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DOWNLOAD: Panthers - Don't Be a Dick
Panthers are now pretty much a straight up metal band (since their mind-blowing 2007 album The Trick) but there was a time when their sound was a little more grunge, a little more 1970s Detroit. Both are awesome, but today we’re showcasing their older single “Don’t Be a Dick” (courtesy of Dim Mak, obviously) which is about as psych-metal as music can get without actually melting your face off. Enjoy, and crank it to 11.
Sounds like: Pride Tiger, Red Scare, The MC5
DOWNLOAD: Graveyard - Evil Ways
Dudes. Graveyard is the Swedish Deep Purple. Deep Swedish Purple! Forgive me for being predictable and losing my shit over ANOTHER psyched out stoner metal trip, but I likes what I likes and I likes this. A heady mix of folk, blues and hard gnar, Graveyard does for "Smoke On The Water" what Dungen did for "Immigrant's Song," not to mention what Soundgarden did for Johnny Cash. Total van rock. Graveyard, like most other bands you're obsessed with, are out on Tee Pee Records.
DOWNLOAD: Graveyard - Evil Ways
DOWNLOAD: The Big Sleep - Pinkies
The Big Sleep, with their glistening forearms and permanent frowns, may end up being remembered as the last heroes of the lower east side before it went to high rise hell. Their music, 100% muscle, comes in vulgar thrusts too brutal to coexist with $6000 apartments and $15 hamburgers. Pure, relentless darkness.
VIDEO: Mastodon at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple
All metal fans know that Mastodon are amazing: they have the chops, the power, and the concepts to make truly interesting hard rock. Check out these behind the scenes video of the band before their performance a few months ago at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple.
DOWNLOAD: Pride Tiger - Forget Everything
Can the music industry please enlist Pride Tiger to instigate a ‘70s revival and kill this whole ‘90s vibe we have going on right now? Not that we don’t love like, old house, but this band sound like Thin Lizzy injected with a dollop of Def Leppard, and it’s kind of making us regret not being alive in 1976. The band have serious cred as well: three members (drummer/vocalist Matt Wood and guitarists Bob Froese and Sunny Dhak) used to be in highly-reveled heavy metal act 3 Inches of Blood, and bassist Mike Payette was in S.T.R.E.E.T.S., the best band-name-as-acronym ever (“Skateboarding Totally Rules Everything Else Totally Sucks”). Pride Tiger’s song “Forget Everything” sounds like Jailbreak on even more amphetamines, shoved into exactly three minutes of raw power. Definitely worth multiple listens. Pride Tiger's debut record The Lucky Ones comes out March 11 on Caroline Records, so be sure to cop it when it drops.
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Witch - Sweet Sue
Weirdly enough, there's a fine line between hippie and hesher. You saw Gimme Shelter, right? From the very beginning, the only thing that separated the acid heads from the hell's angels was pool cues and hats with teeth. Point of all this rambling is that Witch is a hippie/hesher orgy that blurs that fine line unrecognizable.
It makes perfect sense, considering that (as you already know) Witch is equal parts Dinosaur Jr and New England longhair collective, Feathers. And the sum of that equation is just as crusty and burly and exquisitely bummed out as you'd expect. To illustrate the range of their superstoner powers, we present "Eye" and "Sweet Sue."
"Eye" is a rager. Black Flag and Sabbath colliding on motorcycles and puking brains on the highway. "Sweet Sue" either just woke up or it's been up all night and -- now don't freak out about this -- it might kinda sound like a way tougher Candlebox. And we mean that in the best imaginable way. Apparently '70s + '90s = nowsies. Weeeeeeird!
DOWNLOAD: Dead Meadow - I'm Gone
"If you want me to, I could be with you..."
When we hear "doom rock" we think like... Mordor. Don't you? Like Glenn Danzig and goat horns and churches burning in the mountains of Norway. Dead Meadow, though certainly heavy doomers by name and reputation, are a breed apart. They're beyond good and evil. Beyond the pageantry and the leather pants and the making of mean faces all the time. They've got hair over their faces and glasses anyway. The sun's at their backs. What would be the point?
So yeah, the new Dead Meadow (Old Growth, out 2/5 on Matador) is total stoner doom metal. But it's Sun Also Rises doom. Doomed because, who cares, we're all doomed. Nihilist metal. And, not that this really matters or anything, but goddamn does it sound good.
Now, last time we talked, we called Dead Meadow classic rock. "Sabbath-like." And while we stand by that, upon closer examination, there's an undeniable '90s vibe here. Less a Zeppelin knockoff than a mash-up of early indie rock and construction site radio. It's like CCR got their hands on a bunch of Love As Laughter and Elliott Smith and Xanax. Listen. You'll see.
VIDEO: Holy Ghost Revival - Embrace The Hate
One of the things that dismayed us the most about 2007 is that, for all the great dance, indie and pop music that came out, we didn’t feel like there was even one really strong, old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll record. To be frank we didn’t even really get into that last White Stripes album that much, which is saying a lot. Luckily, it looks like Seattle’s Holy Ghost Revival are going to change all that in 2008. The band have the sort of long-haired, sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll demeanor that makes huge riffs and screaming vocals appealing, but without any of the cheese that makes it sometimes obnoxious. This is not Jet or whatever, they’re the real deal. They’ve signed to 1965 Records in the UK, and the label has become a niche for all gritty punk and rock acts in the past two years.
FEATURED: The Runaways
We’ve recently gotten totally obsessed with Joan Jett and her pre-solo band the Runaways (we’re talking vintage record shopping, eBay poster finding, YouTube video searching obsessed). Their songs were really simple and actually kind of boring, but goddamn if they weren’t the coolest, slickest looking band that ever lived, and the prototype for just about every all-female rock ‘n’ roll band ever. Licorice Pizza posted some live and rare goodies from the band today, so check it out.
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