Some days it just feels like we’re all living in the echo of Dead Meadow’s ringing tones. The impression is reinforced by the full-yet-somehow-minimalist-sounding Detroit trio, Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor, whose fashion-worthy, restrained distortion blends the shoegaze wanderings of the aforementioned East Coast expats with some of The Doors’ storm-riding slinkiness (Baltimore‘s The Flying Eyes come to mind as compatriots in that regard). The album is Spectra Spirit, and it’s Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s second self-release behind a 2009 self-titled, comprised of nine varied tracks of tilt-your-head-back cave pop, open-spaced Americana and the kind of neo-psychedelic spirit fostered in Tee Pee sub-hipster bands like Quest for Fire and Weird Owl. Periodic hooks like “You go downtown to the hole in your brain” from the centerpiece “The Hole in Your Brain” serve as landmarks for would-be travelers, and though at this point the line between poser indie and American heavy psych is about as blurry as a hipstamatic press shot, Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s warmth of tone and occasional shift into thickly-delivered bliss makes Spectra Spirit work on its own terms. Greatly aided by a natural-feeling production, the songs can’t help but flow smoothly in themselves and between each other, setting a vibe of grander exploration without ever really going full-on experimental or lapsing into more self-indulgence than is warranted by the style.

And “style” is a keyword when it comes to Spectra Spirit. As their European counterparts seem to be morphing into jam-based, lengthier compositions, American acts like Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor present a darker take. The later cut “Sweet Girl Insanity” is the longest on the album at 5:46 and has probably the most effective build of any of the songs here, with drummer/backing vocalist Rick Sawoscinski announcing the payoff with the loudest snare hits on the whole of Spectra Spirit and guitarist/vocalist Sean Morrow clicking whichever of what I can only assume is a vast collection of pedals puts his tone into full-rock mode. By contrast, bassist/backing vocalist Eric Oppitz (who also handles organ when there’s organ to handle) stands out more in the song’s subdued beginning, cutting through the subtle swirl with an anchoring tone that not only keeps the rhythm, but enhances the atmosphere. Earlier, in the upbeat opening duo of “Untitled” and “Black Mind” – the latter which features Oppitz’s long-held organ notes – the bass occurs as part of a larger barrage of noise, and it’s absent from the acoustic-based “Howlers on the Roam,” but where it’s brought to the fore, Spectra Spirit is fuller and more effective for it. Morrow’s guitar leads most of the material, unsurprisingly, and his vocals are responsible for much of Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor’s chic feel. The Jim Morrison comparison has already been hinted at and is worth reiterating for Morrow’s delivery of “Howlers on the Roam” and the post-centerpiece “Did You Hear the Lion Roar, Mr. Wig,” the latter of which sets its late-night boozery and pill-popping against a backdrop of late ‘60s echoing and would fall utterly flat in its first half as the low point of the album were it not for Oppitz’s work on bass.

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It’s a rare band that will have me throwing the horns at my desk, but so help me Robot Jeebus, the first time I listened to the self-titled EP from Detroit five-piece Knife, up they went at the end of opening track, “The Mess.” It was a gut reaction. No choice in the matter. The song is the perfect balance of catchy choruses and bearded burl, like the first Queens of the Stone Age record after getting its ass kicked a couple times.

As much as Detroit has seen the growth of a hipster culture the last few years, Knife have nothing to do with any of that. In the same vein as like-minded heavy Motor City bastards Chapstik and Mean Mother, they rock straightforward and more than a bit angry, pulling back some on the aggression for “Lake of Tar” (especially as compares to “This Field was Made for Killing” preceding) but giving little slack in the momentum. Knife is only six songs, 25 minutes, but in that time, the band establishes a firm pattern of riffs and solos, earning their two guitars and still leaving room for the standalone vocals of Curt Massof, which more than earn it.

