Chowder - Passion Rift (2012)

Chowder is not Josh Hart's first waltz in the doom ballroom, having put in many years in acts like Earthride, Revelation and Unorthodox; but it might just prove his most interesting and distinct when viewed against the other projects he's worked with. Formed far back in the 90s, and admittedly rather slow and sparse in its recorded output, the trio (also featuring drummer Chad Rush and bassist/cellist Doug Williams) became more active in the past 5-6 years, releasing first a demo and EP, and later recording the material for this album in the year 2008. So, already Passion Rift might seem a few years out of place, but frankly it takes such a fresh perspective on its composition that it's nonetheless timeless and compelling, because there's really little else I can think of that sounds quite like it...

Take an instrumental/stoner rock act like Karma to Burn and then amplify its inherent range of dynamics, then add in spaced-out elements like a Mellotron, multiple synthesizer waves and more eclectic and exotic instruments like a theremin, Taurus pedal, and cello. This is more or less the broth from which the sound is formed, and then splayed out in varied and fascinating riffs that keep a listener's attention regardless of the fact that there are no lyrics or vocals involved (apart from an occasional sample, like the Futurama bit used in "Insidious"). Individual tracks range from brief, extraterrestrial visions ("Mysterioid") to massive flights of atmosphere and primal ambiance (the 18 minute "Passion Rift"), and yet the album's sheer dramatic tension seems quite fluid and intact despite its jarring and oft disparate ambitions. Best of all, the riffs on this thing are fucking beastly, like the Primus meets Fu Manchu explosion "SaltCreep" or the darkened, twisting sludge bruiser "Custody" which closes out the album. Hell, some of the raw, explosive context of the writing even reminded me of wild Japanese schizo/funk/rock soundtracks to cartoons like Sakigake! Cromartie High or FLCL. Maybe a little Flower Travelin' Band alongside the Sabbath and Hawkwind.

The guitar tone and loosely 'jam' aesthetics remain consistent through the entirety, but otherwise they play with a lot of rhythms and tempos that are as often punishing as they are psychedelic, pissed off as they are progressive. I found myself wondering throughout Passion Rift if I would have preferred a vocal presence, and am left relatively undecided. I can't think they would hurt any, especially a unique, aggressive voice, but at the same time their absence doesn't really hinder the music all that much, due to its reflexive and relatively free form nature. Chowder feels like a cockfight between the whimsical and darkly-mannered, and it's served well by a bright, bold production that doesn't sacrifice its jamming and driving ethics for excess, overdubbed plasticity. I can't say that every single riff here sticks, and occasionally the transitions will seem a little sporadic for their own good, but as someone who has suffered so much samey stoner/desert rock, sludge and doom, this trio has so much going for it that they're bound to impress anyone seeking a more transcendental variety betwixt these niches. Passion Rift is fun, frivolous, and ferocious, both in looks and sound, and I hope we'll experience more of this project in the near future.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.facebook.com/chowderdoom

Sylvan Realm - The Lodge of Transcendence (2011)

Recent years have seen a surge of US acts pursuing a diversified, broad spectrum of melodic black and death metal which in the 90s we would generally have associated foremost out of Europe. Joining groups like Obsequiae, Cormorant and Shroud of Despondency in this pursuit, we now have Sylvan Realm, a former one man show (as Reverie) which has transformed into a full trio, with an auspicious debut that promises emotional highs and lows, ample riffing variation and the requisite contrasts of folksy acoustic guitar elements, rasped vocals and writhing, persistent melodies that are hit or miss throughout over 40 minutes and five tracks of dynamic length.

I was a little back and forth with this album, loving some sequences and indifferent to others, but in general The Lodge of Transcendence is a competent, confident piece with much to recommend, even if there are a few rougher corners to work around. The first track, the trio's namesake "Sylvan Realm" comes out firing with an intense flux of swaggering guitars, double bass bombast, but then it bursts into this amazingly atmospheric break over which Sylvan shouts with an almost hardcore-sounding angst that really felt distinct and unusual. Honest, upon hearing this I had rather high hopes for a lot more of this, but while the cleaner vocals are indeed present elsewhere on the record, they're not paired up with such a memorable backdrop, and I just don't find the usual mix of grunts and snarls to be all that distinguished or interesting, nor a vast swath of the riffing, which seems to dwell upon the usual Scandinavian patterns so many Swedish and Finnish hybrids once manifest.

That said, they manage to evince some snappy dynamics here that lead into these straight metal grooves that rock straight out and resurrect the listener's fleeting attention, and they rarely dwell on any one riffing pattern for so long that its blades fully dull. This is especially important as there are some rather fattened tracks here at 8-10 minutes which would be murdered by a blander, more repetitive composition. One of these, "Twilight Kingdom" is an extensive acoustic over which you'll get some, meandering poetry in a deep clean tone, and I admit it lost me over a few minutes, but tunes like the titular "Lodge...", with its mournful and memorable opening passage, and "Temple of Not", which balances periods of psychedelic calm and accelerated tremolo black metal with a Viking feel, were well enough written to hold the attention throughout. Often the extensive duration of the songs, and the constantly swaying melodies will recall a more aggressive shadow of the older, enjoyable Opeth records (minus the difference in vocals).

