Metal is such a frenetic genre. It’s also frequently brutal, angular, angry and most of all noisy. Every now and again, purveyors of the true faith settle down, break out the bong and forget all about all that ADHD nonsense. I don’t mean slapping your balls on the table and wailing lyrical about the power of love. Sometimes you just gotta sloooow dooown dude.

Stoner legends Kyuss managed to capture this laid-so-far-back-you’re-looking-out-from-between-your-legs mood in a musical cloud of herbal smelling smoke with Space Cadet.

Nestling among various slabs of fuzzy, bass laden sludge on their stoner masterwork Welcome to Sky Valley, this unplugged anthem doesn’t hurry, it oozes. It sounds like it emerged from a weed fueled jam, congealing from the waxy, tar stained air, emanating from a basement; suppressed angst – a cleansing by music and sedatives.

The young Josh Homme delivers an acoustic solo that sounds like it burst from the base of his spine. When inhibitions are smudged away; when the fleshy barrier between self and instrument dissolves, such things can emanate.

Space Cadet made itself – a projection of man and miasma – and it is beautiful.

I stand alone on the cliffs of the world
No-one ever tends to me
Sitting alone covered in breeze
Some things are so my mind can breathe
Waiting is hard, fuckin’ takes so long
Draped in sun, hands in sand
Earth acid cleanses me, it cleanses me clean
But the world it never comes, it never comes
It never comes

Alien?

Coast is the most accessible track of Devin Townsend’s coming of (old) age album Ki. Although not necessarily representative of the dense melancholy pseudo-prog on this involving album, it’s an enjoyable atmospheric rock song. This spooky Blair Witch meets Area 51 video, however, casts a completely different aura over this innocuous number. A collage of largely static, monochrome images tell of monoliths and aliens with newspaper cuttings and amorphous landscapes all spliced together in time with the music. Quivering and edgy, this is actually a little unsettling.

Also for your enjoyment Devin has also shelled out for a new website which contains lots of on-brand nu-Devy imagery and plenty of shrink-couch babble for your vicarious indulgence.

A cheeky double scoop of unsigned acts on UKMU for you consumption.

The delectable Dycian Maze:

History repeats. This is particularly apparent in popular music. In 25 to 30 year cycles, music styles re-emerge, reboot and evolve. Some returning genres are more welcome than others. The current 80’s synth-pop revival is nauseating for example, but I’m quite looking forward to grunge coming back round again. One welcome reboot was thrash metal. Bands like Municipal Waste and SSS are farming the routes of this revered genre (DRI, Slayer, SOD) to amusing effect. It’s fun and they sing about beer a lot. However, somewhere in that latter half of the 80’s thrash evolved. Albums like Ride the Lightening, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying, History of a Time to Come, Arise took this mishmash of punk and metal and sculpted into a progressive artform. So thrash re-emerged a couple of years ago, but where’s the progression?

Dycian Maze would seem to represent a reprisal of this transitional phase. They aren’t necessarily pushing boundaries but they do make this vital period sound fresh again. The music they play is not new, but this is no shallow revisionism, the spirit of those masterworks is here in spades.

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The humdrum Hammersalt:

I don’t know if any of you are ancient enough to remember Baddiel and Skinner’s sketch show The Mary Whitehouse experience. They had this great skit lampooning The Cure – the implication was that they could make any song sound depressing, so every week they dressed up like the Cure and preformed songs like the Laughing Policeman in depressing goth style.
I have a similar problem with Hammersalt, except (in similarly depressing style) they seem to be able to make any song sound like Load-era Metallica – the singer sounds spookily like James Hetfield from those albums. Given that this band are British, and the singer’s surname is Booyse it seems unlikely that he’s Hetfield’s long lost brother. What’s slightly more confusing is that they cite every corporate heavy rock band from the last 20 years (from Pumpkins to Foos to Shinedown) as an influence on their MySpace except Metallica. Are we to believe that he stumbled on this distinctive vocal style by chance?

This makes it hard to divine what they really about – it’s kind of like that trick: say milk milk milk milk milk milk….what do cows drink?

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When I grow up I want to be in a sandwich or a metal band

I had the violent displeasure today of (part)consuming what may be the worst pork sandwich I have ever had. I purchased this wretched morsel from a café near me that sells nothing else other than roast pork in rolls. How bad can it be? Well the stale baguette (they seem to have perfected the art of making them come out of the oven that way) was the worst bit, then the dry pork (I’m assuming it was pork, hard to tell) was the worst bit too, after the apple sauce (seemingly made be leaving the apples in pool of saliva to dissolve) it all went down hill (or to be more specific, in the bin).

How anyone could treat pig, not to mention food in general, with such disrespect is beyond me. To celebrate this most auspicious of occasions I’ve selected a few tasty pig related tracks for your entertainment.

War Pigs. The Faith No More version here, but there’s a multitude of excellent covers of the seminal Sabbath masterwork.

Piggy, the foreboding industrial ‘ballad’ from Nine Inch Nails’ astounding The Downward Spiral.

Some delightful, nosebleed inducing Grind from Pig Destroyer.

The fantastically silly, Scientology baiting Big Fat Pig from Clutch’s otherwise less than inspiring Jam Room.

May the pork be with you…

I’m going to be writing a bunch of reviews of unsigned bands for metal forum UK Metal Underground. Check the first one out here.

