HEATHEN SHAME Speed The Parting Guest (Twisted Village) cd 14.98
Everybody seems to be in some sort of doom / drone / dirge state lately, with even non-metalheads obsessing over all things Boris / Corrupted / SUNNO))), Earth. And, hey, we're not complaining, we love our slow motion, 16 rpm, cough syrup tarpit guitar riffage as much as the next person, but hell, you can do a whole lot more with a guitar than just turn it up, kick on the distortion and lean it against an amp. Sure it sounds great, and we could listen to that pulsing fuzzed out throb forever, but you really have to wrestle a guitar to get certain sounds out of it. You have to use both hands, fight it kicking and screaming, hold it down, flip it over, swing it over your head, hold on for your fucking life, and then maybe you can get a guitar to make some serious sound, noises that would send most guitar dronesters running for the hills. Thus we have Heathen Shame, an unlikely trio of two guitars, drums and trumpets. Who make an absolutely amazing din, equal parts head splitting noise and gorgeous skree. You know when you turn on a hose as high as it'll go, and you just let go and it whips wildly like a convulsing snakes spraying water everywhere and threatening to bash your head in with every swing and swoop? Heathen Shame are sort of the musical version of that. To be honest, we can't really even hear the trumpet. And as a matter of fact we can't really hear the drums either. It all bleeds into one swirling, swarming, slithering mass of guitarnoise, feedback, and all sorts of amp frying sonic shrapnel. Where stuff like SUNNO))) and Earth can be soothing and almost dreamy, this stuff is just scary. Totally intense and heavy as fuck and SCARY. But also strangely beautiful at the same time. It takes a very deft hand to render NOISE like this listenable, but Heathen Shame manage to make these three tracks fun to listen to. So much so that we have found ourselves listening to this record over and over, which to be honest is pretty rare for a record this noisy and brutal. Even managed after a few spins to convert a few folks who aren't typically into this sort of stuff. One thing thing that seems to be far to rare in experimental music, especially of the HEAVY variety, is the presence of women, sure there's a few, including Wata from Boris, but now you can add Kate from Heathen Same to that way too short list. She and HS's other guitarist, Twisted Village regular Wayne Rogers, have to be the most brutal double axe attack since Tipton and Downing, or Smith and Murray or even Hanneman and King! While this might be a bit too harsh and brutal for the drone dirge doom rock set, fans of freaked out Japanese psych like Keiji Haino and Fushitsusha, as well as folks into full on noise like Masonna or Merzbow, and especially fans of free rock skree like Total, Hototogisu, Ashtray Navigations, Birchville Cat Motel and the like might really dig this!
MPEG Stream: "Speed The Parting Guest"
MPEG Stream: "Iron Turtleneck"