CD Review: Brant Bjork and The Low Desert Punk Band – Black Power Flower

CD Review: Brant Bjork And The Low Desert Punk Band – Black Power Flower
Napalm Records
All Access Rating: B+

Brant Bjork And The Low Desert
Punk Band - Black Power Flower 2014

Coated in psychedelic fuzz and deep-fried to a crisp in a bubbling vat of distortion, Black Power Flower doesn't go too far off the desert-rock reservation formerly inhabited by Kyuss.

Once the drummer for the pioneering stoner-metal outfit, whose legend seems to grow by the day, Brant Bjork – now a permanent fixture in Vista Chino with his old Kyuss running mate, John Garcia – takes on multi-instrumentalist duties with a new project that bears his name, Brant Bjork And The Low Desert Punk Band.

Now out on Napalm Records, Black Power Flower is a gritty, psychotropic stew of heavy, intoxicating riffs, mind-altering effects, dirty blues and ominous undercurrents. Gathering momentum in the aftermath of a doom-laden intro that recalls early Black Sabbath, the heady opener "Controllers Destroyed" becomes engorged with voluminous guitars, rumbling bass and bashed drums. Thick and rugged, "We Don't Serve Their Kind" goes from a slow burn to a steady, thundering stampede, while "Stokely Up Now" sounds more clear headed and lively, its guitars coming into sharper focus with repeated listens.

The rest of Black Power Flower is a smoky, fetid room littered with seeds and stems, junk food wrappers, pizza boxes and filthy bongs, its denizens, such as "Buddha Time (Everything Fine)" and "Soldier of Love," buzzed and slipping into comfortable comas, where tracks seem indistinguishable from one another. That's not such a terrible thing. Every track here is easy to like, throbbing with underlying tension and brimming with menacing, strong grooves that only seem lazy to the uninitiated, solid riffs with a little bit of bite to them and rhythms that move with a muscular grace. And just to show he's not a one-trick pony, Bjork tries his hand at buttery '70s funk with "That's Fact Jack" and bumps and grinds through the smoldering, sexed-up blues of "Hustler's Blues," both attempts satisfyingly seductive, earthy and organic, if not terribly original. Black Power Flower plants a seed. Now watch Brant Bjork and The Low Desert Punk Band grow.
– Peter Lindblad

CD Review: John Garcia – John Garcia

CD Review: John Garcia – John Garcia
Napalm Records
All Access Rating: B+

John Garcia - John Garcia 2014

The name John Garcia still carries a lot of weight among glazed-over dwellers of the desert/stoner metal community. People there will never forget what he did with the archetypal Kyuss, having blazed rough trails through the most unforgiving of sonic terrain.

There are cults that would kill for the kind of devotion Garcia and the rest of Kyuss have inspired. And although Josh Homme has gone on to bigger and better things with Queens Of The Stone Age, his Kyuss co-founder has not so quietly built an impressive and remarkably consistent catalog of recordings with projects such as Slo-Burn, Unida, Hermano and, most recently, Vista Chino.

That arid, distant voice of his a dagger cutting straight through the sonic haze, vague menace and hypnotic pull of a sub-genre he helped establish, Garcia goes the lone-wolf route on this his first solo album, out on Napalm Records. Leaner and more clean-shaven than other works his name's been attached to, although some of the fuzz remains, John Garcia is a record with a strong pulse and an undeniable affinity for the brawny riffs and catchy hooks of '70s classic rock, as "5000 Miles" sounds like ZZ Top trying to swim its way out of quicksand and the steely, acoustically sketched closer "Her Bullets Energy" reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's brushed folk supplications, with a little Spanish guitar thrown in for good measure.

And while "Argleben," heavy and trance-inducing, is deep-fried in distortion and stuck in great, thick groove ruts – the album is full of them – "My Mind" rides with Steppenwolf into dark skies rumbling with heavy-metal thunder, all the while brandishing guitars wrapped in barbed-wire. Every song on John Garcia is sinister and seductive, sounding mean as hell on the agitated, pounding post-punk engagement "All These Walls." He swims with especially strong currents in the rugged, mid-tempo, swinging hammer "Rolling Stoned," the deliriously infectious "Saddleback" and the spellbinding, serpentine "Flower," as a sense of unease pervades the throbbing "His Bullets Energy," its slashing guitars and unpredictable bass counter melody stalking its prey with murderous intentions and practically begging for a restraining order.

Notwithstanding the sluggish blues of "Confusion" and its equally sedentary "The Blvd," John Garcia crackles with energy and brands its deep, dynamic grooves into your brain. Guests like Danko Jones, Nick Oliveri and Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger – his intricate work can be found on "Her Bullets Energy" – go with Garcia on this vision quest and help him discover his true nature.
– Peter Lindblad

Short cuts: Corrosion of Conformity, Eyehategod, Wo Fat reviewed

CD Review: Wo Fat – The Conjuring

Small Stone

All Access Rating: A-

Wo Fat - The Conjuring 2014

If The Sword, Kyuss and the Meat Puppets all gathered together at some lonely desert crossroads to ingest peyote and summon the spirit of Robert Johnson, the resulting jam session might sound a little something like Wo Fat's The Conjuring. A crusty morass of monstrously heavy, churning riffage and fuzzy, swampy grooves lost in a howling storm of constantly mutating psychedelia, the fifth album from these Dallas, Texas, voodoo priests finds the band expanding and lengthening their stoner-metal instrumental forays into the deep backwoods of the soul on such tales of the strange and weird as the propulsive "Read the Omens," the hazy, menacing "Pale Rider from the Ice" and the dark, 17-minute opus "Dreamwalker."https://www.facebook.com/smallstonerecords

