Look at these crazy bastards! Someone’s gonna get killed!
So I was pretty stoked to see The Sword, live in London’s Camden Underworld. Despite initially being a little lukewarm about Apocryphon, I cranked it hard in the dark days before Christmas. Familiarity bred a comfortable enjoyment of The Sword’s well-worn yet still thunderous riffage.
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.
Yum, broccoli and squid for tea!
It’s safe to say Hazzard’s Cure bloody love metal. The Bay Area foursome’s self-titled debut drips passion for getting toasty and losing yourself in the sweet abyss of the heavy.
Nor are these chaps monogamous to a single metal mistress.
They love to put themselves about, flirting with elements of stoner, sludge, thrash, crust, NWOBHM, black, doom… you name it, it’s here.
Here kitty, kitty!
If you have ever mused that your stoner rock needed a little more feral growl in the vocal department, Hunters could be for you.
The music is fairly straight up 70s-style fuzzy stoner grooves with a few fun gallops here and there. The death metal vocals though definitely give it an, ahem, unique flavour.
I quite like it myself. Not sure how much of a crossover appeal there is though.
The Chicago band are unsigned and you can stream their album Birth To Soil here.
I’m loving that artwork too.
Thanks to quality blog American Aftermath for the heads up on this.
Monkey Defies Gravity 