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We told you about these guys a few weeks ago with our Band Submissions, but now that their record has officially been released, we felt it necessary to tell you all about them once more to make sure you understand why you need these guys amongst your record collection!
Four guys from Washington DC, going by the names Earth
Druid, Space Druid, Elder Druid, and Mountain Druid, have just released an EP
of gloriously epic proportions, covering every inch of stoner, fuzz, doom,
paganist rituals, psychedelia, and drug usage that you could possibly hope for.
The songs on their debut EP shift between thunderous riffs, to 70’s tripping
hard rock with doom overtones with such ease it is a “FUCK YEAH” kind of a
listen. Get onto this band immediately as their sound is going to appeal to
every Sleep, Black Sabbath (They cover 'Wicked World' afterall), and Hawkwind worshipper out there!
Whether adopting the band name as an homage to the original title to the Rolling Stones "Brown Sugar" (and thus by extension as a linguistic insurrection to the affront of corporate intrusion on artistic integrity) or merely as a provocative joke sure to incite the giggle fits at the thought of all the people Googling the band and ending up in BangBros pornoland, the titilatingly monikored Black Pussy can be assured that the stereophonic offerings of these Portland-based stoner pop empresarios will not go unnoticed. On their seminal debut, On Blonde, the music was created almost exclusively by Dustin Hill, resulting in a wonderfully claustrophobic feel. Now fortified with a full armament of musicians (guitarist Ryan McIntire, drummer Deann Carroll, bassist Aaron Poplin, and keyboardist Chief O'Dell) Black Pussy have returned with the full frontal musical assault of Magic Mustache.
The invasion of this newly enhanced and more fleshed out incarnation begins on "Let's Start a War". With its oscillating interstellar intro, reminiscent of an old Outer Limits episode, the song transports the listener to another dimension. "Let's start a fuckin' war, let's burn this planet down" chant the invaders over the cosmic debris of notes sailing past. It all segues perfectly into "Into Your Cosmic", a fuzzed out manifesto of insistent cadence and ethereal design that highlight what is evident on the album as a whole and in this song in particular, that Black Pussy is content to let other bands duke it out for the title of being the next Black Sabbath while they instead aspire to be the Hawkwind for the new millennium. Reinforcing the left of center vibe is "Protopipe", a hippie freakout of a tune wherein a blistering solo holds center stage before stuttering to a stop and surrendering to monolithic riffing that heralds a jam by the band of almost orgiastic proportions.
Hawkwind comparisons notwithstanding, other clearly discernable influences include Monster Magnet circa Spine of God as well as vintage Queens of the Stone Age, most evident on the quirky and poppy "For the Sake of Argument". Easily the coolest track on the album is "On Top of the World", which is propelled by a chugging riff shrouded in a hallucinogenic cloud so thick it sounds almost on the verge of stumbling over itself at all times, adding a sense of subliminal danger to the festivities. That off-kilter nature continues throughout on tracks like "Butterfly", the song most reminiscent of the lackadasical On Blonde, that is until it startles you with a note-for-note recital of the coda from Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast". Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, as Black Pussy laments on the the title track with the laconic refrain of "let' roll the hell out of here, let's get the fuck out of Dodge". However, as the song builds to its space rock jam session climax, the melancholia gives way to aspirations for immortality, with an overture of "let's never die, let's live forever on the edge of time".
With the imminent release of The Witches Drum's second full length, titled "Adjust Your Receiver", I caught up with bass player Owen Griffiths to chew the fat about their past, present and future, but what begins with some sad news ends with a very exciting announcement for the band and their fans. We at Heavy Planet can count ourselves amongst those fans with several of us giving them the props they so rightfully deserve, so it is with a mixture of sadness and gladness that we offer you this interview and an exclusive debut of their video for the song "(Sing Your Confessions To The) Voodoo Court" taken from their forthcoming album.
