Perhaps more than any other Maryland doom band before or since, Iron Man are born of pure Sabbath worship. Guitarist and founder “Iron” Al Morris III is a pivotal figure in American traditional doom maybe not so much for the direct influence he’s had on other players – though certainly that’s a factor as well – but in terms of the loyalist ethic with which he approaches his craft. He’s seen lineup changes enough for three bands, but no matter who he’s playing with for any given release, the core Sabbathian plod remains intact, and that’s true on the newly self-released Dominance EP as well. Dominance, which follows 2009’s righteous I Have Returned LP, is a more rudimentary outing; a true EP in the sense of giving a sampling of what a band is about more than expressing a complete idea musically as a full-length album might. And if Morris feels he needs to get a grasp on the band’s sound again and work it out through these songs, he’s got good reason. Vocalist Joe Donnelly split with the band in 2010 and has since been replaced by “Screaming” Dee Calhoun (who also fronted Land of Doom, from whence guitarist Russ Strahan was plucked to join Pentagram), and Dex Dexter also either left or was fired and Mike Rix brought in to fill the void on drums for this release. Rix, in turn, is already gone, leaving Morris, Calhoun and bassist Louis Strachan without a drummer as of this writing. Having been through at least six throughout the band’s existence, something tells me they’ll survive.

The biggest change, though, is Calhoun, whose approach varies from the unabashed Ozzy-isms of Donnelly and draws more from Judas Priest-type patterns and Rob Halford’s signature and classically metal vibrato. On Dominance, the three songs that comprise most of the EP’s 16-minute runtime – there’s a Morris solo interlude as well – are relatively uptempo, and so Calhoun is more than suited to handle the riffs being thrown his way. It’s a rough production, but clear enough to give some idea of what the band wanted, which I think actually is what the band wanted. Throughout “Ruler of Ruin,” “The Final Straw” and “Grown,” the idea seems to be more about Iron Man (read: Morris) getting their footing as a new lineup on a recording and making that public than trying to expand on their creative formula. The minute-plus interlude “Eternal Sleep” is pleasant as a change of pace between “The Final Straw” and “Grown,” working in the tradition of Tony Iommi’s “A Bit of Finger” to provide listeners a moment’s respite. “Eternal Sleep” also works as a fitting complement to the heavy, straightforward metal of “Ruler of Ruin,” which launches Dominance in fashion well-suited to the EP’s title and offers no letup in its just under five minutes. Calhoun proves a powerful presence alongside Morris’ lead work, and Strachan’s bass comes through the mix in fills between the lines of the verse along with Rix, with whom he makes a noteworthy contribution in the rhythm section, but he did that with Dexter as well, so although Rix’s performance here is capable and enjoyable, Strachan has already shown he’s adaptable to working with different drummers and still enriching the sound of the band. Probably fortunate, given how they come and go.

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They’re among the original harbingers of Maryland doom, and Baltimorian four-piece Iron Man have seen ‘em come, and seen ‘em go. The band’s last full-length, I Have Returned, came out in 2009 (review here), and in the time since then, they’ve been through I don’t even know how many drummers — at least two — and frontman Joe Donnelly has also departed, leaving “Iron” Al Morris III on guitar alongside bassist Louis Strachan, drummer Mike Rix (since out of the band), and newfound singer Dee Calhoun for the new Dominance EP. If we were doing SAT analogies, I might say that Calhoun : Rob Halford as Donnelly : Ozzy Osbourne, minus the physical mimicry of onstage persona. His voice fits well over the four tracks of Dominance, of which I’ll have a review in the next week or two.

In case you missed it, Iron Man aren’t the only ones who premiered a new video today. Pagan Altar, who already had a new track up this week, posted a brand new video from their forthcoming album, Never Quite Dead, for the song “Dance of the Vampires.” That video is on the forum here, and I’d recommend it if you’d like to get your doom fix a little bit more when you’re done with “Ruler of Ruin” above. Right on.

Tomorrow night I’ll be in Philly to check out Earthride, C.O.C. and Clutch at the Trocadero, which I’m confident is going to be a complete blast. While I’m posting links to new videos on the forum, Mike H. shot a yet-unreleased Clutch song Wednesday night in Maine, and embedded it here. Thanks as always to him for his diligence. Anyway, if you’re gonna be at the show tomorrow, I’m the fat guy with the long hair, beard and the brown messenger-type camera bag, singing along to the chorus, “The party’s over/You all got to go/The wolfman is coming out.” I imagine it’ll be the bag that most distinguishes me.

This week, aside from that probable Iron Man review, I’ll have a writeup on tomorrow’s show, as well as the new Cherry Choke album, and — if it kills me — I will get Skype to record on my laptop and hook up that Grifter interview. I’ll also have the December numbers (I have no idea how they are), and since it’ll be 2012, at some point in the week I’ll do a preview of the year to come, most likely in the spirit of last year’s two-parter of records I’ve heard and ones I haven’t yet.

And as we learned today, there will be some albums I won’t hear at all, and for that, I apologize profusely.

