What started out five years ago as a forum for two music lovers to share their obsession with obscure/little-heard rock music, has grown and evolved into a Record Label, a top-rated Radio Show, and one of the world's premiere sites for discovering new and lost classic music: The Ripple Effect. To celebrate 5 years of collective Ripple Madness, Todd Severin (Racer X) and John Rancik (Pope JTE) are unleashing a massive download compilation album, featuring some of the best of the new wave of modern heavy rock bands. And it's all entirely free!
Best of all, the compilation features many brand new, previously unheard, unreleased tracks by some of the bands leading this charge of the Heavy. In addition, you'll find tracks from several albums buzzing across the websites and music blogs, and several new and waiting-to-be discovered bands.
To be released on July 22, through bandcamp, The Ripple Effect unveils, The Ripple Effect presents: Volume 1- Head Music. In it's depths you'll find such notable bands as Stubb, Ape Machine, Devil to Pay, Miss Lava, Voodoo Johnson, Borracho, and more. 23 tracks in all. All free. Some of the absolute best heavy rock the world has to offer.
And continue to check out The Ripple Effect each day for the latest music discoveries, and the Ripple Music record label for the latest releases from bands like Stone Axe, Mos Generator, Grifter, Trucker Diablo, Poobah, Fen, JPT Scare Band and more.
Here's the track listing:
Devil to Pay "High Horse" - from the album Heavily Ever After
White Light Cemetary "The Wieser" - previously unreleased
Torso "One" - from the EP Inside
Cody Foster Army "Built Up Knocked Down" - previously unreleased
Stubb "Under a Spell" - previously unreleased
Space Probe Taurus "Ridin' the Mud" - previously unreleased
Concrete Sun "Silver Tear" - previously unreleased
Hong Faux "Bad City Blues" - from The Crown that Wears the Head
Hosoi Bros "Wine Witch" - from 7" single Wine Witch/Yellow Fever
Ape Machine "Everybody Bleeds" - previously unreleased
Deadweight "Cosmic Lunch" - previously unreleased
SuperGiant "Rosey Posey" - from Pistol Star
Voodoo Johnson "Swear it to the Sun" from ep Black Powder Mother Loader
Banda de la Muerte "Espiritu en Paz" -from Pulso de una Mente Maldita
Venomin James "Seven Years" - previously unreleased from upcoming album Unholy Mountain
Miss Lava "Ride" - from upcoming album Red Supergiant
Steak "Machine" - from ep Disastronaut
The Heavy Company "Groove a Mile Wide" previously unreleased from upcoming album Midwest Electric
Dark Earth "Dark Earth" - previously unreleased
The Enders "Self Deluded" - New Previously unreleased from upcoming album "The Ruins of Ambition."
Borracho "All in Play" - Live version, previously unreleased. Album version from Splitting Sky
Time to catch up with some discs that have been sitting way too long in the Ripple office. This happens sometimes, damn it. Some discs are just so good they take forever to write up. I don't want them out of my car. I want to listen, listen, listen. Then, next thing you know, a whole decade has passed and I still haven't written it up. Time to set that right.
Lonely Kamel - Blues for the Dead
Hailing from Oslo Norway Lonely Kamel is a band that does the hard edged, classic rock and blues sound from the early 70's right. Massively deep, solid grooves, catchy hooks and instantly catchy melodies. Released in 2010, (they have a new album out right now) Blues for the Dead mixes a spice cabinet full of Zeppelin, Hendrix, and Sabbath into some mighty fine retro-groove rock.
"A Tale of a Madman" is as heavy and frightening you'd hope. "Green Eyed Woman" is a full on, Hendrix corker. "Wasted Time" (one of my favorite cuts) rumbles and rolls upon the spine of some freaky bass work before exploding in an orgy of killer guitar and riffs. "Stick with Your Plan" lays down some thunderous doom, while "Lady Mushroom" heads down the psychedelic Hendrix highway that you'd expect by the title. And what a fucking chorus!
I only got this album last year, so it couldn't make my Top 10 list for 2011, but damn, if I'd heard this in 2010, it woulda been there. Seriously killer stuff all the way through.
Kamchatka - Bury Your Roots
I'm not unbiased. I'm not a dispassionate, removed critic. I love music and love writing about the music I love. And I love Kamchatka.
Their last album III jumped into my Top 10 list the year it was released, and Bury Your Roots followed like a laser shot, aiming right into my Top 10 for 2011.
Kamchatka play hyped up, retro-blues, fuzzed out 70's rock like so many bands these days, but everything they do is just one step beyond. Riffs are just a tad bigger, melodies catchier, grooves . . .well . . groovier. And Kamchatka aren't afraid to explore away from the standard blues riff and delve into the world of progressive rock. And they bring those elements in seamlessly.