Whether it’s the start-stop semi-Southern chugga groove of “Outrider” (little Danzig in there) or the unbridled energy of “Lineage,” Knife make sure their foot is right at home in the ass of their listener, and though I don’t know what the deal is with them and a label, them and a full-length, them and touring, them and their lineup, etc., I just wanted to put these songs on here because I actually dig the music. Figure the rest will work itself out.

If you want to hit the band up, do so on their Thee Facebooks profile or buy the EP via Bandcamp. Enjoy this stream of Knife‘s Knife, courtesy of the latter portal:

There’s some stuff out there I like just because it’s fucked up, and the video for BerT‘s “An Adventure 65 Million Light Years in the Making” definitely fits the bill. The song, which was recorded live at Mac’s Bar in the band’s native Lansing, Michigan, is riffy weirdness set to visuals of animals eating each other, space and even a little chimpanzee karate thrown in the middle for good measure. It’s a psychedelic horror trip, and somehow it fits the music perfectly.

I can’t help but think that documentary series Planet Earth would have won even more Emmys if it had this soundtrack:

BerT‘s latest EP, Live at Mac’s Bar 06-01-11 is available for free download here, courtesy of Madlantis Records.

They’ve made a beeline for the rock, have Michigan’s Mean Mother. The Detroit/Grand Rapids four-piece – who formed in 2003 as a side-project of more metallic acts like Ganon and Today I Wait – make their full-length debut (I think; there seems to be one release before it, but info is scarce) in the form of Rock ‘n’ Roll Shakedown (Saw Her Ghost Records), an album the name of which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. The first lines of the opening title cut read as follows: “Make a fist for rock ‘n’ roll/Yeah/Come on/Right now,” and from right there, it only gets more apparent that Mean Mother have no interest in poetry, no interest in brooding melancholy, no interest in pompous artistic posing. They’re here to drink, riff and groove, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Shakedown only asks that you come along for the catchy 42-minute joyride.

It’s the kind of heavy rock one expects to come more from Texas than Michigan – acts like Blood of the Sun and SuperHeavyGoatAss springing to mind as comparison points; or maybe even the new school of Small Stone rockers like Backwoods Payback and Lo-Pan (neither of whom is Texan) – but no question the double-guitar foursome have their papers in order when the issue is heavy rock influences. From Clutch to Deep Purple to the obvious Sabbath and Motörhead cues, they only want to rock, and the utter lack of pretense of anything else is what makes Rock ‘n’ Roll Shakedown work. A track like “Easy Livin’” makes its bones on ‘70s riffing and the white-guy-soulful delivery of guitarist Roxy Vega as backed by bassist Clint Debone, and there’s a million directions one could go in saying, “I’ve heard this before” in citing bands, but Mean Mother do what they do well and write a solid heavy rock song. Vega and fellow guitarist Cobra O’Kelly offer righteous riff-grooves and soloing, and Debone and drummer Bronco Johnson consistently lay down warm foundational rhythms. There’s a reason it’s become the heavy rock formula over the last 40 years, and the reason is it sounds cool.

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Hailing from the oh-so-pastoral climes of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the four-piece Lights at Sea traffics in a kind of wispy ethereal instrumental post-rock. It’s a sound most commonly associated these days with acts like Explosions in the Sky, but as Lights at Sea’s full-length debut, Palace Walls (Mind over Matter/Barrett Records) has some crunch to its low-end, I’m inclined to cite earlier Pelican as well, the two guitars of Scott Adams and Ryan Harig playing off each other in rhythms and echoing tonality. The album, which is a full-length at a bit under 35 minutes, is comprised of seven explorations that feel somewhere between improvised jamming and pointedly linear structures. Doubtless the band, which is rounded out by drummer Rob Burt and bassist Nick Rhodes, had some direction in mind for these tracks before pressing record, but with this kind of effects swirl, there are bound to be moments and sounds that pop up as part of the studio experience that simply couldn’t have been foreseen, and these are often some of the most magical stretches that albums like this have to offer.

