonance got bastardized in the later part of the ’90s by the nü-metal movement. That’s not to say their own burgeoning commerciality didn’t have a role to play, but the sound they became known for fostering wasn’t necessarily the way they actually played. As Meantime nears its 20th anniversary (originally released June 23, 1992) and Helmet has become a more melodically-centered band — the staccato riffing of guitarist/vocalist Page Hamilton taking a back seat — the songs themselves remains eerily relevant.

Hamilton is without a doubt the central figure, though, even more so than Windstein is to Crowbar. Though he’s had roughly the same band with him since 2006, Helmet is his band. All the same, their rendition of the Meantime album was welcomed by those who stuck around to see it, and an appropriate salvo to the evening’s unbelievable gait. When I left, it wasn’t yet 11PM, but I was already dead tired. Six hours of show will do that to you.

Feels redundant to even say it, but if Metalliance hasn’t hit where you are yet, you need to cancel whatever it is on your plate and go. As I noted previously, I took over 2,100 photos at the show, and most of them were crap. About 280 weren’t, and if you want a small sampling of that batch, click the “Read More” link below. Special thanks to Steve Seabury for making the night happen.

Read more »

Let’s say you’re American Heritage. You hail either from Chicago or Gainesville, Georgia, depending on who in the band you are, and you put out an album that gets some pretty sizeable critical response in 2006 called Millenarian on Translation Loss. Two years go by and you decide it’s time to start putting together your next album – but wait, your bass player isn’t with you anymore. Sure there are plenty of bands who go without these days, and with two guitars, you would probably be heavy enough in any case, but some people just like to make things difficult, and apparently you’re that kind of person. Or band.

Instead of going without a low end, which is almost never the right move, or finding a permanent bassist in time to make their new album, Sedentary (also Translation Loss), American Heritage recruited a variety of players from the landscape of modern metal, including such luminaries as Bill Helliher of Mastodon, with whom American Heritage released a split way back when, Rafa Martinez of Black Cobra/Acid King and the ubiquitous Sanford Parker, who also recorded the basic tracks for the three remaining members of American Heritage – guitarist/vocalist Adam Norden, guitarist Scott Shellhammer and drummer Mike Duffy.

It’s a huge project, and with several other outside contributions as well – Lon Hackett who handles bass on opener “City of God” also plays keyboard, Kelliher also rips an added guitar solo on the grinding “Fetal Attraction,” Josh Rosenthal is lead vocalist for the wonderfully titled Martinez-bassed “Morbid Angle,” etc. – it’s a wonder American Heritage came out of it with anything close to a cohesive album. To their credit, and to the credit of Parker who mixed, they did. Norden’s vocals, which are cleaner on Sedentary than they were on Millenarian, are a tying factor, but even more than that, the changes Sedentary presents — there are plenty – are more related to toying with different genres than some kind of tonal inconsistency. Usually something with this many guests involved is either a wreck or a compilation. American Heritage have managed to pull an album out of what must have been a nightmarishly convoluted process, and before any measure is taken of how the thing actually sounds, they have to be commended for that.

Read more »

It’s been almost two full years since I last interviewed guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants of Kylesa, and in that time the growth her band has undertaken is remarkable. Their latest album, Spiral Shadow (first for Season of Mist and fifth overall), is a progressive leap from anything the band has done before, Pleasants and fellow guitarist/vocalist Phillip Cope — who also produced — in particular focusing on writing memorable songs with an increased emphasis on melody.

The result of their efforts can be heard in tracks like “Tired Climb” or the unrepentantly hooky “Don’t Look Back,” which not only show a newfound maturity from Cope and Pleasants, but an increase in the chemistry between them as a team and the double-drum rhythm section of Carl McGinley, Tyler Newberry and bassist Corey Barhorst. Like its 2009 predecessor, Static Tensions, Spiral Shadow was a highlight of its release year. Hands down one of the least regrettable new-album purchases I made in 2010.

