Friday, May 27, 2011

Sharp Ends + Krang - 2 new singles from The Mammoth Cave Recording Co.




2 new singles today from the Mammoth Cave Recording Co, both of which I'm told are in short supply so this is your final Friday warning! If you like what you hear, head over to the Mammoth Store and pick these up.

First up is Krang and this Sabbath meets Wooden Shjips description is perfect..I would even throw a little Dead Meadow in there for the crushing low end coming out of my speakers right now.
"Speed of Tent" on the A-Side kicks off with overblown drums and a rumbling bassline. Super heavy slow warbly vocals and low end riffage complete this heavy heavy psyche metal. It's great they really captured the hugeness of this sound, you might as well have just walked into that dark, smoke filled room you could hear from the street. I hope these guys have some earplugs or those gun range headsets, or they'll have a Mission of Burma situation on their hands if they don't already.
Then on the B-Side, they start out with a muddy acoustic and tambourine, far off ghostly howls accompany a heavy delay vocal, but never fear the wall is coming...you can hear the storm clouds forming and they hold off for just long enough to keep that tension rising. When it breaks, the solid melody they've been steadily burning gets one plateau higher and they wah-wah through epic solos. I can't get enough of this completely live, bleeding into each other sound.

This one is over here.
We think that this is the best 7" we've released so far. Two heavy-psych brain-warpers, think Wooden Shjips if all they ever listened to was Black Sabbath and smoked way more dank. Krang embody the pure spectacle of their psychedelic stoner-rock - crushing rhythms, screaming guitar solos and a dude blaring away on a clarinet making the most ungodly sounds. They destroy. You've been warned.




Next up is the Sharp Ends, and this single is actually a reissue of a self released 7inch they put out in 2009 that just 100 people had the luck of picking up...well not anymore! This 4 song EP is back out having been unearthed in the lower reaches of the Cave, and it's another great production, getting that live room sound just right, sound waves reverberating around, for that unhinged garage psyche feel, keeping their dark character and what I'm sure is exactly what you'd get on stage.
The A-Side's title track, "Broadview Pressure Test" is made up of a massive rhythm section, huge room sound drums and the low end bass and gritty guitar. The vocals are captured just above this wall, with just the right amount of distortion that comes from yelling your face off. They keep this quieter dark section playing off the all out chorus...damn, like Warsaw...there's that raw rock feel that's focused on a driving melody.
"Panic Button" quickly establishes a rising scale riff, and the vocals here just barely layered with echo, this guy is great, here it comes off as that nervous blown out post punk Bauhaus. A great burst of
"Vacant City" goes south with a little bluesy bent, definitely getting garage, with just an overwhelming amount of low end driving this train.
"Can't Say No", these recordings are dense, still frantic and dark, but energetic..and it's a great combination. Instead of brooding on this style, they sound like they're exorcising it.

Get this one here.
Reissue of Sharp Ends self-released 4-song 7" EP that came out in an edition of 100 and sold out in 24 hours back in December 2009, and in my humble opinion, the best Sharp Ends best songs from when they were fresh and hungry. Deadly serious here, we've been itching to reissue this since it was released.

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