What’s holding Palace Walls back, then, is the ease with which it can be pigeonholed into a genre. Cuts like the title-track, which follows a softly droning, minimalist intro dubbed “Fireside,” set up an effective build across their span, but it’s simple to write these and many of the other moves Lights at Sea are making here as derivative. One of their most engaging cuts is the centerpiece “Mantracker,” and even here Lights at Sea aren’t accomplishing anything in their encompassing all of sound that Red Sparowes wasn’t doing with their Godspeed You! Black Emperor influence on their own first album in 2005. To Lights at Sea’s credit, the flow from one track to the next on Palace Walls is immaculate, but I’m not convinced even after multiple listens that that alone is going to be enough to save them amidst fickle ears or heads bored of spaced out noodling. It’s a young sound anyway – one half expects to hear someone start post-hardcore screaming at several intervals on the album, “This is a House of Learned Doctors” among them – but even so, it’s one long since established, and Lights at Sea don’t bring much to it that wasn’t there to start with.

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Coming off yesterday’s bummer news of Backwoods Payback‘s partial tour cancellation, Small Stone Records has revealed their schedule for their first-ever batch of vinyl releases. Small Stone, who’ve traditionally stuck to the smaller-form plastic discs, are preparing to launch limited editions of records new and old, starting with Californian classic rockers Sasquatch‘s 2010 release, III, next month.

Label honcho Scott Hamilton sent over the following update with the schedule in tow, links to preorder (click the band names) and notice that two additional vinyls are to come before 2011 is over:

So, we just got word from the folks at United Record Pressing that the Sasquatch III vinyl is scheduled to get pressed on Monday, March 7. If you happened to pre-order a copy, we estimate that your order will go out sometime in the next two weeks. Literally, whatever day we have them back from URP, all pre-orders will get processed and mailed out on that same day. Unless of course, the LPs show up when we are down at the SXSW Festival, in which case, all pre-orders will be sent out on Monday, March 21.

We have also been getting a ton of emails about our forthcoming vinyl releases, so here is a rough vinyl release schedule that we currently have in the works for 2011. Also, all of these will be specially remastered for vinyl, and printed in limited edition, one-time-only runs between 300-500 copies. So when they are gone, they will be Sold Out and Out Of Print.

Sasquatch – III - 180g LP (April)
Roadsaw - S/T – 180g LP (May)
Tia Carrera – Cosmic Priestess - Gatefold/ 180g LP (June)
Lo-Pan – Salvador - 180g LP (July)
Ironweed – Your World of Tomorrow – Gatefold/ 180g LP (August)
Gozu - Locust Season – 180g LP (September)
The Brought Low - Right on Time – 180g LP (October)

Although this is the second album I’ve reviewed this week with the title MMX (here’s the first), Michigan sludge bashers Balboa MI use the Roman numerals not as a statement of intent or a beginning point, but the opposite, as a way of marking their end. MMX is a 16-track collection from Hydro-Phonic Records that serves as the final statement from Balboa MI, compiling their original 2007 demo with the blistering New Means to an End EP and a cover intended for the dead-in-the-water Buzzov*en tribute, Unfit to Consume. It’s probably as close to a definitive statement from Balboa MI as we’re ever going to get, and at 48 minutes, it says just about everything you need to know about the band: they were here, they were heavy, they’re gone now. Vocalist Jarrad Collard’s striking line drawing of a snarling dog that serves as MMX’s cover is emblematic of the overall mission of Balboa MI, and after seeing the band live in their home state on more than one occasion and making my way through these tracks, I can only say it’s too bad that mission got cut short.