"I guess the main thing is we had a change of guitarist not long after the debut came out. Mat Warren came in - he had one practice then we supported Karma to Burn - trial by fire! After he bedded in on the songs we took time off gigging and wrote the album, then decided to buy some studio gear and Mat's recorded it at his house. That was last summer, we're just finished with it. Unfortunately during this time we've decided that the band has reached the end if it's life, so we're doing some farewell gigs and getting the record out, then that'll be that it seems."
It is a real shame that you all decided to call it a day for The Witches Drum, especially now that you guys have made a lasting impression on the UK heavy music scene, but can you take us back to the beginning, how you all got together and what your collective intention was for the band at the time? "It all started because of a small club called Tafod in Cardiff - the owner didn't really care about it, it just came with the hotel above, so I blagged the manager's job and started booking bands and club nights - everything from doom metal to drum n bass to folk gigs. Through that I met our original drummer Leo, and Joel (who was working the bar). At the start it was just the three of us, jamming out some noisy psychedelic stuff. Then Fry came on board, then Mike on guitar and it started to get a little more structured, I guess because we realized we had a great vocalist and the ability to write a song."
Since the incarnation of The Witches Drum there have been some unforgettable performances from you guys which no doubt secured yourselves support slots for Karma to Burn and Honky, which is no mean feat. The most legendary performances from The Drum have been at the free 'generator' parties you were involved in. Can you tell us about those, how they came about and the idea/intention behind them? I've heard the words "Welsh Kyuss" spoken with regards to The Witches Drum's DIY ethic and appearances at free outdoor/warehouse/wherever parties.
"Really? "Welsh wreck heads" is probably spoken more often! The DIY ethic was there from the start I think - Fry's been involved in the free party scene for ages, and Joel used to run a squat and play in punk bands, plus with my experience with putting on gigs in Tafod we were never going to be a passive, begging for support slots kinda band. We'd get hold of a PA and play cafe's, warehouses, little bars. Then when summer came, and the techno/trance free parties would go off in the forests and mountains we'd drag our gear up and join in - The Witches Drum followed by 12 hours of acid techno. I think the last one we did was the best - Fry persuaded Spider Kitten, Death of her Money and a bunch of other bands to come play in a muddy field, with the biggest rig I've ever seen. In mushroom season! Total carnage. I think the police turned up at that one. They're obviously more effort and hassle than your average gig, but when you're released from the confines of curfews, door men, smoking bans, buying over priced beer etc etc you can cut loose and not worry about a thing."
"Welsh wreck heads." Hahaha..That's very true, I can vouch for that. I think some of the appeal for your fans is the DIY/punk rock ethic you guys have that is born from a tradition and a culture that never really went away since it began here. There is a rich history of free festivals in the UK going back to the late 60's and then throughout the 70's and up to the mid 80's before acid house/rave music came to the fore and dominated the free party scene. There are many great legends of shroom festivals in Wales with some great psychedelic rock bands turning up to play impromptu sets. Hawkwind were well known for this of course. Would you say they were an influence as I can hear a little of Hawkwind's touch on your first album? What other bands would you say The Witches Drum draw inspiration from? "Yeah definitely influenced by Hawkwind - especially the first few albums. Individually, and as a band we have a pretty broad range of influences - there's the obvious stuff- The Stooges, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Clutch etc, but then I've been listening to Bill Withers all day, and I know the others love funk, jazz, blues, dub, folk, rockabilly, techno, punk and on and on. The bands that came out of Wales around the mid to late 90's made a big impact on us - like Acrimony, Taint and Suns of Thunder. Also I love bands that created their own weird little world around them, and aren't afraid to go a bit over the top with their live show - like Jane's Addiction or The MC5."
The Witches Drum's live shows have become almost legendarily debauched affairs, especially with Matt Fry's crazy stage antics; wearing his bright yellow marigolds and covered in glitter and face paint; it's like a dazzling and slightly dangerous freak show with great music. Are there any live shows you guys have done that particularly stick in your mind as the most whacked out and weird, worryingly dangerous or just plain wild?
