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.
This man has an owl on his head. It’s clearly time to party.
Whores’ drawers, I fucking LOVE Kvelertak.
A little green of gill and somewhat gig-jaded, there was notable anti-anticipation around these parts as the clock ticked down towards time-to-get-off-my-arse o’clock.
You see the sour taste of The Sword remained and while High on Fire wobbled my jowls pleasingly with their vibrating air, the crowd carried the faintest whiff of dickhead.
Combine that with my suspicions around the unfamiliar venue – everything in Camden inherently veers towards shithole-status – and the stoke levels were minimal.
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.
Monkey Defies Gravity 