The immediate reference point for Balboa MI during their time together was always EyeHateGod, and with tracks like “Cousin Fucker” (as opposed to “Sister Fucker”) and “Dixie Jam,” which opens the demo, it seems like they knew it. The difference between Balboa MI and the scores of others under the grip of Bower power, though, is that the double-guitar five-piece never lost sight of what really made EyeHateGod so influential in the first place: the intensity. Sure, the slow Southern riffs are great, but it was the unbridled and filthy hardcore punk that offset them that really helped make sludge what it is today, and Balboa MI are (were) masters of the form. “Acid Rain” (which appears twice on MMX as it was re-recorded for New Means to an End) and the aptly-titled “Hardcore Song” take the feedback-drenched churn of New Orleans sludge’s glory days and give it a flavor of Michigan’s post-economic devastation. Anger is universal, and it bleeds out of Balboa MI’s truncated discography as sincere and frightening as ever.

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Coming off an exceptionally bright 2010 that had killer albums from Red Giant, Gozu, House of Broken Promises and Solace, Detroit‘s Small Stone Records is showing no signs of slowing down. Their first releases of 2011, Suplecs and The Might Could are available now, and there’s more to come in April with Roadsaw and Austin, Texas, improv artists Tia Carrera.

Let’s let the label take it from here:

We hope that you all survived the holidays. We have kept ourselves rather busy here at Small Stone HQ, so here is some quick news to keep you all in the loop.

The brand new recordings (in the CD format) from both The Might Could and Suplecs are now in stock and ready for your consumption… Buy them both, and thank us later. They just smoke, plain and simple!

The brand new recordings from Roadsaw and Tia Carrera are now getting mastered. The new self-titled album from Roadsaw will hit the streets in March, andTia Carrera’s new album Cosmic Priestess will hit the streets in April. Both of these releases will be coming out on the LP and CD formats…

Both of the new albums (coming later this Spring) from Ironweed and Lo-Pan are currently in the mixing process at Mad Oak Studios, with our main man Benny Grotto working his engineering and production mojo on ‘em.

Finally, we are getting all geared up for the 2011 SXSW festival, which will include both a Small Stone Day Party and our official SXSW Evening Showcase… Lot’s of propaganda, details, and hype to soon follow.

They’re young, and they have some work yet to do in refining their sound and figuring out what they want to accomplish as players, but Grand Rapids sludge trio Mountain Goat are off to a killer start. Their debut Hydro-Phonic Records 7″, Smoke Filled Land, and their recent split with Christian black metallers The Crowned Virgin (also from Grand Rapids; review here) show the outfit among the brightest and riffingest the next generation of sonic mudslinging has to offer.

Mountain Goat eschew a lot of the atmospheric pretense of modern sludge — I don’t need to list bands, you know what I’m talking about — and instead embrace the rudimentary elements of the genre: “What would Buzzov*en do?” Buzzov*en would get fucked up, play as loud as possible and occasionally throw a punch on a syndicated talk show. So be it.

The band is comprised of Monte Davis, Keith Ortiz and Derek Kasperlik. The former two took some time out to collectively answer the following six dumb questions:

1. Give me the secret origins of how you guys got together. How did you get started and how did you get hooked up with Hydro-Phonic Records?

Well, we (Monte and Keith) started Mountain Goat in our sophomore year of high school. We went through several lineup changes… those being drummer related. Everyone we tried out didn’t seem to get the simple, heavy drumming style we wanted. No one was familiar with the music. Eventually, Derek was called over for a jam practice and afterwards he was in the band as second guitar. We still had tons of drummer problems. After months of going nowhere, Derek decided he would play bass, and Keith would move to drums. We knew what sound we wanted. Why keep searching for someone to slow us down? It was the best decision we made. We’re really rolling on shit now, and it’s going great!

We eventually started playing around town. Someone told us about another Grand Rapids sludge band called Bullpig. We checked out their MySpace and couldn’t wait to check them out live because we really thought we were the only sludgy doom band in GR. We’ve now played numerous shows with them, and saw that they were on Hydro-Phonic Records. They told us to send a message to them and see if they were interested. Travis from HPRX came out to a show, and we talked afterwards. He really liked it. We played “Streetside” by The Obsessed, ha ha. We started hanging with him at his house talking classic horror movies and stoner rock in general. We eventually all decided on doing a 7” vinyl, and we also help with the label with new releases and help HPRX put everything together.

