Album Review: Frozen Planet….1969 - Electric Smokehouse

The new album Electric Smokehouse from Sydney, Australia's own Frozen Planet….1969 is fully instrumental, completely improvised and full on intergalactic.  Seriously, like nothing I have ever experienced before outside of a certain psychotropic.  Just an insane carnival ride through multiple dimensions that you don't want to end or you do want it to end or your not sure if it is ever going to end and you are going to be stuck like this forever.  One way or the other your life will never be what it was when it's done.   

The band is comprised of Paul Attard tripping out on guitar, Lachlan Paine bringing the heavy low end fuzz on bass and Frank Attard pulling it all together on drums.  Their songwriting style is to not write songs, why bother?  They just jam.  Man, they fucking jam.   

I just listened to the album for the third time in a row and am sitting here in silence.  Heart palpitating, a little short of breath and not sure what to do next.  There is nothing to follow this album up with except maybe a cigarette and some quiet time.  I feel exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. 

Electric Smokehouse will be released on January 11th through Pepper Shaker Records.  Of course there will also be vinyl (in black or transparent purple).  

You have to check this one out, you just may look at life a little bit differently after you do. 

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Band Submission: Mystical Communication Service-Psychedelic Rock From Germany

Artwork by Stefanie Barz

Band Name: Mystical Communication Service
Genre: Psychedelic Rock
Location: Germany
Brief Bio/Description: Mystical Communication Service are a Berlin-based music project fronted by the fictional Yanez Di Mompracem, backed by a collection of eccentric and well-travelled band mates from all corners of the globe. The band is an amalgamation of wayward drifters and modern-day mystics, uniting to play their distinctive style of psychedelic and experimental rock.

Their sound oscillates between intricate blues-driven solos, creating a sense of ancient and emotive storytelling, and rhythmic explorations of unfamiliar yet alluring states of mind. Listening to Mystical Communication Service represents an enchanted excursion into a nomadic world, where the concepts of sanity and self-awareness fade away. The band creates an ethereal soundscape, leaving you adrift in a haze of desire and dream-like apparitions.

In late January 2014 the band released their first studio album entitled “Gypsy Spirit”, a mini album which has garnered a vast amount of praise and positive reviews from the online community and press beyond.

Band Members:
Yanez Pasqualin (Lead Vocals and Guitar)
Gerald Moises Pasqualin ( Drums & Percussion)
Diego Sposito Cozzi (Bass)
Yair Karelic (Lead guitar)
Kiyoshi Fujikawa (Djembe)
Links: Soundcloud | Facebook

Band Submission: Burbot-Rock, Metal, Experimental From Minneapolis, Minnesota

Band Name: Burbot
Genre: Rock, Metal, Experimental
Location: Minneapolis
Brief Bio/Description: Burbot is a one-man project out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This self-titled album is drums, bass, and vocals. All original songs were written, performed, and recorded by Chuck Foster in his basement.
Band Members: Chuck Foster
Links: Bandcamp | Soundcloud

Triple Thursday: Rosy Finch, Pohjoinen, Warchief

Rosy Finch - Witchboro

Let’s get this straight off the bat: Spanish trio Rosy Finch have created a simply stunning record with their debut Witchboro. Blending equal parts stoner, noise, and grunge, it’s a record channelling influences from Melvins to Screaming Females crossing over punk and doom influences along the way...tasty right?

     

Formed in 2013, featuring members of Pyramidal and Hela, the Alicante girl/boy/girl group’s debut record packs a hell of a punch from the off with ‘Ursula’ leading the band down a doom trodden path as the vocals of Mirela Porto and Elena Garcia enrapture as much as they guide you down a dark and scary path of layered riffs and pounding drums that is an enthralling listen. All of the band’s influences come raging out throughout the record with the punk screaming, psychedelic drifting of vocals and guitar picking, frenetic noise assaults, and no nonsense stoner songs that make you ache for the desert sun.

    

The band describe the record as ‘a journey through the soundscape of "Witchboro", a dark and soulless village where the occult and magic meet’ and is split into two parts; Black Hills and Sea Of Trees. The first half of the record is the heavy swathes of stoner that they excel at, while the second half is more of experimental meanderings into psychedelic waters, focusing on hazy vocals and doom-esque instrumentation that captures you in many moments of contemplative hypnosis.

