King Giant - Dismal Hollow

 

It's good to be the king.

Dismal Hollow, the second album by northern Virginia's King Giant, was met with much fanfare from loyal followers when it was released last month on the band's own Graveyard Hill Records. And rightfully so. The eight tracks of southern-infused mountain metal are bound to be on plenty of top-10 lists this year, including mine.

I'm a native from the hills and hollows of rural Appalachia - and a huge southern-metal fan - so this record has a special place in my heart. Down on Dismal Hollow (yes, there are such places), King Giant take "the dark tales of their Appalachian folk forefathers to contemporary southern doom territory".

What we have here is NOT a failure to communicate. It's an extremely awesome collection.

Each song really does tell a story and there's plenty to be heard. The tales are about about war, whiskey and women; they're about love and loss. And they're about life, which can get as dark as a coal mine sometimes.

If you remember anything from American History class, then I shouldn't have to tell you about the subject of the first story, "Appomattox". Remember that thing called the Civil War? The impressive, dual hammering guitars of Todd Ingram (lead) and David Kowalski (rhythm) are potent and powerful alongside the thunderstruck grooves of Flloyd Walters III (bass) and Brooks & drums. Dave Hammerly (vocals) is a forceful presence as he weaves his tale of young soldiers on the battlefield.

I think the tracks, "A Steward's Prayer" and "6 O'Clock Swill", are a couple of the highlights on Dismal Hollow. The songs brings me back to a time when I first started listening to - and worshiping - Corrosion of Conformity. When I first started loving southern stoner metal. As usual with King Giant, the guitars and all-around sound on these two are especially amazing.

As I'm also a big instrumental fan, one of my favorites is "Road To Eleusis", the second from the last song. The juicy guitars start sorrowful and lonely, literally crying out and moaning, while faint chimes lend to the initial somber feeling. It's emotional - though void of any lyrics - and it definitely touches me. It also features what I believe is one of the most furious guitar solos on the whole album.

Man, this is great. Appalachia is rich with American history and I think King Giant have made more of it with Dismal Hollow. If you don't have it yet, then you're missing out on a titan of a metal record.

Pay some respect to your king. King Giant.

--Heddbuzz

http://www.kinggiant.com/
http://www.facebook.com/kinggiantband
http://www.kinggiant.bandcamp.com/

Horn's microreviews for you, the diligent consumer - Featurng Summon the Crows, King Giant, Trippy Wicked, Dark Angel, and Wormrot,

So here's the plan:

Recently, reading an article on another site we'll call... Grapefruits Impossible to Perceive With Your Eyes, I came to the worrying conclusion, stolen from said site, that perhaps music criticism is nearly unnecessary in the era of the internet. After all, if you want to judge an artist's music, you just find it on a site and listen for yourself-- you don't need a critic to spare you the financial risk of shelling out for a record you could end up hating.

Then it hit me: what you DO need from critics is enough of a nudge to know what to check out in the first place-- because that's the other side of the double-edged sword of the internet: while you can check out whatever you want, there's roughly a billion more things to check out.

You need less of a critic, and more of a Herald-- one who points you in the right direction and THEN lets you do your own judging.

So.

Here, in tiny/ sound byte/ on-the-go form is what boils down to psychedelic ad copy-- for you to quickly decide if even investigating an album will be worth your time.

Here are a series of shamanistic near-haiku: brief, transient as sand, ephemeral as tea leaves in the bottom of a pint. The visions of one specific seer, to guide your purchases and/or illegal downloads.

Who says the incredible, chaotic, undetermined, endless and eternal can't find niches in a consumerist, material-driven, commodity-based, filthy-lucre society?

So here, then, are your "blasts of leaden verse about leaden riffs, the nitroglycerin shrieks of advertising," in concentrated (i.e., psychically mainlinable) form.


Summon the Crows - One More For the Gallows

Very Southern Lord, very Disfear/ Kvertllak/ Nails, but with more snappy songwriting/ usually sounds like a Metallica cassette b-side, i.e., NWOBHM, but without clean singing/ "Trojan Whore" has a great riff at 2:15....

It's a detuned, slightly more modern version of every band Metallica covered on their cassette b-sides, The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited, and Garage, Inc.-- Budgie, Misfits, Diamond Head, Sweet Savage, and most obviously Discharge.

Brief songs, and the whole album's 25 minutes....

"Beasts of the Night" starts so much like "The More I See" you'd almost mistake it for that. But don't mistake the riffs baby. And not "doom" riffs, not Sabbath, but punk/ thrash riffs, downpicked over a groovy 4/4 beat....


King Giant - Southern Darkness and Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight's - Movin' On:

Southern rockish, Monster Magnet lite; although "TWatCHofK" get some originality credit: I've never actually heard the musical term for song sections said during the song before-- and during "Not What You Know" we get a scream of "Bridge!!" right before, that's right-- the bridge.

King Giant's "Mississippi River" sounds like Tom Waits on sludge and is worth getting in and of itself.


