Bar Jobs and Bus Stops

Sam Russo - Storm
I first saw Sam Russo's name on the internet as an opener for one Mr. Frank Turner back in 2009. Since I had not long before developed a lasting appreciation for Frank's take on punk and folk, I decided to look up Sam and see what kind of things he was doing. I found his Myspace page (remember, 2009), and saw that he had five or six demos available to listen to. I clicked play and was frozen for the next two hours as I played those five demos over and over again. I kept an eye on Sam, and hungrily snapped up the demos and EPs he gave away for the next few years. He'd fade in and out of my mind, and every now and again, I'd see that he'd started a new website, or that he'd joined twitter, or released a few tracks on a split with Chuck Ragan. But above all, I kept playing those wonderful, scratchy, magical demo songs. It seemed a miracle that even though I lived probably three thousand miles away from Sam, I was able to access his music and know what he was up to.

Now it's late 2012, and Sam's name is becoming more visible. Red Scare Industries took an interest, and now Sam has released his first LP, entitled Storm. It's just about exactly what I'd been waiting for ever since I pressed play on that Myspace back three years ago. On paper, his songs might not sound all that notable. They're mostly just an acoustic guitar and Sam's voice, with a few flourishes of extra guitar here and there. The songs exist somewhere between folk and punk, with the usual I-IV-V chord structures, and the lyrics are about his own personal victories and losses, and living hard in modern Britain. I realize that by that description alone, he'd get lost in a jumble of other white guys with guitars, dreaming of being invited to join the Revival Tour, but it's the specific alchemy of these words sung this way with these chords that makes all the difference.

Part of what makes Sam's work so outstanding is, paradoxically, his realness. It's very easy to imagine that Sam is that buddy of yours who stops by and plays a song in your kitchen (as he does in a few Youtube videos), but instead of some embarrassing A-minor shamble, it's a perfect, fully realized folk song that puts a tear in everyone's eye. Sam's caramel-and-gravel voice is the perfect vehicle for his sad, sweet words (not to mention his particular accent...it's worth the price of admission just to hear him sing a word with a long 'O' sound), and he knows when the guitar needs to whisper and when it needs a little punk snarl in the strumming. His choice of words is impeccable, getting right to the heart of the topics he chooses. I mean, I enjoy Springsteen as much as the next guy, but it's been many a year since Bruce was capable of delivering a song about an embittered working man that was as real and true and heartbreaking as Sam's "Factory Rain." The weight of experience rests heavily in these songs, and you can feel it when he sings something like, "All hope was never lost, only abandoned/And every bridge you burn down leaves a stanchion."

Look, a stupid review isn't going to do the subtle charms of Sam's music justice, but I can say that I think this is one of the strongest releases I've heard all year, and I can't stop listening to it. You have to actually listen to his songs to understand why they're way beyond the average acoustic folky punk numbers, so do yourself a favor and give Sam a listen; about half of Storm is streaming here.

The Hidden Masters

The Sword - Apocryphon
The Sword is a band that, despite releasing consistently strong albums, have been saddled with the unfortunate label of "hipster metal." I never really understood why they of all people got tagged with that particular appellation (and understood even less why one would use such a nebulous term to try to specify what the band sounded like). I assume that it has to do with the fact that The Sword received a lot of attention pretty quickly from the music press, and since they don't have any screamed vocals or blastbeats, people who wouldn't normally listen to metal were enjoying them. But doling out such an unhelpful label for that reason seems like lazy music writing, in that it ignores all the traits that The Sword share with the rest of the stoner metal genre in general, and in particular it shines a pretty harsh light on those critics' unfortunate inability to tell the difference between a band that clearly pours themselves into their craft with great attention to detail and influence, such as The Sword, and a band that doesn't (Wolfmother, I am looking in your direction).

The Sword made a name for themselves with their first album, Age of Winters, in 2006. Like many stoner metal records, it showed a clear love for Sabbath, and was filled to the brim with earthy references to the Norse pantheon and snow-covered forests, a theme their 2008 follow-up Gods of the Earth shared. By 2010, they were apparently feeling restless, and with the LP Warp Riders, they abandoned Earth for a much more sci-fi theme, which they pulled off with aplomb, adding some Judas Priest-style riffing to their Sabbath chops. The newly released Apocryphon finds the band somewhere between those two thematic extremes, with imagery that recalls the Hyperborean world of Robert E. Howard, where magic and technology meet in strange ways. If you're noticing a trend of the kind of sixties and seventies sci-fi/fantasy concepts that most frequently show up in airbrush art, you're not wrong. The Sword know what they like, and they use it well.

Musically, The Sword have been steadily improving with each new release, and Apocryphon is no exception. The riffs oscillate between brain-twisting complex and head-nodding simple, but the song structures remain fairly lean, which keeps the whole album surprisingly nimble. Everything is nicely balanced between getting to the point and serious riff worship. The record is fun, but also clearly not a joke; the band is serious about its influences, it's just that its influences are not always totally serious. The guitar work is excellent, as you might expect from a band like this, but the rhythm section is also to be praised for knowing just what to add and where. The aforementioned lazy critics sometimes seem to harp on singer JD Cronise's voice for being overly deadpan, but once again, this opinion betrays their lack of familiarity with stoner metal as a genre. What exactly do you need his voice to be doing that it isn't? If I need to cite precedent for a drier vocal delivery still being effective, I'll just throw out the first four Sabbath records and trust that will end the argument.