"I think the one that sticks out most was in a warehouse in Cardiff about 3 years ago - it was my birthday so we were pretty loose by the time we hit the stage. Fry ended up brawling in the crowd, Joel was on top of a metal joist above the stage, probably not the tightest set we've ever played! There was the one where Joel threw his amp across the stage then jumped on Fry, rolled around on the floor in some glass and put him in A&E- that was the night before we recorded the first record. There's probably loads of stupid shit we did in the early days, but we'll sound like a right bunch of twats if I carry on!"
You said at the beginning of this interview that The Witches Drum will be no more after the release of the second album and with a few final gigs in the pipeline you guys are going out in a blaze of glory it seems. But is that totally it for The Witches Drum? I know several of you have various other projects on the go so can you tell us about those to?
"Well you never know what may happen in the future, but at the moment that's totally it for the 'Drum- you have to know when to step off the wave before you get smashed on the rocks. As for other projects Stevo plays bass in HOMOH and Zinc Bukowski, and I'm sure he'll pop up on drums for someone soon, Fry's making electronica in Deformed, Pulsating, Vibrating, and I think he might be jamming some rock stuff as well, and Mat and I play instrumental psych/space stuff in The Cosmic Nod."
And with that this interview was wrapped up just in time for the announcement that The Witches Drum will be playing this years DesertFest in Camden, London. For our UK/Euro (and everyone else) readers; if you are attending this years DesertFest, be sure to catch The Witches Drum, as along with their mind melting blend of heavy psyche and stoner rock, their live performance is sure to be a highlight of the festival and will be a talking point for a long time thereafter; just like every other The Witches Drum gig. They have that effect on people.
Some bands are too good for their own good. Some bands try and polish their sound till their album is 'bout as dull as a Steely Dan record. But some bands just go for it, loose and lean, like they were back in the garage- or woodshed. The Heavy Company (THC) are one of these bands. They just wrapped up production on their new album Midwest Electric, and this loose, jammy, heavy album proudly displays its warts for all the world to see. This album is rough and wonderful, a throwback to the sounds of yore, when rock bands weren't into categories and would throw anything into their sonic stew without worrying about what any scene might think.
This experimental mindset, coupled with conviction, drove THC to make the album they'd want to hear. They've pieced together Hawkwind effects and scope, Greatful Dead noodling, and riffs when needed to create a compelling piece of Hoosier rawk. Here's a quick rundown of the album.
The Humboldt County Waltz starts things off with a cough, before garagey guitars accompany Ian Gerber's skillet fried warble as he asks for what we all want; "a stash like Willie's and some/room to breathe". This line sums up the bands philosophy, and likely more than a few of you can relate. A Groove a Mile Wide drips like frozen molasses from the speakers with minimal guitar and hints of drone and echo. Neil Young is a ballad that name checks the godfather of grunge, Greasy Mush is an instrumental with stuttering boogie riffs and leads that ring while some wicked synths gurgle in the background. One Big Drag can be heard below, so I'll spare you my description. Sailing Towards the Setting Sun is the trippiest track on the album, which you might have gleaned from the sci-fi title. The tune drones and floats and the narrator sings about existential space concerns. The tune might seem out of place on an album by a band who gave a shit about making all their tunes a copy of the previous one. The album ends with a bang, El Bango Grande gallops out the gates with country inflected vocals which give way to whooshing effects and Pink Floyd style sparse guitar scapes. An eclectic end to an interesting album.
Find this one on Bandcamp, in digital or CD. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for vinyl.
Having previously been reviewed on Heavy Planet back in 2011 as a "New Band To Burn One To" for their self titled album, there was no way I was going to let The Cosmic Dead's latest psychedelic beast "Inner Sanctum" slip through our fingers.
Born in the tough, cold city of Glasgow, Scotland, UK; The Cosmic Dead drop an album of 4 masterful psychedelic jams reminiscent of the best hypnotic wig-outs of the legendary Hawkwind and the likes of Neu and Amon Düül II. The Cosmic Dead play a mix of heavy psychedelic spacerock, Krautrock and experimental audio trips in a unique way that only a British psych band can do. I put this down to the particularly ancient and potent strain of Psilocybe Semilanceata that can be found growing in abundance on the fields and mountains of the UK and The Cosmic Dead's trance inducing mind transferals are a perfect soundtrack to the shamanic ritual partakings traditional to certain tribes of this land during the autumn/fall months. Whilst listening to this album I was flashed back to the last shroom season here and wished I had chosen to listen to The Cosmic Dead when I was lying horizontal on my couch, staring at a kaleidoscopic multi-colored and rippling ceiling, wide eyed and dribbling down my chin as I journeyed to the subconscious realms of weirdness. I certainly won't be forgetting The Cosmic Dead during this years shroom season.