Once more, on their fourth album Bury Your Roots, we find Sweden's Kamchatka pounding out heavier melodic blues-laced rock. But if anything, Bury Your Roots finds the boys plowing even more progressive highways than they did on III. The guitar work throughout can only be described as ambitious, arrangements are more complex without being cluttered, vocals are textured and clean. Most importantly, Bury Your Roots is rooted in authenticity and passion. Highlights are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to say, Bury Your Roots is an amazing album for retro-rock fans from start to finish.
Ape Machine - War to Head
Did I say I'm not dispassionate? I meant it, and Ape Machine are another band I just can't be neutral about. When I first heard that War to Head was coming (and I'd been privy to some very early mixes months ago) I just went ahead and set aside a spot in my Top 10 for 2011 for the boys. They were gonna have to really screw up to get knocked out.
Suffice it to say, they didn't screw up. War to Head is everything that I love about Ape Machine. Hooks the size of wrecking balls smashing down upon my helpless skull in a furious retro-70's assault. Great vocals, emotive and clean, and definitely "of the day" to be blowing out retro-blues, and an adventurous soul.
On War to Head, Ape Machine take a little more time than they did on their debut, This House Has Been Condemned. They allow a little more air to breathe into the mix, explore a tad more progressive pathways while never taking their foot off the Zeppelin-blues gas pedal. The guitar work is absolutely sizzling, and I love the growing progressive/psychedelic influences. Just take one listen to the mid-tempo terror of "The Sun." One listen. Just one. Then I dare you not to hit the play button again, and again. Searing guitar hooks, monstrous riffs, changing arrangements, smoky psychedelia. Amazing stuff.
Check War to Head without second thoughts!
Suede Brothers - The Night
Damn me! Damn me! Damn me!
This is an open letter to guitarist/vocalist Dylan Francis, bassist Kevin Naughton and drummer Mike Varga. Hate me. Kick me. Say bad things about my body odor. I deserve it. All of it. I'll plead insanity. I'll plead a parasitic infection. I'll plead abduction by aliens that violated me in ways that I've yet to find the words to describe.
How else can I explain letting this disc sit for so long on my Ripple desk? I don't even know how long it's been there. A year? A century? The Night came out in 2010, so hopefully it hasn't been a full two years. But it might've been. And for that, I'm truly sorry. Let's make amends.
Akron trio, Suede Brothers, third release, The Night, is exactly the type of album that the Ripple Effect was created for. A killer release by a hard-working, authentic, hard-driving rock n roll band, that for some reason the buzz hasn't been building fast enough. I placed this review in this column with Lonely Kamel, Kamchatka, and Ape Machine for a reason. If these bands appeal to your inner musical mojo, then you gotta check out Suede Brothers. These guys kill!
On The Night, the riffs are a bit heavier, the music less progressive, the gun barrel aimed a bit more directly at your heart than the other bands, but it's still one killer big riff, retro-70's blast. Dylan's voice runs towards the Geddy Lee end of the singing range which works perfectly for these songs. His guitar playing is never flashy, but solid and Kevin and Mike must hate everything about you to pound you in the face so hard with their rhythm assault. And it all works. Perfectly.
The guys call themself, Rust Belt rock and roll. And I won't argue. They're hard like steel. The punish like a foundry. Their rust is poisonous and dangerous. Straight ahead, no bullshit rock n roll. And it's all done right. Check it.
“Mister Peabody, the controls have been set on the Way-back machine.”
“Excellent, Sherman. What year have you set the date for?”
“1971, sir. That’s when rock and roll really exploded into something heavy. Proto-metal came about with bands like Sabbath, Toad, Bang, Alice Cooper, and Blues Creation.”
“Perfect, Sherman. Then make haste. Rush us back to the days of the dawning of the heavy!”
A button is pushed. The Way-back machine’s lights flash, sirens wail.
But something unexpected happens.
Rather than sending our intrepid rock adventurers back to 1971, the machine’s controls have been manipulated. In a massive time-meld of Einstein-ian proportions, dimensions fuse, time warps, decades overlap, and without warning, the year 1971 is brought forward to the present, falling in perfect synchronicity with 2011. 40 years flashes without missing a beat.
And the music they’re listening to is Ape Machine.
It isn’t often that an album will make my top 10 list for the year when I haven’t even reviewed it. But This House Has Been Condemned has. And for good reason. This album is a monster of retro-fueled, bell-bottomed, Zep-rock.