Whatever growth or breadth of influence they show, however, what remains consistent about Kylesa is a fierce will for exploration. They don’t follow the trend in modern metal, they help set it; their post-sludge breathing new life into a genre which often wills itself against sonic diversity. Coupled with the kind of songwriting prowess they show on “Spiral Shadow” and “Distance Closing In,” Spiral Shadow could easily be the marking point of a new stage in an already impressive career.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Just two days after the New Year, Pleasants checked in for a phoner to discuss the metamorphosis of Kylesa, the band’s recent tours with Clutch and Torche/High on Fire, and the working relationship of the band in the studio with Cope at the helm. Like last time, it was more of a conversation than a Q&A, but that’s nonetheless how it’s presented here.

Unabridged interview is after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

There isn’t much about Sons of Tonatiuh you can’t see coming from miles away, but then again, I doubt “subtle” was what they were going for in the first place. The Atlanta, Georgia, group’s self-titled debut — originally pressed to vinyl by the band and now available on worthy upstart Hydro-Phonic Records – finds the double-guitar/double-vocal four-piece offering a solid 35 minutes of screamy sludge. It’s uncompromising in its visceral feel, and the eight tracks seem geared more toward abrasive musical ideologies than traditionally structured songwriting, helped by production between rough and natural-sounding.

It’s not a formula that’s never been encountered before, but Sons of Tonatiuh do much of the work of distinguishing themselves in the vocals. Guitarists Dan Caycedo (ex-Leechmilk) and Darby Wilson both contribute blood-curdling screams throughout Sons of Tonatiuh, playing especially well off each other on Side B cut “Oracle.” That’s not to take away from the effectiveness of their riffs, the bass playing of Mike Tunno or Tim Genius’ drumming, but frankly, that’s all stuff we’ve heard, whereas Wilson and Caycedo show the difference between quality screaming as a vocal technique and the “some dude yelling” technique employed by many bands. From the quick-moving start of the record on “To the Throne” to the later doomed plod of “From Ashes,” the two six-stringers take a large role in defining the sound of the band, and the album is all the heavier for it.

Read more »

It’s a bold band that tours in January, even if it’s just a run through the South. Nonetheless, Atlanta‘s Sons of Tonatiuh plan to boldly step forth and brave the elements for shows with some killer bands, and if you’re like me and by the middle of January you’re tired of being stuck in the house all the time, the PR wire has a plan it would like you to follow.

To wit:

Atlanta sludge merchants, Sons of Tonatiuh are about to embark upon a fourth US tour this January in support of their self-titled debut full-length. The mighty Hollow Leg from Jacksonville, Florida, will be joining the band for the first three shows. After that, the band will be tearing its way across through New Orleans and back around through Shreveport before winding down in Chattanooga, Tennessee with the likes of Hot Graves, Death Before Dying, Car on Fire, Cognitive Dissonance, Currents and Black Pussy among others.

“We’ll try and keep the church burning down to a minimum as we continually raise the dead of our ancestors through our witchcraft,” said the band in a collective statement. “So come out see what we’re all about and we’ll promise to deliver a good time.”

Sons of Tonatiuh January 2011 Tour
01/06 Stay True Tattoo – St. Augustine, FL w/ Hollow Leg
01/07 The Poorhouse – Ft. Lauderdale, FL w/ Shroud Eater, Hollow Leg
01/08 Will’s Pub – Orlando, FL w/ Hollow Leg
01/09 Common Grounds – Gainesville, FL w/ Hot Graves
01/10 C-Level presented by Kuhlcher Korner – Panama City Beach, FL w/ Death Before Dying, Car on Fire
01/10 Siberia – New Orleans, LA w/ Cognitive Dissonance, Mojo Spleens
01/12 Headhunters – Austin, TX w/ Rusty Vein
01/13 Dalzell House – Shreveport, LA w/ Currents
01/14 The Doom Room – Vicksburg, MS w/ Black Pussy, Currents
01/15 Sluggo’s North – Chattanooga, TN
01/28 529 – Atlanta, GA w/ Black Pussy, Demonaut, Wolves & Jackels

Kylesa‘s first album for Season of Mist, Spiral Shadow became something of a lesson about life in the age of digital promos. In my review of the album, I raved about the genius of the 10-plus-minute title-track. Extensively. When I finally bought the record to include it in the Southcast, I found the title track to be half as long. I still don’t know what the story was, if they edited the song down, if there was some fluke in my mp3s or what. The songs on the physical product were also in a completely different order.