2. When did you first realize there was an indie band called The Mountain Goats? Did you ever think about changing your name?

After about six months of being a band, people would constantly remind us of The Mountain Goats. It eventually got to the point of annoyance that we decided to change our name and we did for one show. The name didn’t stick and everyone still knew us as Mountain Goat. At this point, we really don’t care.  Someone reviewed us a while ago and mentioned, “In the great words of Michael Bolton when being asked, ‘Why not go by Mike instead?’ ‘Why should I change if he’s the one who sucks?’” ha ha.

3. How do you know The Crowned Virgin? How did the split release come about?

The Crowned Virgin started six months before we did, so we’ve known them for a really long time. They are really good friends of ours and we’ve been talking about doing a split for about two years now.  That’s about all we really have to say about them. Pretty straight to the point. Good guys.

4. Talk about recording those tracks. Was it any different from doing the Smoke Filled Land 7”? What do you have planned for recording next?

These songs (from TCV split, and Smoke Filled Land 7”) were all recorded at Postman Dan’s — The Mailbox (or Malebox) — at the same time. We did them live, and it was a pretty straightforward recording.

Coming up next year we have a Split 10” with Sollubi, courtesy of HPRX. Other than that, we are just working on more songs during practice. Hopefully, we’ll see where that takes us with later releases.

5. Tell me about the rock scene out in Michigan. I know some killer bands from out that way, but what are the shows like? How has the response to Mountain Goat been?

There’s a pretty big hardcore/punk rock scene. We mostly play with punk rock acts more than we do metal acts. There’s only a couple of places to play in Grand Rapids that aren’t bars. The response we get is usually really good no matter what/where we play, or whom we play with. We really just put everything we can into our live show, and it definitely shows.

6. Will Mountain Goat tour? Any other closing words plans you want to mention?

Yes, we do have plans to tour, but with all three of us having jobs and dealing with school, it’s kind of hard at the moment to find the time, or funds to go out on the road. We are in talks right now of doing a few dates with our friends Blue Aside (from Massachusetts) in mid-July. Other than that, we are just working on new songs, and toying with the idea of putting out a full-length someday, but we are in no rush at the moment because we hate Rush. If anyone has any questions, feel free to message us on our MySpace or on our Facebook page. And if anyone wants to buy our 7”, or our split with The Crowned Virgin, do so on the Hydro-Phonic Records MySpace page or the many distributors that carry them.

Not to be confused with the ultra-hip Californian indie band The Mountain Goats, the Grand Rapids, Michigan, sludge outfit Mountain Goat offer aural cruelty and scraping madness on their Hydro-Phonic Records split with fellow hometown heroes, black metallers The Crowned Virgin. Even with both bands contributing a total of eight tracks, I’d still count it as an EP, since with just four cuts each and a total runtime of 29 minutes, the release gives more of a sampling from Mountain Goat and The Crowned Virgin than it expresses a complete idea from either, but in letting people know what they’re all about, it succeeds entirely. Between Mountain Goat’s (again, not The Mountain Goats) riotous doom maelstrom and the rasping primitivism of The Crowned Virgin, it’s not hard to get what both bands want out of the split. They want you, in pain.

The Mountain Goat formula is relatively simple, but remarkably effective. Feedback, riffs, crashes, screams; the makings of sludge modernity brought to life. But Mountain Goat, particularly from the placement of the vocals – which have a similar unsettling edge to their screams as the original leaders of American black metal or even some of Pig Destroyer’s earliest work – bring the established tropes of the genre into their own context. Their four songs (“Tuskin,” the faster “Necromatik,” “Slumber” and “Covenance Cauldron”) groove like undulating stoner metal, but the sounds are undeniably evil. With production rawer than that of the band’s prior Smoke Filled Land 7” (also on Hydro-Phonic), the meanness of the tracks comes through sounding live and brutal. The droning feedback that ends “Necromatik” more or less sets the atmosphere on its own, and that atmosphere carries across the other tracks to come. As the next wave of sludge rises with bands like Thou and Salome, it’s easy to see how Mountain Goat could fit in that echelon of disturbing sonics.