In truth, I blame Ape Machine for the massive delay in this review coming. If they hadn’t recorded an album of such depth and warmth, performed it with such musicianship, crafted it with such Gods-of-rock perfection and a hefty set of Jimmy Page-sized balls, I’d a written this review a long time go.
But they did, and it took me this long to wrap my head around this organic blitzkrieg of modern proto-metal. It took this long for each layer to unwrap within my skull, each riff to take root in my inner ear, each nuance to be fully digested.
Simply put, This House Has Been Condemned is one helluva album and Ape Machine is one helluva band.
Coming from Portland, this 5 piece takes all the right tones from that glorious year of early rock, infuse it with a modern sensibility, churn it up in an electric blender hooked up to an analogue tape machine, put it on frappe, and pour out one tasty, frothy concoction of legendary-inspired rock. Quite a few bands delve into these fertile fields, but only a few can pull it off with such ease. Most get caught up in posturing and watered down riffs stolen from dad's record collection, like The Answer. Not Ape Machine. These guys live it, they breathe it, they are it.
I haven’t been this caught up in an album since the reissue of Siena Root’s debut and that's a good launching point for thinking about these guys. Think of Ape Machine as a Siena Root without the deepness of the Purple influence, or a heavier, less-stoned Dead Man, or a just-as-heavy-but-less-progressive Kamchatka. If any of these bands ring your bell, then you gotta check Ape Machine out. Think of them as a rock and roll band with a finger on the pulse of the 70’s and their asses firmly in the present. Real heavy-psych for the iPhone generation. True guts and glory rock and roll.
“Under Your Skin,” kicks the affair off with a charging proto-metal riff of such epic proportions it must've been handed down by Sir Lord Baltimore from the top of the Mountain and handed directly to Lucifer's Friend. After a rocket-fire drum attack, the riff is propelled on the backbone of Brian True’s bass. Ian Watts and Jimi Miller explode in flourishes of incendiary electric guitar while Monte Fuller holds the anchor that keeps this song from floating off in a THC-induced haze. Then comes Caleb Heinze, who brings a Robert Plant swagger to the proceedings, in spirit and confidence, if not in the wail. Caleb has a voice that sounds like it came directly from the early ‘70’s from the tone to the phrasing. He's not trying to sing like the singers from the 70's, he is from the '70's, a beneficiary of our Way-back Machine mishap. As with the rest of the guys, there’s no pretending here, this is real.
As the song whips through its motoring riffs, bluesy inflections, and shooting leads, the band demonstrates one of their most remarkable traits. Rather than let the adrenaline let the song burnout in a frenzy of hypercharged playing, the guys know nuance. Suddenly, they let it all drop away. A “Whole Lotta Love”-styled feedback-and-vocal drenched interlude gives way to a jazzy passage of tom drums, percolating bass, and fusion-minded guitars. Not a lot of bands would give a song so ferocious as “Under Your Skin” this much space to breathe, but Ape Machine pull it off effortlessly, dropping right back into the main riff with a minute left to go. The whole thing just evolves so organically, so naturally, with such a feeling of live spontaneity and free form (yet structured) jamming. Everything you need to know about the band is right there.
I’ve seen the band called stoner rock, but I couldn’t disagree more. They don’t have any of the redundant pounding of most stoner bands or a big wall of fuzz and feedback. Ape Machine are the return of true festival-worthy, '70's arena rock.
“Monte Malady,” is even more of a beast, riding out on a riff pinched from any number of 1971’s proto-metal, blues-ified purveyors. Heinze and the the band as a whole really let their early Zep influence show here, and I mean that in a tone, bluesy, and ballsy sort of way, not a glammed up, dumbed-down “Coverdale/Whitesnake/Tawny Kitaen/Here I Go Again” kinda way. Check out out Heinze’s Plant-esque vocal phrasing during the song’s ending a Capella parts. Right before the mean guitars tear on in and rip the ending to pieces. These guys leave eat and breathe the spirit of early ‘70’s rock. There’s just nothing forced, trendy, or retro about them.
The rest of the album is just as strong, but I'll leave that for your exploration.
It’s always tempting to try and pick out a group’s influences, but it’s really not necessary here. This House Has Been Condemned bleeds droplets of ‘70’s blood which I’m sure hints towards the depth of these cats’ record collections. The end result is a monolith of heavy, blues-infested jam rock that feels timeless in its execution. An infinitely listenable album.
"Mr.Peabody, it looks like our experiment didn't turn out as we'd planned."
"That's right, Sherman. It's even better. Rock isn't dead. Even in this day and age of over-produced, iTune-downloaded, fill-the-masses with quantity not quality- musical pap, the spirit of those heady days of real rock and roll still lives."