Ultimately, if you're familiar at all with The Sword or what they do, you know what you're going to get with Apocryphon: a quality record that delights in both the heavy rock stylings of the seventies and the desert rock/stoner metal sound of the nineties. If any of this sounds even remotely intriguing to you, then definitely listen to this record. It's fun and engaging, and if someday I ever meet anyone who actively doesn't like it, I will be forced to question their ability to understand the point of rock and roll in general.

Criminally Underrated: Zeke - Kicked In The Teeth

There are times when you need something loud, messy and impossibly fast. For those times I turn to Zeke. Founded in Seattle in 1993, they specialize in 300 mile-per-hour, out-of-control hardcore punk, and though all of their albums are worth having, my go-to LP is their 1998 release Kicked In The Teeth. As you can see from the title, subtlety is not really on the menu here, and it's a better album for it. To give you a sense of the pedal-to-the-floor-fun of Zeke, Kicked In The Teeth has seventeen tracks, and it's over in less than twenty-one minutes.

This is not a band that comes with particular acclaim from most music critics. That's because Zeke should only be listened to by people who actually like rock and roll music. The Allmusic review of Kicked In The Teeth says, "...it's a shame Zeke feels compelled to rely on speed alone to get by." This a textbook example of someone missing the point. Zeke isn't a band that plays fast because that's all they can do (their later albums, which do throw in some less frantically paced fare, prove this point), they are a band that plays fast because A) they are good at it, and B) it is awesome. If you start this record and don't feel your pupils dilate, then this was not made for you.

In general, hardcore punk has a tendency to view any displays of instrumental prowess as mere wankery, but Zeke has decided to go the other way and regularly find space in their minute-long compositions for some ultra-fast fret-blazing solos, which only add to the high octane madness. The rhythm section is relentless, keeping the hardcore and D-beats going without breaks even between the tracks in most cases. There are a few mid-tempo numbers in there to allow listeners to assess the damage, notably a fist-raising cover of Kiss' "Shout It Out Loud," but overall Zeke's work should require a safety harness of some kind.

If you really want the full Zeke experience and don't mind running from the law, listen to Kicked In The Teeth in the car. Everything will go red for twenty minutes, then you'll snap back to normal parked on your front yard and wonder why your windshield is cracked and why there's a police helicopter overhead. Good times for an otherwise boring Thursday, so ignore the critics, have some fun, and ride with Zeke.

This Heathen Temple Will Stand Tall

Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
I'm changing the review format for this one a bit. Explaining why this record is good isn't going to work, because even if a person academically understands why this album is of a certain quality, the music may well sear the flesh from their frames. Pig Destroyer specializes in creating music which can only be described in superlatives. Fastest. Heaviest. Scariest. Angriest. Most Disturbing. This is the kind of thing that separates potential listeners into two camps: Yes Please! and OH MY GOD NO MAKE IT STOP.

I imagine the amount of people on Earth who would enjoy this kind of thing hovers around a half a percent of the total, and that's being generous to your individual staminas. I myself happen to be of that group and therefore I find this release a bracing dose of Pig Destroyer doing what it does best: short bursts of aural psychosis. For the rest of you, just hope you never come across this record (or any of PxDx's oeuvre, for that matter) in a dark alley, because it will do things to you. Unpleasant things.

If you think this might be just the sort of thing for you, then by all means, give them a listen. They're streaming their new LP Book Burner here right now.

Interview - The Great Old Ones

You might remember a recent RFF review of The Great Old Ones debut album Al Azif where I was quite taken by their blend of atmospheric black metal and Lovecraftian themes. Instead of relying solely on image or style to make their name, TGOO seem to have an intense focus on songwriting and musicianship that made their debut a grand and wonderfully dread-filled piece of art.

Now guitarist Xavier Godart has sat down to answer a few of our questions about how they build their black metal epics, their respect for H.P. Lovecraft, and where they're headed next:

Radio Free Future: You guys seem to capture the essence of H.P. Lovecraft's writings better than many of the other bands who have tried to do so. How do you approach Lovecraft as an influence that might be different from other bands?

Xavier Godart: Thanks! Well, it's hard to tell how we differ from others bands based on Lovecraft's works. I think it's more a combination of circumstances that made TGOO work. Lyrics from Benjamin, our musical influences, and Jeff's paintings seem to fit perfectly together.

RFF: With atmospheric black metal, there is a difficult balance between being hypnotic and simply being repetitive. How do you keep a long song from becoming tedious? How do you decide when a song needs to shift in a new direction?

XG: It's hard to answer that question. There is no specific recipe. Usually, one of us (mainly Benjamin) comes up with a full song structure. Then we work this song in rehearsal where we add music arrangement and we move some riffs in order to avoid the song being boring.

RFF: When you start to write a song that will likely end up being fifteen minutes long, where do you begin, and how do you know when it's finished?

