Welcome to the latest edition of “Freeloader” in which we review albums that you don’t have to feel like a douche for downloading for free. Today Satan Rosenbloom checks out Empty Crawlspace by Godstopper.

Go ahead and scoff at the suffocated production on Empty Crawlspace by Toronto band Godstopper. You’re losing out if you can’t get past the EP’s strangulated sonics. They’re partly the point, I’m guessing – those absent highs and lows smoosh everything into a compressed center, like we’re peering through a fisheye lens at the terrible things happening in the interior of this music.

And there’s a lot on the interior of this music. Godstopper’s Tumblr page shows reams of images of boarded up houses and masked or obscured figures. This music seeks to obscure, too. Dissonant sludge riffs cohabitate uncomfortably with Mike Simpson’s bell-clear vocal harmonies, spewing up sparks. Chiming major key guitars grind against gurgling bass lines. Nothing is quite right. Check out this video clip for “Clean House” for evidence.

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Here at MetalisNotGood, we take our stony music quite seriously.

Duh.

So clearly we’re rabid fans of the almighty Tee Pee Records, a label known for representing the best in stony bands from the US and abroad…..in this case, ‘abroad’ means Canada (why not?), and the band you oughtta check out is Toronto’s Quest For Fire. This is music for taking bong hits in the eye of a hurricane to — the songs shift from calm, haunting, almost-drony creepers to raucously boogie-stomping classic rock-ish ragers…..their self-titled album (due out on June 9th) definitely exhibits range in mood whilst retaining a specific ‘sound’ throughout.

Metal with a capital KILL, this is most definitely not — but fans of shweet/shwirly/shtony bands like Dead Meadow shan’t be disappointed.

You can currently catch these craysee Canucks on the road with The Pink Mountaintops…..tour dates on MySpace, but NYers be forewarned — they’ll be in Brooklyn this Friday night and Manny-Hatty on Saturday. Light em up!

Visit Quest For Fire on MySpace

-KW