I also dug the poetic, introspective, and cosmic bent to the lyrics here which is so often a boon for this sort of ambitious balance of extremes. Sure, there are quite a few cliches in there about walking through the woods, falling leaves, etc, but what would you expect? The Lodge of Transcendence is wide music suited to wide spaces, often shouting down the mountain towards you or bubbling up from the nearest brook. There's this naturalistic feel to the whole package which I feel fans of the rustic North American acts Agalloch, Woods of Ypres and Wolves of the Throne Room would enjoy, but at the same time there's nothing as minimalistic here as you might here in a number of the 'Cascadian' black metal groups. Definitely a decent debut, I didn't love the thing but it was able to loop my interest back around at several points where I thought it had run off course.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

http://www.myspace.com/thetruereverie

Wrathchild America - 3-D (1991)

You didn't have to look far to realize that something has changed within the Wrathchild America camp. Just one glance at the cover image and you'll find something even more perplexing than the debut, which was a fucking guy stuck in a maze! Okay, perhaps its not 'perplexing', but 3-D certainly looks surreal, and even the logo had changed from something expected to something more uniform, modern, and...chic? Thankfully for us all, the actual musical content has a lot going to it, so it's hardly the product of some pretentious ejaculation. In fact, Wrathchild America were one of the few bands who seemed as if they'd survive the wake of the great thrash metal purge of 1991-92...and they did. But not as Wrathchild America.

3-D shows some a pretty sound progression from the material of Climbin' the Walls, which was largely just a flirtation with Metallica and Megadeth worship that failed to even take the coat of those bands' shadows in the 80s. Here, we've got a band trying something new without sucking at it. The choruses are catchy, the songs more uniquely structured, and you can hear that the band are bringing in the outside influences of jazz, and perhaps a tiny element of funk, without soiling themselves over it. The thrash & hard rock mix of Brad Divens' vocals is a more subdued hue, but a strong improvement over the debut, and where the rest of the band add in some contributions, it sounds quite good. As for the composition itself, just about every song has a few riffs worth going back to, and as a whole it flows rather nicely. You'll grow to trust the album after only a few songs, and it never betrays you, provided you've got a slightly more open mind than normal when approaching a thrash record.

The songs. Many of them are great, not the least of which include the opener "3-D Man", an oddly structured, strutting rally against the narrow minded, and then "Spy", which was the album's 'hit single' if every there were one. This is a pretty impressive, accessible tune with a dainty walking bassline that is eventually laid on thicker with the guitar chords, and I love the private eye philosophy in the lyrics, even if one might argue that this is not really entirely 'metal'. Sure, it's fun, the sort of campy fun that I often don't appreciate on an album like this, but it's very well written, if not the best song here. "Gentleman Death", "Forever Alone" and the other 'silly' piece here "Surrounded by Idiots" are all just as riffy, with solid melodic chords being used against catchy, simple thrash riffs that felt fresh and crisp in their day, as they still do. I also enjoy the groove and swagger of "Another Nameless Face" and "Desert Grins", and the eerie ballad verses of "Draintime".

If you've got the CD, there's another bonus silly song, and it's not an original. No worries though, this isn't Pink Floyd, but a blues rock cover of "I Ain't Drunk, I'm Just Drinkin'" by Albert Collins. Of course, the original is funny, and they don't really fuck around with it, but it does sort of tie together the band's sense of security around incorporating outside elements into their music, and unlike so many faltering thrash bands trying to cast their last chips into the game, Wrathchild America didn't quite fail at it. Okay, well they changed their name to Souls at Zero and put out two more albums of middling quality, so I guess they felt they must have, but at least drummer Shannon Larkin got to perform with Glenn Tipton and even a gig with Black Sabbath. Souls at Zero does feel like a natural continuation of the band's experimentation here, but it's nothing to write home about, so while it's not perfect, I'll have to nominate 3-D as remaining the best work of these musicians, and something to check out if you're interested in what bands were trying right as the bubble burst on this beloved genre.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (I can make you disappear)

Wrathchild America - Climbin' the Walls (1989)

Not a hell of a lot of metal bands got to sign with huge labels like Atlantic in the 80s, and surely it was a testament (pun intended) to the trajectory of your career to count yourself among them. Or was it? Well, in the case of Maryland's Wrathchild America, who added the national suffix so they wouldn't dare be confused with a crappy UK band, it certainly seemed like they were going to be huge. Back in the close of that great decade, this was one of those bands that even your normal high school friends had heard about, you know, the cliquey types who liked Metallica, Ozzy, Megadeth and Anthrax but couldn't be bothered to ever delve further into the underground or even consider themselves 'metal heads' publicly for fear of losing job prospects or not getting laid by the good girls.

Yes, Wrathchild America had a lot going for them, but I'm not it had truly manifest in the debut Climbin' the Walls, with its iconic hesher in a maze cover artwork. Though the band would later develop into a more interesting hybrid of progressive thrash with a few jazz aesthetics, this is more like a mixture of Metallica's 1984-86 period with some traditional British heavy metal, not terribly unlike another hopeful band, Powermad. You've got some decent enough songs here like "Climbin' the Walls" itself which has a few decent, ripping guitar riffs and stupid but fun lyrics; the driving, melodic "Day of the Thunder"; the goofy but endearing vampire epic "London After Midnight"; or "Silent Darkness (Smothered Life)", a hymn to being buried alive with a nice melodic guitar line in the chorus. But then you've got garbage like the bluesy hard rock & roll of "No Deposit, No Return" which might have fit better with their UK counterpart, or "Candy from a Madman", which is hard not to laugh at despite an acceptable riff or two.

Then there's the cover of Pink Floyd's "Time", which you might not expect on an album like this, and well, it's "Time". While a band like Voivod would manage to convert an experience like "Astronomy Domine" into something relevant and even poignant on the mesmeric Nothingface this very same year, it just doesn't seem that it belongs with Wrathchild America. Granted, it's not the worst cover out there, but it's not doing Climbin' the Walls any favors. Otherwise, this is just not all that great of an effort. Catchy enough perhaps to get a few people to notice, with decent guitars and drumming. The production was sufficient enough to match label mates like the comparable Savatage, but in the end, this album would be greatly outclassed by its follow up, and I very rarely find any compulsion to go back and listen aside from maybe two songs.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]