Dark Angel - Darkness Descends:

The live version included here of "Perish in Flames" is awesome-- at around 1:00 a second guitar suddenly enters on the left channel, and whether it was intentional or not, it sounds great, as does the longer version of the song. The whole album reminds you what true speed is-- there's a genuine sense of velocity, one that blast beats can't adequately convey; 27 years later, listening to Dark Angel still makes me think, "Fuck, they are fast." And unlike blastibeaty black metal, the vocals here try to keep up with the velocity of the drums, too fast here to even actually sing, they must just speak rudely.... it slows down temporarily, but only to accentuate the speed when it inevitably returns....



Wormrot - Dirge:

"Puckish," not threatening (unlike say Rotten Sound or Phobia), Wormrot are the most together garage band ever, and they fire at you strangely satisfying grindcore in standard tuning: there's a "clean," live, direct sound, one buzzsaw-like, and it makes Wormrot sound like Agnostic Front on the Joker's Smilex toxin... highlight is "Principle of Puppet Warfare," but if you like one, you'll like all. They're really just movements of a long single song. It's almost (more so than other grindcore) thrash metal (which makes sense, seeing as it came from hardcore/punk) gone completely off the rails, coming apart at the seams, like they've gotten going to fast to slow down and they've lost control. Except they never quite do. And despite the velocity and screaming, they sound like they're having fun.

More to come!

--Horn

Revenge of the Quick Ripple Bursts - Featuring King Giant, King Lizard, Foobar, and The Stone Foxes

King Giant – Southern Darkness

Truthfully, this album could never be more aptly titled.  Southern Darkness.  That’s what it says and that’s what you get.  Perhaps in a moment of inspiration, they could have called it Southern Heavy Darkness or The Night of the Heavy Southern Darkness or such, because that’s the only word missing.  Heavy.  Damn Heavy.  Massive Gibson Clutch-esque riffs, rolling monstrous bottom end, thick, sludgy southern groove.  And dark.   All dark.  “Solace” is the kind of opening track that most bands could only dream of writing.  “Lady Whiskey” adds a dollop of sensitive guitar to the fray before the heaviness comes in like a storm drifting in off the Gulf.  “Mississippi River” floats in a morass of acoustic, countrified blues without ever losing it’s power, while “Machine Gun Mantra” is everything it’s title promises.  A deadly assault of neck-breaking riffs and chugging intensity.  For fans of Clutch.  Not to be missed.

King Lizard – Viva La Decadence

Viva La Decadence indeed.  If any of you out there felt that sleaze-mongers like Buckcherry played things just a little too G-rated and safe, have I got a band for you.   London’s King Lizard pick up where the Crue left off, stuff their briefs with a ton of man-meat and attitude, bathe the whole shebang in a “Fuck You” and a “I’m Gonna Fuck You,” attitude and roar out of the gate like a poisonous snake on the loose.  As you can tell by the album cover, subtlety ain’t in these cats’ vocabulary.  The title track is a flaming rage to post-Crue hedonism.  Better than Vince Neil vocals screaming over wailing guitars, big post-80’s riffs and a vat of bathtub meth velocity.  “Video Lover,” has got to be more perverse than a busload of groupies could handle.  Sex runs through the grooves of this song like blood runs through their veins.  Others like “Rain on You,” “Hell Yeah,” and “Taste the Hate,” load up with more than enough obscenity-spitting attitude to make up for any lack of subtlety.  Hair sleaze ain’t dead.  It just has a new name.  Hyper-adrenalized, big hair rape.  Rubbers not included.

Foobar – Grand Theft Audio

I fell in love with this the first instant I heard it.  Brutally, full of snot, gun-metal rock and roll.  Five songs that approach like thunder and leave like a hurricane . . . devastation in their wake.   Coming from Sweden, this ain’t stoner, it ain’t blues.  It’s rock and roll with a purpose.  A deliberate intention to unsettle the foundations of your house, your mind, and your ears.  Huge riffs with a bottom end that could bounce your goldfish clear outta their tank.  Or make them want to jump out and rock (if you could visualize a goldfish headbanging that is).    Hard driving, gunpowder metal with a stoner glaze on top.  Give me a full-length album and do it quickly.  This is some seriously great stuff.


The Stone Foxes – Bears & Bulls

Not since the Swamp sludge blues of Black Bone Child first graced the Ripple office have I heard a band who so effectively got it.  I mean really got it.  Slacked strung acoustic guitar blues force fed some modern rock flair and dropped kicking and screaming right into the Mississippi Delta.  This is ass-kickin’, foot-stompin’ backyard party blues that never forgets to rock the fuck out.  Just listen as opening acoustic-jam “Stomp” transforms into the blistering rock assault of “Patience.”  Crap!  Break out some Blackened Voodoo beer, toss the crawdads into the pot and fry up some hush puppies because I’m deep in the south and lovin’ every minute there.  Musical skill to turn from blues to rock to metal to indy on a dime.  A soulful singer who can belt it out like a house on fire.  Groove, baby groove.

--Racer