The result is I’m not sure which version of Spiral Shadow I like better, but suffice it to say both kick considerable ass. Hearing Kylesa embrace their inner prog was a high point of 2010 for sure, and between cuts like the aforementioned “Spiral Shadow” (still pretty good at 5:12), the stomping “Drop Out” and the viciously catchy “Don’t Look Back” — which is probably one of my favorite single songs of the year — there was just about no way Kylesa wasn’t going to make the top 10.

They’ve established a very solid chain of consistency between Spiral Shadow and last year’s Static Tensions, and with all the touring they’re doing (winter 2011 dates have been announced), they can only add to the momentum. Kylesa has never really had a steady lineup, but with the creative core of guitarist/vocalist/producer Phillip Cope, guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants and a duo of drummers, they nonetheless crafted one of 2010′s best albums in Spiral Shadow.

There were arguments to be made for and against Zoroaster‘s 2010 E1 Music debut, Matador, but at the end of the day, I dug the record and it’s off-kilter methodology. The Atlanta trio’s third album overall, it was time for Zoroaster to shake up their approach. Last year’s Voice of Saturn saw them begin to experiment with clean vocals and more melodically-conscious songwriting, and aided by the production of Sanford Parker, Matador took that experimentation in new and innovative directions.

It’s a fascinating record, and hypnotic. If you played it for me back to back with Zoroaster‘s full-length debut, Dog Magic (2007), I wouldn’t think they were the same band, or at very least not the same personnel therein. But ultimately it may have come too quickly on the heels of Voice of Saturn, which was an honorable mention addition to last year’s top 10, as it seems like some of the material could have been developed further — the toying with traditional rock and roll guitar conventionalism on “Titan,” for example — before being put to tape.

Zoroaster are proving themselves able to produce at a consistently high quality, and Matador is a big part of that, but I’d be interested to see what came out of it if they took two years between albums instead of one again. The jump from Dog Magic to Voice of Saturn was much greater than that from Voice of Saturn to Matador, and as they’re at a pivotal point in their career — right on the verge of the bigger metal notoriety of bands like High on Fire — it’s time for them to really hunker down and start writing great songs. I hope in the future we can look back at Matador as the beginning of that process.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I set myself a couple rules for this one: No farther west than Texas, nothing north of Virginia and if a band features members of Down, they’re out. That means no Crowbar, no C.O.C., no Eyehategod or any of their other offshoots. Those are great bands, don’t get me wrong, but you get into that territory and next thing you know the whole podcast is full — ditto had I included Maryland — and I think once you take a look at the tracklist, you’ll see I was aiming for something else entirely.

When the idea was originally suggested, it was an exploration of the new Southern metal, bands like Baroness and their post-Mastodon Southern prog ilk. Later it was expanded to include a wide breadth of Southern rock and metal old and new. Well, the first was a little too narrowly focused (there just aren’t 30 bands — yet — playing Masto-prog), and the second was a little too wide ranging, so I took a middle course between them. You still get the bands like Baroness, Torche, Mastodon, and Zoroaster, and you also get some more straightforward rock-type stuff from the likes of Texas acts SuperHeavyGoatAss, Amplified Heat and Orthodox Fuzz.

I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it’s a killer mix of bands, and that it covers a wide ground, from the humid sludge of Sourvein and Ol’ Scratch, to the wide-eyed psych bliss of Tasha-Yar. All but one of the included tracks are from the latter half of the last decade (I’d argue the song from 2004 and the album from which it came were a big inspiration for many of the other bands present), and that was definitely on purpose, since this is a vibrant scene happening right now. I tried to be as timely with it as I could.

