Graveyard - Hisingen Blues
After a stint revelling in the comfort of nostalgia, dusted off and rescued from a neglected corner of my personal cultural attic, I started to get my heavy back on these past few days.
It’s healthy to have a break from punishing my eardrums every so often.
It allows me to listen afresh to albums that maybe didn’t click because they didn’t match that moment’s obsession.
So, in between draining the last dregs from the brown bottle of my grebo revival, I dipped into a few things I’d been excited about hearing.
Unlike most nights out on the razzle though, nothing really kicked me in the balls and said “hey sweetheart, where you have been all my life?”
This is getting all kinds of love and already touted as a best of 2011 contender. I rather enjoyed the Sabbath-worshipping doom rock of their 2007 eponymous debut. The Swedes were ploughing a similar furrow as The Sword, who debuted the year before, which is more than alright with me.
The odds appeared good for being blown away.
Yet Graveyard had a bluesier feel than Age of Winters. So while The Sword have developed into a fully-fledged stoner metal band with a dash of thrash and NWOBHM, Graveyard have now largely ditched the doom in favour of recreating 70s rock. Think Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, even Cream.
Hmmmm.
Yes, the production is impressively spacious and organic, yes, the riffs and song-writing are solid, no, sir, there is not enough metal in my sandwich.
It does have a great overall sound though, particularly the Robert Plant-style vocals, so I’m not going to give up on it just yet.
Horseback – The Invisible Mountain
Droning, sorta post-black metal with a sludgy, psychedelic noise coating? Ambient blackened noise-rock-inflected post-sludge? Trying to label this kind of music seems to always result in this species of gibber.
Whatever it is, The Invisible Mountain may have a tendency to drift by but there’s definitely something there. I personally get wafts of Krallice, Twilight and the harsher, swirlier elements of Alcest.
Gaza – He Is Never Coming Back
I admit it. After two songs, I cut my ears off and fed them to a passing dog. I piped a heavy dose Kvelertak into the bleeding holes to recover and now I feel much better.
May this nasty, grinding mess never again darken my aural doorstep.
Monkey Defies Gravity 
Yeah, it’s funny; I should like Graveyard (I like Witchcraft, which is nearly the same band), but they just don’t do it for me. I think it’s because they’re too perfect a copy of a 60s/70s rock band. Now we know what Cream would sound like with the recording technology of today.
I keep wondering, like those guys you hear about who could perfectly forge a Monet or Rembrandt– if you’re good enough to perfectly emulate someone else, why are you apparently not good enough to write your own stuff?
Horseback is indeed a strange beast (I reviewed it a while ago). It’s supposed to be music that people listen to when they get high or whatever–which is why I don’t think I quite “got” it–but it’s bound to give you some kind of bad trip, I would think.
Gaza is a name I’ve heard but never had the impetus to check out. Now I know I was right not to. Cosmo Lee didn’t like Graveyard, so that means something to me. I’ll have to preview it first.
I’ve listened to Horseback quite a bit more since that post and I think I might do a fuller review as I didn’t do it justice. I’m definitely warming to it but yes it’s strange – there’s a massive disconnect between the vocals and the music.
Don’t let me put you off Gaza. Some grindcore afficionados swear by them, whereas I only dabble.