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The second full-length from Detroit horror-obsessed doom and rollers Acid Witch might be the most aptly-named album of the year. They called it Stoned. Their first release through the extreme metal imprint Hell’s Headbangers (an appropriate home given Acid Witch’s deathly leanings), Stoned follows on the hooves of the Midnight Mass vinyl-only EP, released just a couple weeks prior, and fleshes out the ideas nascent on 2008’s Witchtanic Hallucinations debut. In many ways, the opening track, “Satanic Faith,” says it all. Spooky organs, horror movie samples, gleeful reveling in devil-worship; it’s all in good fun for the duo of Shagrat and Slasher Dave, and with the level of riffly mischief they get up to on tracks like “Trick or Treat,” there’s plenty of heaviness to back up the lighthearted approach.

It’s riff-led all the way. “Witchfynder Finder” sets the tone with Sabbath-worship and Trouble’s classic straightforward structures, but the death growled vocals give Stoned an atmosphere like a Hammer Horror version of Carcass’ Heartwork LP. Acid Witch know their doom, clearly, and they’re obviously not shy about showing off a stoner rock influence. “Trick or Treat” is among the catchiest songs on Stoned and an early highlight, but “Thundering Hooves” — its title line delivered in a cadence reminiscent of Electric Wizard’s “Dunwich” from Witchcult Today – proves no less exciting. Samples have been done to death and we all know it, but Acid Witch is so much fun to listen to, and so self-aware, that the cliché aspects of Stoned are more than half of what’s to enjoy. While I doubt either Shagrat or Slasher Dave sit around and pray to Satan, they’re not being ironic either. Rather, Acid Witch seems hell-bent on paying homage to the horror culture of the ‘70s in a way similar to a band like Hooded Menace, though their doing so takes a much less extremely metallic form. The organ on “Live Forever,” following the guitar into the solo as it does, is straight-up Deep Purple and not a move Hooded Menace would make.

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In case anyone’s looking for a fix of weird, Lansing‘s BerT have placed two of their albums, Budgum Toe… a Tale of Two Toes and BerT — both released this year on the band’s own Madlantis Records — online for free streaming and downloading at Bandcamp. Since I think that’s so nifty of them, and since their tracks have quelled my week’s desire for musical quirk, I grabbed the player for Budgum Toe… a Tale of Two Toes off the Madlantis site, and you can use it to listen to the full album below. Have fun.

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In honor of the label’s upcoming showcase in Philadelphia (info here) later in September, I’ve decided this month’s audiObelisk transmission should highlight some of the best contributions from Detroit‘s Small Stone Records. The biggest challenge in making this installment wasn’t deciding what to include in terms of bands, but where to stop. It’s about three hours long, and I probably could have gone another easily.

I wanted to include some of Small Stone‘s classic output, from bands like Acid King, The Men of Porn and Five Horse Johnson, and I had to make sure the current and new faces were represented as well: Gozu, Skanska Mord, House of Broken Promises. And just when I thought I was all set to go, I realized I’d forgotten to include Sasquatch. Don’t even ask me how. I was all converted, uploaded, labeled and live, and the next thing I knew I broke out III and ripped the opener, reconverted, re-uploaded, so on and so forth. I don’t know if that’s dedicated or dumb.

Either way, it’s worth being both, given all that Small Stone has done for the genre over the course of the last decade-plus. We start off with some love for Jersey, which the label has always been ready to show. Halfway to Gone, doing “Great American Scumbag.” It’s a song I think sums up a lot of what it means to be into this kind of music in this day and age. As always, I hope you dig it and the rest of the transmission, which is the longest yet at over three hours and featuring 35 bands. This one’s easily my favorite so far.