The album takes off with "Gustav Björnstrand" which is an ode to a rather obscure Swedish physicist from what I can tell and of whom I can find very little information other than that he doesn't watch TV or read newspapers and believes we are currently living in an Orwellian nightmare. I can't argue with that and I join him in his rejection of main stream news and entertainment. I haven't owned a TV in years and have a great loathing for the British tabloids in particular. But I digress...the opening of this track does not start with a long introspective ambient space-out as one would expect from a band like The Cosmic Dead, but instead launches straight into a thick psychedelic jam with a hypnotic bass line and drifting trippy guitars and tight drumming that drives the track along on it's journey into the inner realms. After a few minutes there is an echoed voice of some narrative by an unknown maverick of the mind. Is this Gustav Björnstrand speaking? I'd like to know what's being said. The track evolves and builds as it drifts with easy style along the space highway sending shards of bright purple and yellow to twist and splinter my mind in its wake. The psyche-out continues to build throughout until our first destination is reached and we are firmly set within the mind expanded dimensions laid out by these sonic psychonauts from Scotland.
The journey then continues as we move ever further into psychotropic frequencies with "The Mass of Betelguese" and a quiet rising up the spine of pure psychedelic energy that then fills the space between your ears with a soothing massage of floaty guitar effects and laid back bass riffs and sparse percussion. This blissful drifting of meditative sound builds to illuminating crescendos and gently tripping drops of hallucinations for over 20 minutes in dazzlingly beautified and colourful spacerock played at it's very best. Your mind is wrenched open and in pours a myriad of visions the likes of which can only be experienced with huge doses of hallucinogens or 25 years of dedicated yogic practice while living in a tree dressed only in a loin cloth. The track ends with with an ecstatic breakthrough to even further in/out dimensions that The Cosmic Dead travelled to in this albums opener.
In the third stage of our grand mind trip with The Cosmic Dead we enter the "Inner Sanctum" and another 20 minute mind bender of trance inducing vibrations in the form of simple rhythms, all encompassing swathes of spacey guitars and hypnotic bass jamming building slowly but very surely towards a wild eyed and flailing arms freak out as the pace of the track builds leaving a throng of long haired and half naked space cadets writhing around in ecstatic bliss within a vast hazy meadow of many coloured flowers under a multi-bejeweled and deep purple night's sky.
The Cosmic Dead end their 4 stanzas of psychedelic instrumental poetry with "Hello, SATAN" which takes us into the darker occult realms but here does not lie evil and horror even though this track is as doomy as The Cosmic Dead go on this album. Dear reader, I know you do not come here for lessons on occult symbolism but I feel it is worth mentioning briefly that Satan is not necessarily the harbinger of spiritual destruction and the king of the fiery pits as so belovedly believed by those of the christian faith. Indeed, Satan could be understood on one level to symbolise the masculine generative force of nature, a modern form of the horny goat legged Pan and in Tarot lore the Phallus as the lingham to the yoni or the 1 to compliment the 0. This I feel is where The Cosmic Dead are going with this reference to Satan but I may be over presumptuous in my interpretation of the track. Nevertheless the initial doomyness of this track, which to me sounds more humbly somber than doomy; is left behind 6 minutes in to enter another psychedelic void of wonder and colourful waves of glowing visions but the solemnity is not broken throughout this journey from the darkness so beautiful. The spirit is raised up as the sounds evolve as a twisting and twirling mass of emotions bring one to higher levels of understanding beyond the sticks and stones of the mundane universe. It is not all sweetness and light within or without, but a balance of positive and negative, the ying and the yang, + and -, Α and Ω, as above so below.
