Quick Hit: SIMPLE JACK - "BRAND NEW EYE"

Stoner Punk? That's the label I'd give Simple Jack's music, perhaps. As with all labels, though, it never tells the complete, or even correct story. Simple Jack's music isn't punk necessarily. It is brash and bold and unpredictable in its familiarity. Or maybe it's familiar in its unpredictability. The music is massive, with colossal guitars that riff and burn in grand stoner metal style on songs that carry incredibly clever melodies that are never sweet but always clean. Vocals are athletic and perfectly strained, adding a rapturous element to the whole. Subterranean rumble, like quarry explosions, emanate from the muscular bass riffage while the drums are immense, nimble, and deeply engaging of their own accord while still providing complementary assistance to each track

The cinematic image that comes to my mind is grainy black and white with a single Samurai slashing and dancing his way through a horde of challengers. The instrument is sharp and shiny and supremely deadly in the hands of its brash yet masterful wielder who eschews the traditional killing methods for his own lethal style.

Simple Jack are something new, something unique, something out of the standard mold yet still delivering the appropriate weighty sound as well as the important rush of primal triggers. They're raw yet precise, ragged but clever, and a whole lot of fun.

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New Band To Burn One To: SUNDERFEET

A potent sound of high energy, agile vocals, bruising drums, brawling bass, and riffs galore are the hallmarks of this threesome from the north of France. They have mastered the art of combining great melodies with a massive sound, full of razor sharp hooks, skull stomping drums, bone crushing guitar from bass and six string, and dusky, ragged vocals. The music is stonerish and grungy, but uniquely their own as they play with relish and ferocity.

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QUICK HIT: Blackbird Hill - MIdday Moonlight (maxi)

May 5th is the official release date for Blackbird Hill's latest EP, "Midday Moonlight (maxi)", but the music is available for streaming a day early on their bandcamp page. This duo from Bordeaux, France are master blues rock craftsmen, expertly cobbling together powerful tunes of melodious amplification with their single guitar, single trap set, two voices, as well as a knack for engaging melodies and powerful hooks. Their songs range from haunting ballads to rip-roaring rockers, all supremely crafted and heartily delivered. If you listen today, hopefully you'll return tomorrow and download this gem of a collection.

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New Band To Burn One To: Slugpie

French three piece Slugpie have just released a Demo of four of the nastiest sludge punishments that we’ve heard all year, and we mean sludge in its heaviest, choking sense. Like a lot of today’s sludge bands, Slugpie has roots embedded into Blues and the grooving tones underpin the fuzzy claustrophobic riffs, especially on a track like ‘Mojo Drown’. The vocals come out like Dopethrone with a sore throat, and they’re as scary as they are addictive.

Slugpie are everything we like about Sludge in 2016: thrashingly fast and doomily slow, suffocating and relentless riffing, and heavy and nasty as hell! I need a shower. 

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Band Submission: Pillars- Doom From Le Cannet, France

Band Name: Pillars
Genre: Doom
Location: Le Cannet, France
Brief Bio/Description: Doom band from south of France formed late 2014. Features former members of Svart Crown, Impersial Sodomy, Addicted...

Releases :
"PYRES AND GALLOWS" EP (2016)
Band Members:
KLEM "Wizard" (Incantations)
DJÉ "Blaspho" (Fuzz & larsen)
DISASTER (Fuzzbass & larsen)
JJ (Unfunky beats)
Links: Facebook | Bandcamp

LP Review: Waste by Sofy Major

The new record from French trio Sofy Major is a Noise rock/hardcore masterpiece. It’s a simple, but huge statement, which is just what’s needed to echo the music that is spat forth on Waste, a record which angers and snarls, while all the time grabbing you and jumping in unison. It’s a record to pump your fist to and smash the chairs with hate.

Opening with the title track, it’s a frenetic pace from the start with Mathieu Moulin’s rasping vocals covering the noise/sludge/hardcore hybrid with an air of impending menace, letting the razor edge riffs take charge of the song’s spine. This passion and energy continues straight into ‘Wee See Fire’ as the immense drums and bass take the lead as the pounding rhythms bombard you with joyful relentless aggression that is welcomed with opened arms. Much like their Solar Flare label mates Pigs, Sofy Major’s music is as danceable as it is sludgingly aggressive, and it’s a pleasing hybrid.

There’s no let up throughout the rest of the record, as the vocals continue to yell through ‘Turning Point’, ‘Slow Everywhere’ and ‘Black and Table’ sees the band highlighting their Melvins influences with a downshift in speed, layering, and vocal delivery, but their influence is one which is worn with pride and respect. ‘Devotion Man’ carries the incredibly bass heavy lead, which is evident throughout Waste, with rock’n’roll aplomb, while album closer ‘As Happy As’ strays a little from the Noise path, and into a kind of hard rock new romantic pastiche. Whatever you want to call it, it works.

Waste is a fantastic record, containing all the best bass driven Noise you could wish for.

