Clint from Owl sent me his bands debut single on Magic Hermit Records. From the foldout liner notes these guys are based in San Francisco and he and his two brothers along with bass player Melanie Burkett are heavily into a complex metal/stoner rock sound, and pull it off in a completely sincere, technically perfect, altogether headbanging way.
A-Sides, "Feaster from the Stars" starts whirling in from far off in the distance with a messy echo'd feedbacking guitar. They pretty much had me when this crisp medieval guitar. They get that great in sync guitar sound that becomes almost synth and combine it with loud as hell stoner rock with speed. Lots of metal influences, not afraid to drop down low into Earth or Harvey Milk for a second, slow things down, bring on a rumbling windmill. I'm into how esoteric this is getting, the falsetto operatic singing and this mean kind of bellow...all with god damn sweet guitar playing. A hazy twilight breakdown right into acoustics and distorted feedbacking over huge booming drums. They've got this epic nerd sound nailed. Still being tough with that precise super effect sound, but there's nothing like having dueling metal Jay Mascis' going. Punch in the last part, boom boom then solo the hell out for 15 seconds and done! It's like the Fucking Chanmps with classic southern rock roots.
The other side of the sleeve is a flying skelton with a scythe? Get this already. I love that this gets really complex, not metal at times, but deep mathy licks like this. They don't ever take it to an easily cheesy place, right on that line and I would love to see this.
B-Side "Stone Loner", here comes the SF sound, psychedelic harpsichord, going right for those classical instruments because they are super trained D&D nerds but for music. The door opens on some sick guitar playing and drum snare rolls....whan you get a couple of guitars together like this there's nothing like that sound of a heavily gated distortion, so clean and layered like this sounding like laserbeams, headbands and mounstache's. Vocally he's got just a slight metal wavering high register delivery that isn't going anywhere near Iron Madien, but should easily get that crowd on board with this genius breakdown of smoke and harpischords, while getting the real technical guys attention too. Turning this up constantly and looking forward to the long instrumental parts because none of this even needs vocals. Hitting perfect changes, getting even a litte bit prog on this, if Arctopus is prog. Make a guitar with more strings, a 24 string guitar? That's the only way you're going to get over on these guys. On second thought I love the mystical vocals, exactly what you would expect and they dive right into it.
The liner notes are in illuminated text. Dense impassable lyrics, hitting every mark intentionally. Metal Hawkwind.
It's why I get excited still to get a random record in the mail, the needle hits the record and there's no telling where you'll end up.
From Magic Hermit or get it from the bands bandcamp page.
LISTEN TO THIS ALREADY!
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