Some bands just get it right.
Inter Arma have been building towards a wonderful record and this most definitely is it.
It’s bleak and it’s beautiful. At turns joyously uplifting, at others crushingly heavy. I’m fucking enchanted.
Black metal and Pink Floyd are stirred in equal parts through soaring psychedelic sludge to create something unique and utterly compelling.
I don’t think babies should be allowed to smoke marijuana. They can’t roll their own for a start…
NOT the Kyuss rip-off you might expect with a bandname and EP title like that.
Instead we get satisfyingly fearsome crusty, sludgy hardcore-inflected metal that draws from the same wellspring that nourishes great bands like Black Breath and Trap Them.
While these Ohioans (is that even a word? Google says yes, so that’s good enough for me) certainly share traits with some popular beat combos du jour, their take on this sound feels their own.
Are these your balls sir?
Inter Arma are the best band you’ve never heard. Debut Sundown snuck up on me and wrapped a tire iron around my head to snaffle third spot in my 2010 end of year list with its amalgam of black metal, sludge and NWOBHM.
Typically when I fall in love a record, any follow-up will struggle fill its shoes.
On their Relapse Records debut EP, Inter Arma do more than buck that trend, they torpedo that motherfucker out of the water.
Now it’s time for medication, stallions on the eiderdown
Some of us love metal for the darkness and mystery: cloaks, pseudonyms, smoke and ritualistic paraphernalia.
Baroness offered none of that. Just four guys and their instruments squeezed together on a low stage in a tiny upstairs room at a London bar that was packed out with adoring fans.
This was no-frills rock and roll. Band and audience giving it their all.
Will bits of me get caught in JBD’s beard? One hopes not…
Long time readers of Monkey Defies Gravity will know how much of a collective man-crush I have on Baroness. I have long thought that I might explode with excitement should I ever get to see them.
Well, I shall be able to test my hypothesis on July 12 at tiny London club, Barfly – that’s just five days before the UK release of Yellow & Green. Let’s hope the staff don’t have to scrape me off the walls and ceiling. It could be messy.
I can’t believe a band of this stature is playing a 200-capacity venue in the UK capital in 2012. I also can’t believe I managed to snag a ticket. Thank you Songkick.