To put it simply, this album shows that The Cosmic Dead are truly the one of the best heavy psych bands in the UK, if not this entire rock we call planet Earth that floats through space. They are currently in the last half of their current European tour so if they happen to be playing near you then go and see them, loaded up with a huge dose of the hallucinogen of your choice of course but if for whatever reason you can't make it then go buy their album now released by Evil Hoodoo on a limited edition pea green cassette in a handmade cotton sleeve. Very tasty.
I try to start these reviews with an anecdote, a little something to get the readers attention or situate the album I'm reviewing in time and place. But I won't be doing that for this one. Early Mammal says all our stories are fucked. So I'll pass.
The album starts off slow, with a short guitar piece titled Right Hand, which sounds like it was
beamed down from an alien space craft straight into discarded desert amps left behind
after one of those infamous Kyuss generator parties. As this piece ends, the urgency builds then
blasts into Final Witch where we’re
greeted by a vocalist who’s got the psych ward pipes of a young Iggy Pop. The track is an interesting
blend of the primal throbbing of the Stooges and the atmospheric Hawkwind, whose
influence can really be felt in the cosmic noodlings laced throughout the next
track. That track, Demon or Saint, is a creepy plea for a girl to meet the singer “in
the woods” and offers up heavy chunks of fuzz guitar. The next track, Coming Back is a short instrumental interlude which gives the listener time
to meditate before the organ heralds the return of the demented vocalist, begging
for a "little time" on To Find Me Gone. Money
Shot comes up next, and he proclaims "he stays out late, cause he wants to" in a voice so deranged one would be crazy to argue he shouldn't stay out late, for fear of a gleaming shiv meeting yer soft innards.
It's around this point one wonders if the band isn't a little off, if they aren't simply aping the prosimian stomp of the Stooges but actually living that raw power life, all guitars and drugs, and drugs and drugs. Anyway, whatever they do in their spare time ain't anybody's business but their own, so back to the music. Next up, track seven by my count, is Checking the Bullshitter's Queen, a longer, heavier instrumental piece than the one's you're used to finding on this album. And one instrumental leads to another, this one another short interlude, titled Going Out, which sets you up for the longest track Resurrection Men. Clocking in just over nine minutes long, it's got it all; layered vocals, tortured wails, organ, geetar, and a warning about them "looking in through the window...". Don't say they didn't warn you. The album ends like it began, with a softer instrumental piece titled Uncle Scary's Left Hand. And that's it. A great album. Reminds me
a bit of the aforementioned Stooges, Hawkwind, and the heavy weirdness that was
QOTSA’s Rated R. This is grade A grime. Get some. April 1st on Devouter Records.
BUDGIE and HAWKWIND have been confirmed for the Hard Rock Hell II festival, set to take place December 5-7, 2008 at Prestatyn Sands, North Wales, UK.
The festival billing is shaping up as follows:
BLACK LABEL SOCIETY THIN LIZZY BUDGIE HAWKWIND CLUTCH BATTLELORE KORPIKLAANI ORANGE GOBLIN RAVENS CREED THE WILDHEARTS TIGERTAILZ VIKING SKULL
Hard Rock Hell launched a new standard in UK metal and rock festivals. Taking place across three days at Butlins in Minehead, Somerset on November 9-11, 2007, the sold-out festival was an enormous success. Bringing together acts such as TWISTED SISTER, SAXON, CRADLE OF FILTH, TURISAS, MY DYING BRIDE, ZODIAC MINDWARP and TESLA in a unique setting.
Taking up where last years festival left off, HRH II will span four decades over six arenas and feature 50 bands. This year’s rock ritual will feature all Lords of the Riff and turn it into, another 48 hour maelstrom of rock 'n' metal. HRH II's selection of bands will not disappoint, with some incredible exclusives, rare appearances from the vault and even a trio of bands never witnessed on stage together to answer calls for a space, prog, psychedelic rock arena on the Friday night.
Tickets include two nights accommodation and entrance to all six arenas as well as free car parking. Limited Early Bird tickets start from 90 GBP.
