A Storm of Light

The Metal Examiner: A Storm Of Light’s As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

A Storm of Light: As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories FadeA Storm Of Light: As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade (Profound Lore, 5/17/11)

A Storm Of Light: “Destroyer”

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Since its inception, Josh Graham’s A Storm Of Light has adopted a model that’s based squarely on collective evolution, be it in something as complex as its musical aspirations or something as simple as its personnel. With its fourth release, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade, the group seemingly moves a little further from its loose “project” designation yet seemingly keeps the “band” label at arm’s length.

With its sound rooted firmly in no-frills rock, Valley’s style could best be described as “talk metal” or, barring that, “verbal doom.” Graham’s vocals tend to avoid conventional melody, or at least anything too advanced, instead coming off more as pitched declarations of ideology over the anvil attack of bassist Dominic Seita and newcomer drummer B.J. Graves. Though the obvious comparisons to contemporaries Neurosis or Unsane will make sense, Valley really borrows more heavily from mid-1990s hard rock — the half-spoken, hard-truth heaviness of Rollins Band, or the sludgy Sabbath nods of Soundgarden (fittingly, guitarist Kim Thayil pops in for a pair of guest spots: “Missing” and “Black Wolves”). The chugging “Collapse” evokes a less tom-reliant form of Tool, and the environmentalist-turned-existentialist “Destroyer” finally explains what a Queensrÿche / Alice in Chains / Rage Against the Machine collaboration might have sounded like.

World in Stereo: Those Shocking, Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk, 1970-1978

World in Stereo examines classic and modern world music while striving for a greater appreciation of other cultures.

V/A: Those Shocking, Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk, 1970-1978 (Now-Again, 3/8/11)

Shark Move: “Evil War”

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Giving service to the music and the musicophiles who go in search for it, Now-Again Records has released a stunning overview of 1970s Indonesian funk, rock, and psychedelia recordings in an anthology titled Those Shocking, Shaking Days.  The title is a perfect summation of the sounds coming from the compilation; deep funk gems and gritty rock riffs are captured in the lowest of lo-fi senses, driven to the head by relentless fuzz guitars, psychedelic howls, and all kinds of general weirdness.

Helmed by Now-Again’s head honcho Egon, with research and crate digging from producer Jason “Moss” Connoy (and the not-to-be overlooked assistance from Indonesian rock legend Benny Soebardja, who secured all the necessary rights), the compilation is what happens when the record-collector gods align everything just right. Add in a thick booklet with groovy album art, eccentric band photos that could only belong to the ’70s, and extensive track-by-track notes from Holland-based Indonesian ex-pat Chandra Drews, Those Shocking, Shaking Days does an incredible job of giving listeners the whole package.

Weedeater

The Metal Examiner: Weedeater’s Jason…The Dragon

Weedeater: Jason...The DragonWeedeater: Jason…The Dragon (Southern Lord, 3/1/11)

Weedeater: “Mancoon”
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North Carolina-based Weedeater has always balanced its stoner- and sludge-metal aspirations with a wide-open embrace of not just Southern rock but Southern culture as well. Songs about Dale Earnhardt sit alongside Lynyrd Skynyrd covers; odes to mystical demons were right at home alongside ballads praising the band’s titular indulgence.

But despite some commendable efforts (especially the group’s previous disc, God Luck And Good Speed in 2007), these two directions never fully reconciled, and the band’s masterpiece always seemed just out of its reach. Jason…The Dragon, the group’s fourth full-length (and second for Southern Lord), doesn’t quite put the group over the top of the mountain, but it’s never for lack of trying.

Black Mountain

The Groove Seeker: Black Mountain’s Wilderness Heart

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Black Mountain: Wilderness HeartBlack Mountain: Wilderness Heart (Jagjaguwar, 9/14/2010)

Black Mountain: “Wilderness Heart”

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Thanks to endless comparisons to bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, and tagged as a band obsessed with ’70s stoner rock, Vancouver-based rock outfit Black Mountain has a lot to live up to.  But beyond the umbrella terminology and exhaustive retro comparisons, the group doesn’t receive enough credit for striking a modern chord with mainstream and underground-minded audiences alike.

Triptykon

The Metal Examiner: Triptykon’s Shatter EP

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Triptykon: Shatter: Eparistera Daimones Accompanied (Prowling Death, licensed to Century Media, 10/25/2010)

Triptykon: “Shatter” Official Video

Tom Warrior’s creative output is both extensive and divergent. Since 1983, Warrior has released music as part of Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, and Apollyon Sun, and now his current project is Triptykon. If one takes inventory of the music created by this man over the last two-plus decades, one finds that none of his albums really sound all that much like any of the others. There are common threads and tendencies that tie everything together, but each release stands on an island of its own.