I wish you a safe, insanely happy and healthy New Year, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. I hope your 2012 is overflowing with joy and personal fulfillment, large cash settlements and whatever else it is that will make you glad to be on this planet. Raise a toast to the killer records to come and we’ll see you back here Monday for more adventures in adjectival phrasing.

Much as I love the city of Philadelphia — and I do; it’s the Wesley Snipes to NYC‘s Stephen Dorff — it’s a long way away. Nonetheless, for a lineup like Las Cruces and Iron Man, the trip is well worth it. And hey, I didn’t drive as far as Las Cruces, who are from San Antonio, and thus know what salsa should taste like. So it could be worse.

I was in no hurry to get to the Millcreek Tavern, since it was just the two bands on the bill and I knew the show would be running late. Las Cruces went on first, playing tracks off of their latest, Dusk, as well as older material and a new song called “Egypt” that I shouted from the crowd was a keeper. And it was. There wasn’t much of an audience — apparently some fest was happening down the street — but the loyal few enjoyed what the four-piece had to offer, myself included, and when they played “Wizard” and “Cocaine Wizard Woman” back-to-back, I felt like life was doing me a personal favor. Two songs with “wizard” in the title — in a row! Doesn’t get more doomed than that, folks.

In general I consider myself a fan of a singing drummer, and Paul DeLeon of Las Cruces didn’t disappoint. While guitarists George Trevino and Mando Tovar (Pillcrusher) poured out killer riffs and solos and bassist Jimmy Bell windmilled a breeze enough to feel it from in front of the stage, DeLeon held down the rhythm and the melody of material both old and new. Dusk is the band’s first full-length in 12 years, but the band and the songs sounded fresh and they put on a righteous show despite the fact that there weren’t too many people in the crowd to see it.

A chicken cheese steak was enjoyed in between sets — no onions — and I had plenty of time to eat, as Iron Man took their time getting going. Vocalist Joe Donnelly must have been running late, or else waiting outside to make his grand entrance, since he came in just before the set started. Bassist Louis Strachan and new drummer Mike Rix (who has about four more toms in his rack-mounted kit than he needs for doom) make for a killer rhythm section, and Donnelly‘s Ozzy-style antics are well documented and always good for a laugh, but the essential component in Iron Man is Al Morris III, whose sheer presence while he plays guitar makes the whole set. I managed to get video of the opener, “I Have Returned,” which you can see below. Watch his solo and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Amazing.

Iron Man played a new song as well. I didn’t catch the name of it, but it’s good to know they’re working on material for a follow-up to I Have Returned. They were selling the recent Shadow Kingdom reissues of Generation Void, Black Night and The Passage as well, though I don’t know how many people were there who didn’t already have them. They played an 11-song set, which seemed like a bit much, but although it’s three days later and my sleep pattern is still thrown off, I’m not going to say it wasn’t worth the time or effort to get to the show. It was all the more special because of the sparse attendance, and with Las Cruces having come so far, and Iron Man having made the trip from Maryland, it seemed the least I could do to show up. I guarantee whatever else was going on in town that night wasn’t as doomed out as this show was.

Adding to the argument in favor of attendance was not knowing when Las Cruces would be back this way. Iron Man is killer, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve already seen them this year and worse comes to worst, Maryland is only three hours away. San Antonio is a little farther out from Jersey, and since I enjoyed Dusk so much (even the tracks not about wizards of any shape or form), I wanted to be there to support the band. I don’t know if it did them any good in terms of getting gas money to get to the next show, but there you go. Should have been a couple local acts on the bill to round it out and fill up the place, should have been more people there, but it was a killer gig and easily justified the ride down. No complaints out of me.

If the elder’s fables are true, and there really is a cult of true doom, then I can’t help but feel that somewhere in the initiation process is Black Night, the 1992 debut offering from Maryland legends Iron Man. Among the most sought-after of the Hellhound Records catalog, it’s an album whose legacy has only grown with time. I don’t know if it’s a rite of passage or some kind of challenge to would-be cult inductees or what. Maybe you have to air guitar all of Al Morris III’s riffs while on fire or something. That would be cool in a very Beavis and Butt-Head kind of way.

Shadow Kingdom Records, whose reissue kung fu is like Bruce Lee in fast forward, capped off 2009 by re-releasing this rare doom gem, capturing the Iron Man lineup of Morris, Larry Brown (bass), Ron Kalimon (drums) and Rob Levey (vocals; also the man behind the Stoner Hands of Doom series of festivals) in their first incarnation after leaving behind their Black Sabbath cover band roots and trotting out their premiere batch of original material. With cuts like “Life After Death,” “Black Night,” “A Child’s Future” and classic album opener “Choices,” we can only be glad 18 years later that they did.

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It was that special kind of cold that renders pants pointless because the wind goes right through them anyway. Nonetheless, I and the pants I decided to wear despite the futility made our way to The Clash Bar in Clifton, NJ, in plenty of time to catch Nimdok, ClamFight and headliners Iron Man in the surprisingly swanky venue. The floors were clean, the bar freshly wiped down, the lighting expensive. I’d never been to The Clash Bar before, and it hardly looked like the kind of place that would have a doom show, but hey, where Iron Man guitarist Al Morris goes, so go I.

