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!

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Song of the Day-Toke-"Winter Wizard"

"Winter Wizard" is taken off of the band's self-titled 6-song EP release. Ah-heh, ah-heh, ah-heh...excuse me while I clear through the smoke-filled haze and bash my skull to this fuzz-filled Stoner Doom riff fest. Thick groove and harsh but fitting vocal complete this raw example of aural debauchery. Fire one up! For more information, please check out the following links: Facebook | Bandcamp

Song of the Day-Bedowyn-"Blood of the Fall"

"Blood of the Fall" is the first song from the upcoming release of the same name due out on October 30, 2015. Combining bits of classic metal, doom and thrash, this song gallops into oblivion with thundering ferocity and wanders into the realm of psychedelia at times while staying quite melodic. The vocals are strong and provide the perfect intensity for the song. Also, pretty amazing cover art if I must say. For more information, please check out the following links: Facebook | Bandcamp

Quick Hit-Boar (Asheville, NC) Post-Rock

By my accounts, there are at least 3 different bands with the Boar moniker. Add this Asheville, NC post-rock band to that list as well. After coming off a recent show where the band opened for the mighty Valkyrie, there was buzz around this band of instrumental dexterity. Soft picking and timely crunch on opener "Thales" hints at what is to come on this melodic and well thought out piece of instrumental post-rock/metal. A little less metal than ASG, Baroness, and The Sword, but the power and punch shines through on the riff-driven tune "Tusk". Combining scorching guitar leads, furious drum fills and a leveling bass line, this band named Boar has enough meaty chops to fill the void. Don't let the lack of vocals scare you off. Favorite track: Moirai

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LP Review: The Golden Veil by MAKE

It has been over three years since North Carolina’s connoisseurs of fine doom/metal/prog/psych MAKE delivered a statement of intent with their debut record Trephine blowing all expectations and hopes away with immense destructive doom metal that shook the earth’s crust. Now with their follow up full length, the three-piece have taken all of the metal infused demonic riffs, deathly vocals, and utterly sublime post-metal glacial sound-scapes, and crafted them into a thing of eternal beauty.

The Golden Veil opens with the gloriously titled ‘I Was Sitting Quietly, Peeling Back My Skin’ which menacingly awakens the record into life as it plays on a collection of distorted sounds and alien motions before parting to acoustically lead you towards the death chant of the gut-wrenchingly heavy ‘Breathe’ in all of its layered percussion-led, death vocals, guitar-crushing savagery. The tracks highlights how MAKE have grown as a band and become an all round heavier beast, at times suffocatingly so, but then their beauty shows in a track such as the gentle psychedelic progressive ‘The Immortal’ with stunning clean vocals swaying in the wind. Comparisons are understandably drawn with the likes of Isis, but MAKE aren’t copyists; they’ve taken their post-metal sound and created a very concise record, turning drawn out meandering numbers into shorter songs, enhancing their impact, turning up the brutality, and the beauty that lies within.  

The record continues in much the same vein, never letting you rest of notions of solitude or comfort, while songs such as ‘The Absurdist’ or ‘The Architect’ draw you in to their soul, what you find their is blackened embers floating away, laughing as they’ve pummelled your expectant body, one gentle guitar pluck after one crushing blow after one playful trippy heavy psych tone after another demonic scream at a time.

What Scott Endres, Spencer Lee, and Matt Stevenson have created here is quite extraordinary in its polar opposite assaults of space drifting laid-back beauty, and soul crushing heavy doom metal, blended perfectly together.  Where a lot of bands always fail to live up to their debut record, MAKE are one of those bands that every other musician envies, an band that rather than chase the flame of their early offerings, instead build, grow, and learn from everything they do, push themselves out of their boundaries and comfort zones, to strive to improve and make the best record that they can. If The Golden Veil is going to prove to be the peak of the band’s output then it is a fitting testament, but if they are going to keep improving, holy shit are we in for the greatest record ever made next time. 

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Church of Wolves-New Band To Burn One To

Heavy Planet presents...today's "New Band To Burn One To" CHURCH OF WOLVES.

Bio:

Hitherto, a monolithic beast ravaged and raped the stewards of the simple life. He had seven heads, the gullet of a serpent, and a wolfs body. Cries of agony echoed to the village from the dark and dense forest. Finally the day for retaliation came, and the monks summoned an even greater beast to battle their foe. Church of Wolves was born, in blood and under a heavy moon to aggressively seek justice for all.

We formed in Durham NC and have members around the triangle area of NC. Consist of Alex Kokawski(vocals and guitar), Chris Walls(guitar and vocals), Bret Mcgraw(bass and vocals), and Rick Moras(drums).




Thoughts:

"This band from NC known as Church of Wolves sets an ominous mood by resonating goose-pimple inducing feedback from their speakers. The band churns out some pretty sick stoner groove-laced sludge jams. Along with thundering drum wallops, devastating low end, a fuzzed-out tone and a devout vocal unholiness, Church of Wolves unmercifully devours through the meaty flesh right down to the bone.  This shit reeks of pure fuckin evil!"

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Bitter Resolve-New Band To Burn One To

Heavy Planet presents...today's "New Band To Burn One To"-BITTER RESOLVE.

Bio:

Bitter Resolve completed the trio in December of 2010, when drummer Lauren Fitzpatrick (The Curtains of Night), signed on to learn and record six songs by the end of the following January. Initially, she agreed to do the recording project only, but was surprisingly taken by the work that the other two members, Robert Walsh (Dirty Little Heaters, The Spinns) and R. Corey Dial, had already created. It became clear that this would be the new lineup, as well as each member’s first priority.

Following the completion of their first self-released record, Bows and Arrows Against the Lightning, bitter resolve continues to meet regularly in a dark basement to write good songs that are heavy, passionate and meaningful, teetering on overly dramatic. They are determined to find their own audience, one that adheres to a good/bad dichotomy, rather than settling down with any specific genre. Following suit with this dichotomy, favorite bands, past and present, include Black Sabbath, Earth, Neil Young, The Byrds, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones.

From Chapel Hill, NC, members are:

R. Corey Dial – guitar, vocals
Robert Walsh – bass, vocals
Lauren Fitzpatrick – drums



Thoughts:

"Aside from the interesting song titles, Chapel Hill, NC band Bitter Resolve exhibits an aural lambasting of post-rock sludge. The band tinkers with elements of prog, stoner, space rock and even grunge. The harsh monotonous vocal style and gargantuan bass rumbles along with ripping solos and a sincere approach to each song's unique structure, albeit with heavily distorted noises and very raw production."

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