It’s never a good to start a band without knowing how to spell your band’s name. There seems to be 2 ways of spelling ‘Hades’ on the band’s MySpace – 1 ending with an ‘s’ and presumably a reference to the ancient Greek underworld, or ending with a ‘z’, which means nothing at all (not that this is a problem, after all, we live in the 21st century dudez).

Whatever they’re called, they make hard rock music. Hard fuckin’ RAWK! Well most of the time anyway. Their MySpace assortment is a ramshackle affair that loiters around various rawk subgenres without committing itself too much.

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You have to wonder whether the title of this much anticipated comeback EP is a reference to the backwards leaning tendencies contained herein. Like a little smorgasbord, these 4 tasty tid-bits are both familiar but also fresh.

Cayman’s Tongue lurches into the post-hardcore territory of Perfect Pitch Black while also referencing the space rock majesty of Jupiter. We then take a complete left turn into the pounding Retina See Rewind – a forceful yet melodic punk frenzy.

The Red Trail is pure ferocious hardcore of a kind becoming less common if these days of monotonous Deathcore and pretentious crabcore. This is new ground for the ephemeral Cave In, and is a style that suits them well, but we’re used to them pushing boundaries, which aren’t being pressured much here.

Finally Air Escapes is has a robotic pummel reminiscent of Queens of the Stone Age and provides the most melodic moment of the quartet.

What’s missing here are the yearning melodies of Cave In’s middle period. The is progression here but overall this seems like a band finding their feet again, and consequently doesn’t stand up against their best. Cave In need to decide who they’re going to be next; as a transition work this is an entertaining bask in former glories, but a glorious comeback it ain’t.

The EP is currently streaming in its entirety here.

(3.5)

A track by track breakdown of British post-[hardcore|metal|rock] act Fall of Efrafa’s third full length album would simply read ‘epic’ 7 times. The majority of tracks on this vegan opus clock in at between 10 and 17 minutes. This is the final instalment of Fall of Efrafa’s 3 albums that  re-imagine the story and themes of Watership Down in a quasi-political polemic – an effort that makes Coheed and Cambria’s Star Wars wet dream seem half hearted.

Inlé takes it time. There’s little room for subtlety here, but there are moments of wistful beauty interspersed with bludgeoning hardcore which elicits The Ocean and Neurosis. The vocals are a monotonous roar which occasionally breaks down to a Frank Carter-esque rasp while the guitars cast a doomy air across these rhythmically sparse soundscapes. Highlights are the doom-core of Wonderwort and the final track  The Warren of Snares which wraps up this series in spectacular style surging and and waining before culminating into a pummeling finalé.

Fall of Efrafa should perhaps be congratulated for being the only band in history to base their entire career on rabbits and their dedication is commendable. However, Inlé is perhaps too ponderous  for it’s own good – Efrafa may be labouring a point here, and they’re certainly labouring the music. I’ve no doubt that this album will blossom it’s purposeful beauty after repeated listens, but time is precious, and you have to wonder whether Efrafa are in any hurry to spread their message.

I’ve not heard the rest of their back catalogue so I can’t say whether this is a fitting end to the saga, however, it’s a diverting listen which is heartfelt and passionate. It can be downloaded in its entirity (as well as their other releases) here.

(3.5)

Currently doing heavy rotation on the interwebs – Phil Anselmo making a complete dog’s arse of Alice in Chains’ sublime Nutshell. He seems a little drunk, and guitar clearly isn’t his instrument, but it must of sounded like Stairway to Heaven through a haze of booze and weed.

So all your fiends and family are either on the brink of redundancy or about to die of swine flu. Your house is worth less than the boat that you’re going to have to by when the ice caps melt and you’ve taken a liking to the new Beyonce track and you’re concerned that this may develop into something more sinister.

Don’t feel so down old chum. Here’s some reasons to be cheerful!

The new Dillinger Escape Plan album Option Paralysis will be released early next year which apparently will sound “dark and evil –very early ’90s thrash-influenced” and not “upbeat and danceable –very Justin Timberlake-influenced” like we were all expecting.

One more instalment of the 4 album odyssey that is the Devin Townsend Project. This one will be heavier apparently, which is nice. Strapping Young Lad will be revisited on the 3rd album apparently. Apparently there are also twitters regarding some possible live appearances next year. A visit to the UK please Mr. Townsend!

The new album New Junk Aesthetic from southern hardcore frontrunners Every Time I Die in September. The first track released from this has backing vocals from Dillinger’s Greg Puciato. Read my thoughts here.

Alice in Chains got a new singer, and have recorded a new album due for a September release. Against all the odds, the first track released off of this opus is actually rather good.

Baroness have finished recording their new album, which is due out in October. If it’s 1/10th as good as The Red Album, then it should kick the arse out of most other stuff released this year.

Apparently Metal is currently the most popular musical genre in the UK. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a reason to be cheerful or a reason to slit your wrists. If it leads to more unforgivable adolescent nonsense like this, then possible the latter, unless you’re 12, then surely the former.

Feeling happier? No? This should help (mainly because it’s what I’m listening to now, and it’s cheering me up).

A Thom Yorke played a new track and some rarities in a rather daring midday solo slot at Latitude festival according to NME.com. What possessed that mad pixie to play this usually mortuary like slot is anyone’s guess (perhaps he was hoping that no-one would turn up), but never-the-less he apparently played storming set including classic rarities True Love Waits and fan favourite Follow Me Around among highlights from his solo album and recent Radiohead back catalogue.

I’d love to see him tour with a set like this – which of course he won’t. He’ll more likely play a one off show in a supermarket composed entirely of Talking Heads covers played on a Commodore 64.