Heavy Metal Ketchup # 8: Harvey Milk, Gigan, Grand Magus, more

Submitted for your approval: three slow bands, two fast bands and one band that can't make up its damn mind. At least two albums below are better than the one that the notoriously unreliable site metacritic.com ranks among the best-reviewed albums of 2008. And at least two have song titles that pay tribute to soul music, even if they don't necessarily get their groove on.

Gentlemans Pistols, Gentlemans Pistols (Candlelight USA): From Leeds (generally known more for its Mekons than its metal), one of the most playable loud rock albums I've heard in the past year or two -- never draggy and loaded with stick-to-the-gills riffs and choruses. The band's MySpace page lists their influences as simply "1968-1973."  And sure enough, the singer frequently reminds me of MC5's Rob Tyner (especially in "Just a Fraction"), though overall I hear at least as much late '70s punk and early '80s NWOBHM as early '70s sludge. My favorite cut, speedy and catchy and over-the-top, is probably "Vivid Wonder." "Mistress Mistrust" sounds like if the Chili Peppers were actually any good (i.e., if they had an actual singer, for starters.) Biggest problem: even the band's label can't seem to decide whether the pistol-packing gentlemen are plural, or if they deserve an apostrophe.

Gigan, The Order of the False Eye (Napam): A big deal with the metal mags, apparently due to all the needlessly jittery time-change clatter underneath these Floridians' typically tuneless monster puke. Me, I have no use for the thing, though the quasi-conclusion "Space Coffin Hallucinations" extends its clank into a droning "Hidden Track" that at times seems nearly bearable.

The Girls, Yes No Yes No Yes No (Dirtnap): Not to be confused with excellent but little-known Boston post-punk weirdos of the same name, these five kids from Seattle employ chintzy 1979-vintage color schemes and typefaces that make you hope for the Buzzcocks or Vibrators (or the Cars or Voidods, who some critic at O.C. Weekly claimed they crossed) (or at least late great fellow Dirtnappers the Exploding Hearts). But neither their melodies nor energy can back the pure-maniac packaging up.

Grand Magus, Iron Will (Candlelight USA): Got bored with the indistinguishable slowness of these non-nonsense power-doom Swedes much sooner than I expected to. In fact, had I devoted more time to this album, I might well have decided the songs weren't indistinguishable after all. But I doubt I would have decided they weren't slow.

Graveyard, Graveyard (Tee Pee): More old-school doom-metal from Sweden, but this time of a notably more retro-psych bent, and proficient at muscular stomps that plop deep Danzig vocals over overcast post-Hendrix/Cream blooze sludge -- done best in the almost accurately titled "Blue Soul."

Harvey Milk, Life ... The Best Game in Town (Hydra Head): With a metacritic.com rating of 85 tying them for 11th place among all 2008 releases, this long-lived Athens, GA, dirge unit secured their hepster cred this year with sodden plods not half as deserving of repeat play as their early '90s singles compiled a half-decade ago by Relapse. Which isn't to say the Budgie-style riffage is not still intact and hefty; in fact, guitars in trudges like "Motown" and "Goodbye Blues" go a long way toward burning down the barn, and the latter works in old Looney Toon toons to boot. Plus, opener "Death Goes to the Winner" directly references and/or samples both the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" and Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man." In fact, if it wasn't for the singer's tedious Melvins schtick, that metacritic score might not be entirely ridiculous. 

Comments

[Brett]

Speaking of M.E.T.A.L., what happened to (most of) the Relapse catalog? I can't live another day without Zombi.