In that spirit, you’ll find new music included from Torche, Kylesa (finally found Spiral Shadow at an FYE; let the record show I tried two legitimate indie stores first), Elliott’s Keep, US Christmas, Kin of Ettins, Orthodox Fuzz and The Crimson Electric. To honor readers Josh and Jason who first presented and then expanded the idea, we start off with Weedeater, who are possibly the most Southern band on the planet.

Click here or the image above to get the file, or stream it on the player above. Full tracklist with timestamps and years of release is after the jump. I hope you enjoy it.

Read more »

It’s an odd thing that’s happened over the course of the last couple years with the surge of blogs replacing print publications, but you have people (myself included) lining up to be the first place listeners can go to hear/view/download whatever. It’s interesting, like the White House press corps being too afraid to criticize George W. Bush in his first term for fear of losing access. I don’t know if it helps establish a critical aesthetic for these websites, but I find it fascinating nonetheless.

There’s an odd egalitarianism too it as well, though, because while anyone can be “the first” to post something and it’s their name that goes out in the press release, five minutes later, everyone else has it. To wit, the following Kylesa video for the track “Tired Climb” from their Spiral Shadow album. Stereogum got the premiere, got their name out there, got the hits, and here we are, with it posted below. Strange days we live in, my friends. Strange indeed.

I guess the headline pretty much says it all, but Atlanta doom mavens Zoroaster have made the song “Witch’s Hammer” available for streaming and downloading as part of Adult Swim‘s Metal Swim online compilation, which also features the likes of Jesu, Isis, Torche and Boris.

One can only imagine Adult Swim would rather you checked out the track at their site, and if you’re so inclined, that’s certainly cool by me. If not, however, here’s the song for streaming goodness, followed by the latest off the PR wire:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Celebrated psych metal band Zoroaster has unveiled the brand new track “Witch’s Hammer” via the just-released [adult swim]/Scion A/V compilation Metal Swim. Described as “a collection of 16 metal tracks from some of the heaviest bands in existence,” Metal Swim features “rare and never-before-released songs from some of the genre’s most notable bands” and is available for free download at adultswim.com/metal now.

Sometimes I think bands just use changing record labels as an excuse to screw with their own sound. Certainly Savannah, Georgia, sludge-bringers Kylesa have grown over the course of their four prior studio offerings, but with the latest, Spiral Shadow (their first for Season of Mist), they push their approach into new territory in terms of how it touches on both prog and pop, and come out sounding easily the tightest they ever have, but also the most melodically capable and farthest ranging.

It should say something that in a band with two drummers the guitars still dominate, but that’s the case with Spiral Shadow. By now it goes without saying that guitarist/vocalist Phillip Cope did an outstanding job with the production – his prowess in that area is well-documented and one can chart his growth as an engineer/producer over the course of Kylesa’s career – but on Spiral Shadow he seems to have smoothed out the band’s sound some. You can hear it in the tones of opener “Tired Climb,” or in the mixing of the ringing notes that mark the intro to second track, “Cheating Synergy.” Of course, the rhythm section of bassist Corey Barhorst and drummers Tyler Newberry and Carl McGinely is still essential to what Kylesa does, but Spiral Shadow’s focus seems just as much on bringing forward the five-piece’s instrumental and vocal melodicism as on pummeling with sludge or surprising with quick percussive turns.

Guitarist/vocalist Laura Pleasants made a breakthrough on Kylesa’s last album, 2009’s Static Tensions (their final album on Prosthetic Records), and here she refines and redefines her role in the band. Her interplay with Cope, as on “Drop Out” – which also features some of Spiral Shadow’s best performances from McGinely and Newberry – makes that track among the record’s strongest, but it’s on songs like the poppier “Don’t Look Back,” where Kylesa approaches Torche-like accessibility, and “To Forget” that she really demonstrates how much she’s come into her own in terms of clean singing. It’s strange to think of Kylesa as a band with a frontperson of any kind, since up to this point it’s always been about the group’s performance as a whole, but to call Pleasants’ work on Spiral Shadow anything less than standout is to undersell it.

Read more »