And if you’re wondering what the image is above, it’s the Detroit airport.

You know the drill: Full tracklist after the jump, stream the file above or download it here. As requested, I included time stamps for when each song starts.

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Many bands sound angry. Many fewer of them actually are. With Year of the Pig, however, I buy it. I buy it completely. They certainly have enough to be angry about, being from Detroit, and given the political/socio-economic bent to their presented rage, there’s nothing about it that strikes as a put-on or disingenuous in any way. They’re pissed. Seriously.

On the six-track Year of the Pig EP (released through Spider Cuddler Records), the trio run through raging anti-corporatism and sub-Marxist commentaries. The lyrics – printed clearly and distinctly when you open the jewel case; clearly meant to be seen – being almost if not equally central to the music in terms of Year of the Pig getting their point across. With lines like “Primetime they evangelize and pray that our minds remain devoid,” there’s little danger of the audience not getting it, as guitarist/vocalist Vince Williams (ex-7,000 Dying Rats, The Christpunchers) spits fury in the direction of the capitalists who have, admittedly, eaten our world alive, backed by the jabbing barks of bassist Hank Pardike and the technically precise yet somehow passionate drum work of John Lehl (both ex-Diegrinder).

Pardike and Lehl have a tightness to their playing that underscores their years together in bands, and in Year of the Pig, they’re a huge portion of what makes the self-titled work. Lehl’s timely hi-hat hits in the intro of “Incinerator” bolster the beginning of the track and pave the way for Williams’ memorable lead lines to come. Throughout Year of the Pig, he doesn’t show himself to be a soloist in the shredding sense, but Williams’ leads on that song are what make it a highlight of the EP (there are several others), and Lehl and Pardike give him enough dynamic space so that he can shine where appropriate and be bolstered as necessary.

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Detroit‘s Diegrinder are officially listed as “on hiatus,” and with the rhythm section of bassist Henry Pardike and drummer John Lehl moved on to the decidedly angrier climes of Year of the Pig, I think it’s probably safe to say that Diegrinder‘s days are done. And though I didn’t find their 2002 Goin’ Down EP or 2005′s subsequent Detroit on Fire! full-length (between, the band suffered the loss of second guitarist Steve Kapo) in a used bin, they nonetheless seem ripe for a posthumous look. So here we are.

Detroit on Fire! is obviously the more developed of the two releases — the addition of guitarist Mike Elgert to the fold alongside Pardike, Lehl and guitarist/vocalist Adam Till went a long way — but Goin’ Down is not without a simplistic fuzzy charm. Diegrinder played a Roadsaw-style booze rock, showed a little punk on tracks like “Ballslide” and tapped the veins of familiar subject matter with “Motherfuckin’ Cocaine,” “We Ride,” “Bullets” and the even more blazing “Get Down Motherfucker.”

Nonetheless, what they lacked in revolutionary approach, they made up for with the aforementioned charm and a lack of pretense. In a state that has more rock bands than it has lakes — and Michigan, in case you didn’t know, has a lot of lakes — Diegrinder‘s time came and went quickly, but the documents they left behind are worth seeking out for aficionados of American stoner rock or the type of dude who simply has to have everything. Detroit on Fire! even has a secret track that’s a medley cover of Misfits‘ “Horror Hotel” and “Hybrid Moments.” Adorable.

Diegrinder don’t have any videos on the TuberYous, but their MySpace page is still up for anyone with a couple minutes and the will to hear something they haven’t already heard a thousand times. I know that’s asking a lot for a Monday, but sometimes you can pull it off. They didn’t change the world in their time together, but Diegrinder have echoes of a certain breed of local stoner rock type that’s rarely seen these days and so represent something larger than themselves. If you can dig it, dig it. If not, maybe they’ll come off “hiatus” and impress the next go around.