riff noun \ˈrif\ music : a short and usually repeated pattern of notes in a song : a short set of comments on a particular subject
Showing posts with label Stoner Rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stoner Rock. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2015
Dat Haiku Tho: Sleep - Dragonaut
Riff mark: the first riff of this song is one of my favorite riffs ever
Matt Pike, take my shirt.
No, please. It will likely stretch,
better than nothing.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Acid Bath - Paegan Love Song
Riff mark: oh man just get a load of it all at the beginning
Best of luck finding another band anywhere who can debut two
70-minute (Note: secret track for this one bumps it up roughly 17 minutes) records
back-to-back with such poise, perfection, and poetry. Paegan Terrorism Tactics is the exact follow-up you feared would
ruin When the Kite String Pops yet
didn’t. Admittedly, it’s less-recklessly structured, seeming to know when to
hush and lull rather than thrash and seize. Dax, the serpent king, with his
skin-bound bible of tongue-twisted murder gospels, gleams in sheen black
velvety funeral pipes more than the previous record, crooning cleanly because it
is required to disarm you. For all my snake skin, he’s the best front man
you’ve never heard. Fingers aren’t pressed too hard to lips for headbangers
like opener Paegan Love Song (a
lyricist’s wet-dream) and New Corpse,
but the honest-to-rot-ness beauts just bloom from ugly like Graveflower, this album’s version of Scream of the Butterfly, a beating,
deliberate, scarring box-cutter, six minutes of funeral hurt. New Death Sensation and Dead Girl just leave a few instruments
behind at the wake and play whatever is found at the casket to get by, drifting,
drowning, and softly waving goodbye to a town and home state that seems to
loudly parade one’s passing with brass. Then a car accident (not drugs, not a wife)
happened and the band split. So it goes: two forgotten studio relics and a pile
of demos and bootlegs. Super-bizarre album painting by Dr. Jack.
Update 4/3: Of all the bands posted on our blog this is the first one whose videos are removed from Youtube due to copyright laws. So, have a bootlegged live rendition instead.
Update 4/3: Of all the bands posted on our blog this is the first one whose videos are removed from Youtube due to copyright laws. So, have a bootlegged live rendition instead.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Kyuss - Gardenia
LISTEN TO THE WHOLE THING.
When you first drop the needle on a copy of Kyuss (Affectionately referred to as Welcome to Sky Valley by most fans), you might think that there is a problem with your stereo, because there is just no possible way the music emanating from the speakers should sound this distorted. But you would be wrong, as the Palm Desert quartet plays with the fuzz turned up to eleven and enough volume to reduce a mountain to a swirling storm of dust.
This is music that feels constantly in motion, as though by listening to it you are placed at the wheel of a 1968 Pontiac GTO and are launched down a desolate highway getting really shitty gas mileage the whole way. The riffs smolder in the speakers as your ears take a drag and thick smoke pours out of your mouth as though you just took a hit off a bong the size of an oil drum.
As the sun sets over the mesa and the stars come out, flashing lights and sirens fill the night air as you glance down at the speedometer and realize that you are flying down the road at 666 miles per hour. Then as though channeling the Duke brothers or Mad Max, you floor the gas pedal, take another hit from the cinder tipped speakers, flip your headlights off and let go of the wheel.
Hyperbole aside, this is serious driving music, highly recommended for any road trip or long commute in warm weather where you can crank it with the windows down and feel the breeze.
Listen to "Wretch" on YouTube
Listen to "Blues For The Red Sun" on YouTube
Listen to "Welcome To Sky Valley" on YouTube
Listen to "And The Circus Leaves Town" on YouTube
This is music that feels constantly in motion, as though by listening to it you are placed at the wheel of a 1968 Pontiac GTO and are launched down a desolate highway getting really shitty gas mileage the whole way. The riffs smolder in the speakers as your ears take a drag and thick smoke pours out of your mouth as though you just took a hit off a bong the size of an oil drum.
As the sun sets over the mesa and the stars come out, flashing lights and sirens fill the night air as you glance down at the speedometer and realize that you are flying down the road at 666 miles per hour. Then as though channeling the Duke brothers or Mad Max, you floor the gas pedal, take another hit from the cinder tipped speakers, flip your headlights off and let go of the wheel.
Hyperbole aside, this is serious driving music, highly recommended for any road trip or long commute in warm weather where you can crank it with the windows down and feel the breeze.
Listen to "Wretch" on YouTube
Listen to "Blues For The Red Sun" on YouTube
Listen to "Welcome To Sky Valley" on YouTube
Listen to "And The Circus Leaves Town" on YouTube
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Harvey Milk - Death Goes To The Winner
1:38 mark.
23 years is a long time, for some like Creston Spiers & company, that's how long they have been playing music. For others, like a few reading this for example, it will be how long Harvey Milk has existed before you heard their music. I myself, did not hear of them until 2009, the year after Life...The Best Game In Town was released.
Describing the record or even the band is trying, because they don't fit into conventional genres very well, it's like trying to hammer a triangle shaped peg into a round hole. This record touches on sludge, hard rock, punk, acoustic singer/song writer weirdness and pop all rolled together into a dripping southern barbecue sandwich of sound. Thunderous drumming can be heard throughout and is very much a driving force behind a lot of the songs. The band makes excellent use of pauses and other quiet passages, letting the last bit of a riff ring out until it fades completely, before crashing back in with another monolithic dirge. The record also features an impressive take on "We Destroy The Family" by LA's FEAR.