XG: We usually know how we want a song to start. Then, we just develop several ideas at their maximum. We try to make the song evolve in the same way our feelings evolve when we read a Lovecraft novel.

RFF: Al Azif has a unique sound to it that makes it stand out a bit, even from other black metal records. What kind of production decisions did you have to make in order to get that sound? Were there any particular techniques that you'd never used before?

XG: We knew that we didn't want Al Azif sound like a classical metal record. We wanted the sound to be dynamic, alive, as if the sound surrounds you completely. For that, we've worked with Cyrille Gachet, who is the sound guy of Year Of No Light, another band from Bordeaux, France. The work he did with their last album Ausserwelt is spectacular.We recorded everything in a vaulted cellar. All the reverbs on this record are natural.

RFF: Some bands take a few albums to really find their sound, but it seems like you guys kind of arrived fully formed with a really impressive debut. How long have you played together as a band?

We are a full band since a year and a half, but 70% of the music on Al Azif existed before that. Benjamin started writing years ago. I think the fact that most of the music comes from one person ensures homogeneity. For the sound itself, all of us were playing in a lot of bands way before TGOO. The experience helped us to find how we wanted to sound really quickly.

RFF: Al Azif is still a new album, but looking forward, do you think that future TGOO albums will be Lovecraft-related?

XG: We've already started to work on the second album and it will definitely be based on Lovecraft's works. But for a more distant future, who knows...

RFF: A lot of the really interesting black metal seems to be coming out of France these days, especially black metal that isn't afraid to experiment with the sound and add new influences. Is there something about French music culture that creates this tendency?

XG: Difficult question. Metal in France has always been underexposed by French and international medias. Maybe it's because of this lack of interest in the French metal scene that bands like Deathspell Omega or Blut Aus Nord aren't afraid to push their music far away from classical boundaries.

RFF: What's the first thing you'd tell someone about TGOO if they'd never heard your music before?

XG: For me, it's difficult to put the right words to describe our music. I would say just relax, put a good pair of headphones on your head, and let yourself be surrounded by the sound.

Thanks to Xavier for taking the time to answer our questions, and make sure to stop by The Great Old Ones' website or bandcamp page and pick up their debut album Al Azif.

Soundgarden Release New Track

The recently reunited Soundgarden have released the first single from their new LP King Animal, out November 11th. The track is titled "Been Away Too Long," and has all the elements you'd really want in a Soundgarden track, plus some new and interesting sonic touches.

Lost Rivers and Ditch Lillies

Murder By Death - Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon
Some bands make their fans a little nervous when they release an album. Will it be as good as the last one? Is this going to be the album where they lose the magic? I doubt many fans of Murder By Death have such apprehensions. MBD have made a reputation on releasing consistently strong albums throughout their more than ten years as a band. Each effort has a different flavor, but it's always the Murder By Death that their fans know and love. Their newest LP Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon is no exception to this unbroken string of success, and in fact shows the band making a larger stride forward musically than they have on any of their older works.

Part of this big step forward has to be credited to the addition of multi-instrumentalist Scott Brackett, who provided a plethora of sounds that have rarely if ever been heard on a Murder By Death album before. Brackett is ostensibly manning the piano position that Vincent Edwards vacated a few albums back, but it sounds like he's also provided organ, mandolin, accordion, trumpet, and even theremin (and probably more that I'm missing) this time out, and it's to the band's credit that they find a place in the mix for all of it. The sound is by turns grand and dramatic, or spare and intimate, but always evocative.

As much as Brackett has added to the sound with his many talents, it's obvious that the veterans of the band have all stepped up their game on this album. Adam Turla's vocals are still in their deep Cash-esque register, but he's also gained impressive control of his higher register that is reminiscent of the modulated Ralph Stanley style. Matt Armstrong's bass has always had an audible presence on their records, but here it takes on a throatier growl and really lets you know it's there, just listen to when it kicks in in the song "Ditch Lilly." Sarah's cello work has a fascinating versatility, from the expected melodic elegance, to the stuttering accents in "Lost River," to the distorted solo in "Straight at the Sun." And Dagan Thogerson continues to be one of the hardest working drummers in music, providing just the right emphasis in any situation. Drummers tend to escape people's notice at the back of the stage, but if you get the opportunity to see this band live, be sure to watch Dagan. He's doing twice as much behind the kit than you'd think by how effortless he makes it sound.

In a recent interview with Invisible Vanguard, Armstrong talked about how important it is to improve by "never missing a chance to shut up" when playing in a band, and that's really the key to the success of Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon. With this much going on it would be easy to fatigue the listener with all the excess, but if Murder By Death know anything, it's how to arrange a song for maximum effect. Why this band hasn't gotten more cinematic score and soundtrack work is a mystery, but it's apparently a future goal for the band, so keep an eye out.

Murder By Death have crafted an album here that is both beautiful and unsettling. According to the band, they were aiming to add some David Lynch-style creepiness to their already dark Americana, and they definitely nailed it. This one will be a perfect autumn soundtrack, so definitely pick it up. Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, is an impressive musical achievement, and easily one of the best records of the year.