CD Review: Eyehategod – Eyehategod

Housecore Records

All Access Rating: A-

Eyehategod - S/T 2014

"Sometimes I'm stuck together/sometimes I'm so unglued," rages Eyehategod vocalist Mike IX Williams in "Parish Motel Sickness," a trudging, Sabbath-like dirge off the legendary NOLA meat grinders' latest epistle of vitriolic sludge metal. And sometimes life gets almost unbearably tough, as it has for the infamous Eyehategod in recent years – culminating with the death of drummer Joey LaCaze. Eyehategod ends its long silence with this visceral, tortured self-titled release, surging so forcefully ahead with brutal, writhing riffs and bulldozing rhythms driving "Quitter's Offensive" and "Trying to Crack the Hard Dollar" and blasting through the hardcore intensity of "Agitation! Propaganda!" Though monolithic and lugubrious, Eyehategod never settles into predictable tempos, and when it downshifts or speeds up, the path they're on, however rocky and twisting it is, takes them exactly where they want to go. Every note is played with careful deliberation and delivered with a sledgehammer. http://www.thehousecorerecords.com/

CD Review: Corrosion of Conformity – IX

Candlelight Records

All Access Rating: B+

Corrosion of Conformity - IX 2014

Simply titled IX, Corrosion of Conformity's newest offering from Candlelight Records is a brilliant hot mess of heavy electric blues, doom-loaded sludge metal and trashy hardcore. Raw and utterly organic, the bludgeoning IX takes its cues from Blue Cheer, Black Flag, Black Sabbath and rebellious, anthemic Southern rock, throwing it all in a blender and pouring out this tasty gravy over a bed of grits and razor blades. With the power trio of bassist/vocalist Mike Dean, drummer/vocalist Reed Mullin and guitarist Woody Weatherman stretching out jams a little further than before, IX on rare occasions lacks focus, but they still know how to manufacture brawny, meaty riffs. Between the stomping blues of "Elphyn," the blustery punk of "Denmark Vesey," the catastrophic breakdowns and chugging insistence of "The Nectar" and the renegade tempos of "On Your Way," IX flies Corrosion of Conformity's freak flag with pride. http://candlelightrecordsusa.com/site/

CD Review: Vista Chino – Peace

Vista Chino – Peace

Napalm Records

All Access Review: A-

Vista Chino - Peace 2013

The names have been changed to protect … well, the brand. After stoner-metal giants Kyuss called it a day in 1995, the group’s following grew exponentially and calls for a reunion grew louder and louder as the years passed.

In 2011, John Garcia, Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri toured as Kyuss Lives! Conspicuous by his absence, Josh Homme, having long ago moved on to Queens of the Stone Age, wanted no part of the much-anticipated reunion. More than that, however, he didn’t want anybody else using the Kyuss name either, and he, along with another former member, Scott Reeder, set in motion legal action to stop them from using it. Evidently, Homme was going out of his way to make damn sure this version didn’t tarnish the Kyuss legacy with some half-baked cash-grabbing nonsense that failed to include him.

Being the hardy desert folk they are, Garcia and Bjork, who played with Sabbath-influenced, muscle-car fanatics Fu Manchu for many years, have decided to carry on under a new name. Say hello to Vista Chino. Tuning down their guitars to deeply resonant levels, while still allowing shape-shifting melodies to drift in and out of a fuzz-toned haze, Vista Chino concocts a murky and strangely intoxicating brew on the musical sweat lodge that is the surging Peace, with the grumbling malevolence and guitar witchcraft of “Dragona Dragona” casting a particularly irresistible doom-laden spell.

Crispy around the edges, Peace is not the work of burnouts living off their past reputations, even if the record’s dank atmosphere is as smoky and close as any seedy drug house. A swirling maelstrom of burrowing, evil guitars, pummeling drums and splashing cymbals, rumbling rhythms and Garcia’s strong, illuminating vocals cutting through the sonic fog, Peace is thick, heady stuff, indeed, but it’s not exactly pretty.

Insidiously infectious and utterly compelling, “Adara” and “As You Wish” ride on hypnotic, writhing movements and grimy riffs into dark, scary places, while the dirty bomb of distortion known as “Planets 1 &2” drives Hawkwind’s space-rock aesthetic down to bad interplanetary neighborhoods and slides into a slow-motion slipstream that drowns all who follow it there in sludge and bong resin. There’s a bluesy feel to Peace that is inescapable, but it’s a dangerous, rough-and-tumble mutation of Cream’s heavy psychedelic visions, as the jazzy “Dark and Lovely” swings and tunnels ever deeper into a disordered mind, its grooves becoming more engorged as every second passes.

It all leads up to the tempest-tossed, mythic 13:25 closer “Acidize … the Gambling Moose,” a gloomy, gathering blues-rock storm whose immense winds blow trash and paper all over a lonely highway, some of it getting stuck in a dead tree’s spindly branches. Portending doom, it’s like a soundtrack for a Day of the Dead march in Mexico, as Vista Chino slows to a seductive crawl and a guitar solo pierces the gloaming of a truly evil-sounding love song. Vista Chino’s fevered imagination has finally gotten the best of them in the most surprising and interesting ways. They let songs and arrangements unfold organically, whereas Queens of the Stone Age seems hell-bent on making incongruous ideas fit, even though they never will. Vista Chino has its revenge. http://www.napalmrecords.com/

– Peter Lindblad