The band or at least singer Creston Spiers believes that this is their worst record. However, many fans, critics and myself strongly disagree. I feel as though I am failing to describe how great this band truly is, however in a few searches of the internet, most other reviewers have the same problem. The music speaks for itself and ultimately that is what is most important. Check out the links below to let the music speak to you.
"I am alive and it's good to be alive"
Describing the record or even the band is trying, because they don't fit into conventional genres very well, it's like trying to hammer a triangle shaped peg into a round hole. This record touches on sludge, hard rock, punk, acoustic singer/song writer weirdness and pop all rolled together into a dripping southern barbecue sandwich of sound. Thunderous drumming can be heard throughout and is very much a driving force behind a lot of the songs. The band makes excellent use of pauses and other quiet passages, letting the last bit of a riff ring out until it fades completely, before crashing back in with another monolithic dirge. The record also features an impressive take on "We Destroy The Family" by LA's FEAR.
The band or at least singer Creston Spiers believes that this is their worst record. However, many fans, critics and myself strongly disagree. I feel as though I am failing to describe how great this band truly is, however in a few searches of the internet, most other reviewers have the same problem. The music speaks for itself and ultimately that is what is most important. Check out the links below to let the music speak to you.
"I am alive and it's good to be alive"
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Torche - Annihilation Affair
0:00 mark.
Everyone has that one band, the band that no matter what kind of a shitty, awful day you're having or what fucked up thing happened to you minutes before can lift you up and slap a huge smile on your face. Torche is that band for me, and they could be that band for you.
From their album covers adorned with fuzzy looking pastel colored creatures and cotton candy clouds to their undeniable sense of melody and catchy hooks, they are a fun fun band.
The self proclaimed "sludge pop" genre name is an appropriate moniker to describe their Weezer meets Corrosion of Conformity sound. This new track comes from their upcoming album entitled "Restarter" due on February 24th through Relapse.
Crack a smile and enjoy.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
High On Fire - Hung, Drawn and Quartered
0:28 mark.
Matt Pike once said "Heavy is about being pissed off and being a warlord, and laying down, like if someone that was in battle, if they had an axe and just chopped some dude in the head and it landed and you have a riff that plays the same way that way...that's heavy." Hung, Drawn and Quartered is that riff.
Coming from their second record, Surrounded By Thieves, the song takes the listener on a familiar ride, yet manages to totally lose them at the same time as the riff drones on and on over Pike's guttural slurring. His voice comes off like Lemmy bellowing through an ashtray, while his vocal chords are simultaneously raked over a bed of hot coals.
As with Sleep, High On Fire make good use of their drummer, driving the song along a crumbling highway of some dystopian wasteland before careening straight off of a cliff as the song comes to a close.
While I am not super keen on recent HoF material, the first couple of records are very good and worth checking out. Also I have included the documentary that Matt Pike is quoted from, it is a very good film which covers the underground hard rock/desert rock/stoner rock scene from the 70's til the time of the films completion.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Milligram - My Own Private Altamont
0:35 mark.
Milligram is one of no less than three fantastic bands fronted by Jonah Jenkins (Only Living Witness). The first time I heard this song, it was on YouTube and cued up with footage of the Operation Castle nuclear weapons tests at the Bikini Atoll.
The music seemed to fit flawlessly with the images that I was seeing. Sailors huddled on the deck of their ships, a plane flying overhead readies its bomb bay. A brilliant flash of light and a massive mushroom cloud, the decimated target. A moment that would even until today, poison the environment and people of the Marshall Islands.
When this riff hits, it is that blast. That towering plume of smoke, that deafening explosion that can be heard for miles. It creeps into your ears like radioactive fallout, leaving you forever changed. This is a song that should have been cranked through the cabin of the Enola Gay, as it made its return flight after raining death on the city Hiroshima. It would have been an auditory revelation of the magnitude of the situation at hand. A eerie feeling of foreboding in the aftermath of annihilation.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Yawning Man - Digital Smoke Signal
0:14 mark.
When I bite into a york peppermint pattie, I get the sensation THAT I AM SLOWLY DRIFTING THROUGH SPACE TOWARDS AN INFINITE ABYSS WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD...OR THE UNIVERSE FOR THAT MATTER. Oh wait, that not when I bite into a piece of candy, that's what happens when this riff kicks in.
Soaring along for almost 7 minutes, this acid soaked jam fest will leave you unconscious in the middle of the Palm Desert, shirtless and sun scorched. It's a full on peyote trip, a psychedelic journey that you will want to put on repeat and stare into the sky.
It's the soundtrack of a western, if the lead character did nothing but slowly ride into the distance for an hour and forty minutes.
It's the soundtrack of a western, if the lead character did nothing but slowly ride into the distance for an hour and forty minutes.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The Melvins - Joan of Arc
0:45 mark.
Moss in the morning may refer to any number of things, who really knows.
My theory is that it is a reference to Buzz Osbourne waking up in an abandoned building, shaking the bugs out of the fuzz mop attached to his head and lighting a 3 foot long joint rolled in newspaper and unleashing a cloud of smoke that can be seen from space.
Hyperbole? Maybe, but don't come crying to me when you're in traction after being run down by a hemp powered 1960 VW van with a shirtless Mr Osbourne hanging from the window screaming MOSS IN THE MORNING MIGHT BE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
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