New Band To Burn One To: Z/28

Big flat slab of good ol’ stoner rock and roll emanates from the speakers as the debut EP from Massachusetts trio Z/28 strikes off every riff and desert scorched highway of your stoner car ride’s dream. There’s nothing new or ground breaking in their sound, but it’s a glorious noise which encapsulates all of our loves into one short bundle of riffing joy (try to tell me that ‘Blinded’ doesn’t get you going). Excellent potential!

Bandcamp|Facebook

Album Review: "The Bushgate" - Samba Cemetery

Are you looking for something fresh, something with a bit of the new, something that tickles that desert/stoner rockbone without directly rehashing a thousand albums already consumed? Samba Cemetery's "The Bushgate" might just be the thing to trigger that rewind button interface on your music app and perk up your stoner rock antennae.

There are some sharp metal edges and thickly welded melodies throughout this 5 song EP that opens with the title track, an instrumental that will make you think you're in for a psychedelic excursion before it smoothly segues into a huge riff barrage. "Samba" gives way to "Blast of the Rex" where fast and fierce rhythms fuel the launch of this EP juggernaut for the album's duration.

"Rolling" catches it's breath....just for a bit... before itself expending jet fuel to hurl us into the deep, dark recesses of this vibrant, viscous concoction of sand, sound, and steel.

"Help Me Breathe" is mighty. It's muscular. It's a mammoth rendering of the razor edges Samba Cemetery wield with an assassin's relish.

The EP closes out with a perfect coup de grace, "Last Samba", a long agonizing burn off of sugar and sweetness to reveal pointy crags of sharp rock, the cracking timber of splintering oak trees, and precisely honed riffs of gleaming metal edges.

Hailing from Berlin this powerful threesome include:
Ruben Leon - Vocals, Guitar
Lukas Weber - Drums
David Gi - Bass

Leon's vocals are pure barbed razor and rusty iron rebar, slicing and cleaving in and through his equally dangerous sharp riffs and bruising runs on guitar.

Gi has brought the big hammer to the job with his bombardier bass perfectly rendering the primal underpinnings of the music.

Weber's drumwork is unrelenting, unstoppable, and invanquishable, pummeling and pounding in a pugilistic onslaught, never retreating behind or below his amplified brethren.

Together this threesome are able to deliver that rare bond between superbly crafted melodies and expertly delivered renditions of such.

When all is told this short foray of lustful metal is blissful and refreshing, well worth a kickback and listen, a bandcamp and chill, or a Heavy Planet and Jam.

bandcamp ||  facebook || soundcloud || spotify

New Band To Burn One To: ODDHUMS

This is the debut EP from Jaén, Spain’s, ODDHUMS. The band only formed earlier this year and have already created a record which blows many of their peers out of the water. The band (Freg on Guitar, Keke on Drums, and Will on Bass and Vocals) combine a few different styles over these four tracks, from stoner and sludge riffing, to post-rock dalliances with grunge overtones, making them hard to predict but exciting to listen to.

Grab a hold of this EP while you can from their bandcamp, and play on repeat until their first full length comes out; we think you’ll be as excited as we are for it. 

Bandcamp|Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: FALL OF AN EMPIRE - "CROWEATER: AN ECHO IN THE BONE"

South Carolina's Fall of an Empire had arguably one of the best releases of 2014 with their debut album Songs of Steel and Sorrow, named by HeavyPlanet's own Reg as a top ten album for that year. Now they're back with a follow up album, Croweater: An Echo in the Bone. How does this 6 track EP stack up to their gargantuan debut? One spin through is enough to let you know this purple covered jewel exceeds any eager expectations. So well crafted, well constructed, and keenly delivered is the music on this six song presentation it is not beyond the realm of possibility it will become an album for the ages, a metal standard to be enjoyed through time and generations to come.

Each song is an exquisite blend of melody, craft, and fuzz, delivered with high handed skill of the most accomplished songsmiths while brandishing the heart of the hungry tyro. The weaving of syrupy rich solos, gritty riffs, crackerjack rhythm, and exuberant drumwork is exquisitely framed by the magnificent vocals of frontman Kenny Lawrence whose voice is a beacon of rock clarity seldom matched in a sea of thousands of gargling mediocrities.

Band members include:
Brent Carroll - Guitar/Vocals
Shane Smith - Bass
Cody Edens - Guitar
Brad Munoz - Drums
Kenny Lawrence - Lead Vocals

Fall of an Empire's style, if you will, is one of evocative, haunting ballads of deep, rich texture, amplified thrills, gargantuan twin guitars, and leviathan bass and drums trolling along a rumbling underworld of deafening darkness. No song exemplifies this more than the title track "Croweater". The standout song of the album, perhaps, is "Uprising", a relentless pummeling of sound and turbulence whose inexorable vibrations quickly sync to a primal core of sonority. Each song is an adventure of deep stirring with payoff in excess as heart, guile, and finesse deliver a trove of music treasure.

bandcamp || facebook

LP Review: Pilgrimage of Loathing by MAKE

Only a year on from the release of one of our favourite records of 2015, North Carolina’s MAKE have released another album to make us stop what we’re doing and check how many superlatives we can fit into a short review, because these guys have gone one better than last year’s The Golden Veil, and created a record which is gonna really screw with your senses, and what’s better this time round is quite a menacing thing: MAKE are fucking angry!

The record opens with a slowly built follow on from last year’s release, before the sheer wall of noise hits you as ‘The Somnambulist’ hits you with what MAKE are all about this time round; musical stylings that flicker between beautiful atmospherics, and harsh dark doom that flows with anger and discontent with the society around them. But one of the stunning things about this band is that like a flick of the switch, they can turn the sound into a chanting like state of pleasure without losing any of their flow, never letting the listener settle for a moment, knowing what will come next. ‘Birthed Into A Grave They Made For You’ gets a little more deathly with the vocals, while the sludging riffs and war chant drumming makes your blood boil, echoing MAKE’s own disgust and vengeance. It’s a glorious aggression!

The astral plain style playing is there though, with the poetically named ‘Two Hawks Fucking’ sending psychedelic post-rock vibes reverberating through the speakers, the aftermath of the siege that came before it, right before ‘Human Garbage’ pins you down and continues to relentlessly punish any sort of sensitivity you had left. Their cover of The Stooges’ ‘Dirt’ is as Iggy would have sounded if a diet of doom, pain, blackness, demonic chants, and religious hypocrisy were his staple diet on a daily basis, and it is on point! It would be close to being an album highlight if it were possible to dissect the record into individual songs, and not viewed as a whole, as that is what is necessary with MAKE record; listened to as full records, all the way through, repeatedly.

It has been quite a journey listening to MAKE progress and develop through the years as a band, from Trephine to last year’s stunning The Golden Veil, to their latest spectacular effort, Pilgrimage of Loathing, we have become engrained in the band, willing them to achieve greater things with each effort, and they’re not disappointing. Their sound is combining all the elements that they’ve been teasing with in the past, the sludge/black metal scowls, the ethereal riffs from both hellish and tranquil plains of existence, and soundscapes that challenge the ears, toeing the lines between post-rock/metal, black metal, sludge, and good ol’ heavy rock, MAKE have seriously mastered their craft!

Bandcamp|Facebook