Nimdok was up first; a kind of noisy throwaway trash rock that took elements from the ’90s AmRep scene probably without realizing it. The vocals were bad on purpose in a kind of punk rock way, but not really pulled off, and the impression I got was the young trio didn’t give a fuck about what they were doing. Sometimes that’s cool. Sometimes it just doesn’t sit well. I guess I was anxious to see the next bands, because I wasn’t buying it.

Needless to say, I survived, and they actually weren’t bad dudes and stuck around for most of the show despite being musically disparate to the other acts. You can’t ask for more than that really, when it comes to local bands. Everyone’s going to do what they do and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and some like it and some don’t. You stand there anyway. That’s just the way it is.

With Diane Kamikaze of the famed WFMU DJing the evening, there were plenty of between-band moments of righteousness. She hit tracks from Darkthrone, Kreator, old Mastodon (you always forget how good that shit was until you hear it again after a while), and plenty of doom/stoner stuff, including “Avon” from the first Queens of the Stone Age, which sent me on a binge with that record from which I’ve yet to recover. Could be worse.

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To avoid running otherwise the risk of shameless self-promotion, I’ll just say that when a kickass band like Iron Man comes to your neck of the woods, you don’t miss it. That’s pretty much the deal. For my fellow Jerseyans, behold the following righteousness:

I never got around to writing up the official Buried Treasure entry for my first trip to Red Scroll Records on N. Colony St. in Wallingford, CT (it seems like everything in Wallingford is on N. Colony). The standouts in my mind now — and I’ll allow this is perhaps because I’m staring directly at that section on my CD rack — are an original issue of Saint Vitus‘ V on Roadrunner that may or may not be a European import, the Brownhouse release of Welcome to the Western Lodge by Masters of Reality and Acid King‘s Zoroaster. They also had a $15 copy of Dozer‘s In the Tail of a Comet, which I almost bought on principle even though I already owned it. There were many others.

It’s my wife’s family on the shore of the Long Island Sound in Connecticut, which is why I leave the valley so often on weekends and head up there, and in between my sister-in-law’s house and my grandmother-in-law’s house — wouldn’t you know it, just a short detour away — is Red Scroll Records. It was two Saturdays ago, maybe. Whenever the Clutch show wasn’t and not this past weekend. Come to think of it, it might have been a Tuesday. “Is this a weekday? What day is this?”

Regardless, the stipulation from The Patient Mrs. was that I had no longer than 13 minutes to do my shopping. Red Scroll Records is not especially large, but 13 minutes isn’t enough to properly peruse even the barest of used sections. Something is better than nothing. I issued myself the challenge: if I could find one CD in 13 minutes, I’d buy it.

So what the hell is challenging about that?

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In the church of true doom, there is a stained glass window in honor of Iron Man. Born out of a scene comparable to none other in the United States, namely Maryland and greater metro D.C. area, Iron Man stand out among the truest of the traditional doomers. Led by guitarist and senior riffmaster Alfred Morris III — who after more lineup changes than any band should have to endure is now accompanied by vocalist Joe Donnelly, bassist Louis Strachan and drummer Dex Dexter — the band this April released their first studio full-length in a decade, the appropriately titled (and recently reviewed) I Have Returned.

I Have Returned swims a magic ocean of classically melancholic doomisms, pushing a timeless sound into a receptive modern age and earning the respect of heads young and old. Released via Pittsburgh‘s Shadow Kingdom Records, the album issues 10 tracks (all available for sampling on the band’s MySpace page) of cult-worthy riffs and enough woe to last until 2019. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait that long for the next record.

After the jump, “Iron” Al Morris III graciously answers some questions about his band’s past, present and future, including the story of how they reformed in 2004 and what it was like being back in the studio to make I Have Returned. Enjoy.

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“Iron” Al Morris III is a doomer’s doomer; an original in of the congregation of The Riff. His band Iron Man, in the ranks of the original Hellhound Records greats, has seen ups, downs, further downs and expanses of time where the question, “Hey, what the hell ever happened to Iron Man?” wasn’t necessarily out of line. With just the self-released Submission EP to show for studio material (though there have been a host of live albums since 2006) in the time between 1999′s Generation Void (Brainticket) and today, Morris and Iron Man have been through lineup changes, periods of inactivity and damn near every other obstacle you can put in front of a band, remaining in spite of everything in the top names of traditional Maryland doom, which, to be fair, is a scene forgiving of intermittence among its own.

In 2009, Iron Man signed up with Pittsburgh‘s Shadow Kingdom Records to release their new album, the aptly-titled I Have Returned. Anyone who knows the band knows they got their start chopping out live sets mostly comprised of Sabbath covers, but on I Have Returned, originality takes center stage, with vocalist Joe Donnelly (once an Ozzy impersonator) providing unique companionship for Morris‘ riffing. The rhythm section of bassist Louis Strachan and drummer Dex Dexter makes this an entirely new lineup surrounding the guitarist since Generation Void, but Iron Man more than meet the tightness required by the music, sounding cohesive and natural throughout the album’s 10 tracks.

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