    

Witchboro is an outstanding record, one that will be challenging the top of many a end of year list by the time 2015 is done with us.

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 Pohjoinen - Pohjoinen

The gut-busting sludge/stoner sounds coming from Scandinavia in todays' scene is an impressive feat, making it one of the hottet places for new talent in the market we love, and added to the ever expanding list is Pohjoinen with their self-titled debut, with enough menacing threat to make you run for the North European hills.

   
Three years on from their demo, the Finnish trio have mixed together elements of stoner, sludge, metal, prog, and a bit of doomy death for good measure, and the results are brutal at times. Take a track such as ‘Kuolema’ which takes you on a complete journey covering every venomous grunt or rage filled riff and despairing vocal the band have to offer, and drive you through every emotion with them, whether they bury you in doom or throw you head first into the razor sharp metal riffs and guttural screams; they’re not a band to do things half-heartedly.

    
The native tongue certainly gives the band a sense of an alienating other worldly beast, but the riffs and songwriting allow everyone to cling on for dear life to this assault that Pohjoinen are taking us on, whether it’s a floating doom of ‘Joki’, the gritty stoner riffs of ‘Luovuttaja’ or the death prog of ‘Helvetin Aurinko’. Pohjoinen is not a record for the faint hearted, but if that’s not you, allow yourself to be subjected to their relentless time and style changes and impressive musicianship, it’ll be worth your pulse rating for a good hour or so.

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 Warchief - Warchief

Another band from Finland in our Triple Thursday review, but a slightly different beast this time round as the Jyväskylä band Warchief have crafted a record full of rock and roll stoner songs with experimental wanderings into fields of sludge and grunge thrown in for good measure, and it creates an enthralling listen.

Opening track ‘Give’ fluctuates between gentle soft rock bases before launching into screaming stoner deluges of sheer glory as the seven-minute track closes into a gargantuan wall of riffing noise. The vocals are in English and clean cut, and they work perfectly with the edgy vibes of the music and the youthful spirit evident in a track like ‘Hounds of the Dune’ which is as groove-laden as it is brutal.

    

The closing of the record is split into two 10 minute parts with ‘For Heavy Damage I’ and II, showcasing all of this exciting band’s talents, trawling the listener through every avenue of stoner glory, experimenting with modern day rock jagged edge playing, and doing what they set out to do in “exploring the many dimensions of the rock and roll universe”. Warchief is one of those records where once it’s finished, you take a moment to gather your thoughts, and hit that replay button straight away.

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New Band To Burn One To: Doormats

When everything is stripped away, all the shine, polish, layered falsities of the things that are shown to us, all that is left is raw, unadulterated aggression; art in its truest form. At first it can be something which is harsh to experience, a truth which we have been “protected” from without our knowledge, therefore it can be an alien sound when first heard, but it is something which is always lingering, there at the start as at the end. Such a sound of purism is a rare thing to find, but with sludge experimentalists Doormats, it’s essential nuts and bolts kind of stuff.

The three-piece from Bainbridge Island, Washington (US) carry a sound in its earliest stages of passion and originality. The raw unfiltered out-pouring of the vocals on their debut Mounds teeter on the verge of spoken word earthly sounds filled with gut wrenching passion, not too dissimilar from post-hardcore group The Saddest Landscape. It’s a construct of stripped down brutality that is echoed throughout the record hidden in the depths of the riffs, the heavy suffocating bass lines and the death-knocking-at-your-door drumming.

The title track for instance begins with nightmarish experimentalist vocals that clear the room before the sludge/doom covering of riffs cut you like a blunt spade, before ripping into stoner jams. It raises the hair on the back of your spine. Doormats is a band that keep you guessing at all times, never letting you settle into a sense of comfort with their songs, filling every void with a sense of meaning, pouring their sludge into every orifice.

Doormats could turn into influential players in the sludge field, but for now, they’re taking us all back to the prehistoric days of noise; time to drag your knuckles and grunt along with them.

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