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Song of the Day-Mathusalem-"Haunted Bong"

"Haunted Bong" is taken from the 2015 EP release "Sons of Salem. Continuing with our Halloween theme, nothing could be finer than some sinister riff worship. As the haze gradually swells, the doom beckons with tortured screams and immensely fuzzed-out riffs. Not too shabby for one-dude. For more information, please check out the following links: Facebook | Bandcamp

Song of the Day-Duckhunters-"Dragooning"

"Dragooning" is taken off of the upcoming release "Extinction Road" due out November 28, 2015 on Drop Dead Records. Straight-forward fist-clenching fuzz-driven Stoner Metal, albeit with darker subject matter and a progressive edge. For more information, please check out the following links: Facebook | Bandcamp

LP Review: Shaft by El Cam

Hailing from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France, this Karma To Burn loving duo have gone full throttle on their second release, Shaft, following 2013’s Orchard, rammed with razor sharp riffs, doused in fuzzed out tones to entice the lovers of the heavy, and lovers of the melodic, these French instrumentalists have created a record which is worth your attention.

Being a duo is no longer a gimmick, and when the noise created by the two people is as loud and as full as these guys, you can never tell that the band are lacking any other instrumentation, and that is a testament to how good a musicians Mat (Drums) and Jey (Guitar) are (plus the record was recorded live). Comparisons will be rife with Karma To Burn (as I’ve already done) because they’re an instrumental stoner band, but the key to El Cam is in the way that they execute their songs, instead of slightly drawn out numbers that take a while to get going, these guys go straight for the kill. The record opens with the fuzz loving ‘Life in The Ruts’ with its downturned guitar riffing slicing you from top to bottom, then ‘Red Guts’ builds up momentum before an almighty devastating implosion of guitar riffs crushes your face with a joyous grin, and ‘Reeks of Firedamp’ has a devastating effect on your already shattered body, and we’re only onto track three!

The rest of the record continues at the gloriously energetic pace that the duo have set from the start, with each of the six songs on show hiding huge riffs hidden behind other riffs, and song structures that keep you following the story of the song, to ride its flow, and that’s what all good instrumental music should do, not to  alienate, bore, or work as background music, El Cam demand that you pay attention to each and every riff, like it was a sermon from the Gods themselves.

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New Band To Burn One To: Decasia

French stoner/doom/fuzz band Decasia have recently released their debut EP, and Holy crap is it heavy! Having only formed in 2013, the Nantes natives have created an almighty crushing sound that makes you take some serious notice. The self-titled EP was recorded in a living room so the sound captured is a perfect mix of rawness, passion, vulnerability, and no hint of any polished bullshit, just music from its roots.

The record opens with the progressively heavy instrumental ‘Halo’ building layer upon layer of pulverising riffs with distorted echoes of doomonic face shredding. The ethereal sound that the guys spew out of the speakers is dirty and addictive in all the right places. Vocals come into play on the rest of the tracks with Maxime Richard clinically leading the music down a midnight psychedelic route with standout track ‘Sherpa’ showcasing everything this band has to offer with progressive psychedelia leading into throbbing stoner doom that is essential to hear.

Decasia are going to be THE band to watch out for in the future, but for now, get hold of this fantastic EP and immerse yourself with some of the greatest stoner/doom you’re going to hear this year.

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New Band To Burn One To: Pauwels

Every now and again we like to throw you up a bit of a curve ball with the bands we’re introducing you to. While still keeping to our core aesthetic of keeping everything HEAVY, a slight side step away from the stoner/doom/sludge bands can be a needed booster, and today we’re bringing you a beast which in all parts excites, scares, confuses, and dazzles in equal measures, rotating in order part way through most songs. Today’s New Band To Burn One To is Strasbourg’s (France) Noise/Post-Rock troupe Pauwels, bursting your eardrums and snapping your neck.

The French instrumentalists are Jeremy Ledda, Bob K, Sebastien Pablo Hermann, Marlon Saquet, and Jovan Veljkovic, and together they make one hell of a noise, frenetically switching from guitar shredding to blissed out technical elements, through counteracting time signatures, flowing along a sound which never lets you settle nor rest for long on your laurels, before it’s removing your face once more.

The band have just released their second EP, Elina, sounding like Cloudkicker if he was brought up on the Noise bands of Melvins and Helmet, while still holding a desire to stray into post-rock wastelands, bringing the youthful Math-rock attitude along to boot. The important thing that Pauwels achieve is never straying far from the realms of making actual songs, their basic sound is instrumental music with chorus and verse, just perhaps not necessarily in the accepted normality of what is perceived as a “song”; but who the hell wants to be normal anyway?

Pauwels are one of those bands that you just can’t predict, not where their sound will take you, not what will come after the next chord change, or for what label to tag them under. The band are an exciting addition to an often underappreciated genre. Trust us, you will want to keep an eye on Pauwels.

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