Mammoth Grinder

Mammoth Grinder: Pure Metal Immediacy

With its second full-length album, Mammoth Grinder combines the simple brutality of death metal with a hardcore rawness that is heard less and less in this age of digital recording programs, overdubs, and pitch correctors.

Om: Spiritual Work and Colossal Vibrations

When Om’s Al Cisneros isn’t playing bass guitar, he’s been known to teach chess. “They are complementary to each other and say the same thing in my heart,” he says. “They uncover the same things to me. In a lot of ways, practicing one is practicing the other. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I don’t usually pick up the bass until I have something, the same way you wouldn’t pick up a chess piece until you have a move.”

Cisneros has been a prominent figure in underground metal for years, but his gentle, unassuming demeanor is a far cry from what many would expect from a musician associated with what is typified as an aggressive, macho genre.

Om, the intense, hypnotic bass-and-drum duo that he founded with drummer Chris Haikus in 2003, has been reinventing the way that many people perceive heavy music. Its songs are cerebral but accessible, spiritual but unreligious. Om’s music could be used to excite the apathetic as much as it could serve as a meditative soundtrack for the hyperactive.

In a live setting, Om takes on another dimension. The walls rattle under the colossal vibrations from Cisneros’ bass cabinets, fuelled by his carefully selected custom amps; the huge, warm sounds that come out of them seem to enter the body, resulting in a feel that is like being caught in the eye of a storm.

“I feel really safe sometimes, if that’s the right word, when the speakers [fuzz out] like that,” Cisneros says. “Descriptions [of music] can be stereotypes. It’s very peaceful.”

When Haikus amicably left the band in the spring of 2008, Cisneros sought out Grails drummer and Holy Sons mastermind Emil Amos to take his place. Things have been good ever since, as the title of Om’s fourth studio album and first featuring Amos on drums, God is Good (Drag City), suggests.

“It’s just true,” Cisneros says of the title, which, true to form, decontextualizes religious iconography from its traditional meanings. “We’re in the journey right now, and we wanted to sing about it. It’s the word symbol we came up with. You can’t explain it. The more you try with words, the more you try to explain what it means.” As each word passes, Cisneros sounds vaguely frustrated at trying to communicate such esoteric thoughts out loud. “You can feel it,” he continues. “Everyone can feel it.”

Amos is more direct about the title. “It makes me think of a really hellish LSD trip,” he says, “where at the end of the whole thing, you meet this sobbing resolution that things actually are okay—the fact that you know, in some Jungian sense or in a Carl Sagan book, [that] the creation of this universe came from the first moment of good winning over evil.”

Cisneros began exploring the depths of heavy metal as a teenager in the late ’80s, when he and Haikus formed punk/metal hybrid Asbestosdeath. The band added second guitarist Matt Pike (now guitarist/frontman of High on Fire) and by the early 1990s morphed into Sleep—a riff-brandishing psychedelic power trio, a band that owed more to the bluesy grooves of Black Sabbath and Pentagram yet whose sound was filtered through a set of musicians that had also been exposed to Bay Area hardcore and thrash.

“We all dropped out of high school—I think every one of us,” Cisneros recalls. “We were all having hard times, and we were friends through music.” For the young friends, music became more than just a hobby. “[It was] our lifeline,” he corrects. “I wouldn’t have made it through those times without it.”

Sleep grew a following, and with the release of its second album, Sleep’s Holy Mountain, many believed that it had the potential to cross into the mainstream. The band signed with London Records to release its third album, tentatively titled Dopesmoker, a single, hour-long epic song that had taken the band years to perfect.

The label, rather than appreciating what it had, saw it as “noncommercial” and toyed with remixing it and dividing the song into pieces. The band was horrified and eventually broke up under the strain, but the album later surfaced as the segmented Jerusalem on Rise Above Records, and eventually, an unabridged version of Dopesmoker was released on Tee Pee.

Sleep left a legacy not only because of its primal, heavy sounds that have influenced others, but also because of its unwavering commitment to its vision of its art, no matter what the stakes.

The Top 10 Cover Songs by The Bad Plus

Hard-hitting jazz trio The Bad Plus knows how to pen pieces of proprietary gold. But its three members are also known for their genre-leaping renditions of rock songs, propelled by the chops of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King. Here are the group’s ten best covers.

The Sword: The Times Are A Changin’

Despite their wildfire success at shows, The Sword was having a rough time. Years later, things have changed and they’re doing better than ever, with a wide demographic of classy ladies, heshers, and businessmen alike.

Pink Mountain: Hodgepodge Collective With a Darwinist Twist

Scott Rosenberg of P.A.F. fame brought together a motley crew of musicians to form Pink Mountain. What resulted was something no one could have expected: a sprawling twelve-song marriage of psych, prog, krautrock and freeform jazz that is fueled by a synergistic array of influences.