MetalSucks

The general consensus around the palatial MetalSucks Mansion is that the Cave In reunion is fucking awesome. With the members now focused on the main project, it stands to reason that the side-projects that emerged in the band’s wake would lie dormant. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing (the Stove Bredsky disc was fucking awful), I’m pretty devastated to hear that Clouds will essentially call it a day after one last show at the end of the month.

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Andrew W.K., I Get Wet (Island, 2002)
Andrew W.K. – vocals
Jimmy Coup – Guitar
Erik Payne – Guitar
Frank Werner – Guitar
Gregg Roberts – Bass
Donald Tardy – Drums
Produced by Andrew W.K., John Fields, Scott Humphrey, TSD, Frank Vierti

It has been suggested by some of our commenters that I don’t belong here. Be it my distaste for deathgrind, my inability to appreciate the tr00 kvlt nature of Norwegian black metal, or the fact that I don’t give a flying fuck about Protest The Hero, I’ve always felt like an outsider around you people. Yet at no point did I feel so out of place than during the countdown of the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far. Sure, I participated. I submitted a list. I presumed many of my picks would never make the cut (Unsane’s Visqueen; Zozobra’s Harmonic Tremors), but also acknowledged less esoteric favorites of mine from the past nine-and-a-half-years (Boris Pink; Down’s III: Over The Under) that I thought had a shot. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer disappointment these past few weeks when none of my favorite albums made the goddamn list.

Rather than be mature about this sad state of affairs, I am now going to explain why everyone who voted in this poll is a fucking butthole for not selecting Andrew W.K.’s 2002 masterpiece, I Get Wet.
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One of the very first “sign this awesome local band” posts I wrote for this site way back on June 20th of 2007 was a show review of the crushingly heavy New York stoner/doom metal band Hull. They opened for Big Business that night and literally blew them away; several months later I saw them open up for Early Man at the same venue, and once again they stole the show. Hull’s live shows are just that powerful. So it is with extreme pleasure and excitement that The End Records has given me the opportunity to announce to the world that they have signed Hull to the label.

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My stars and garters, there sure are some super-spectacular noise rock bands plowing through their local scenes these days, a number of which remain criminally unsigned. Boston’s Disappearer is one such unseemly gang of morally bereft marauders, performing hard charging tunes that recall Unsane’s best moments cut with a moderate dose of stonerdom and even some Jesu-type metalgaze. The Stephen Brodsky produced demo (which you have no choice but to download for free!) will leave you dizzy with rage and hazy with bewilderment. The band is due for some shows soon in Allston Student Ghetto, MA and New York with such fine artists as Zozobra and prior “Why Haven’t You Heard Of…?” featured act Gods And Queens, the latter having recently released a sweet-as-hairpie debut on Robotic Empire.

-GS

[Gary Suarez can't believe it's not buttsecks. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No.]

Like my e-comrade Vince, I too am planning to check out Canadian stoner/doom/mammal metallurgists Bison B.C. at tomorrow night’s CMJ Metal Blade/Relapse/Lifeforce showcase at Knitting Factory (Also playing: Psyopus, Tombs, This Or The Apocalypse, Left To Remain). Now if, like me, the very thought of CMJ causes you to break out in painful hives and cold sweats, the next chance for New Yorkers to see Bison B.C. will be as part of the all-day long (4pm – 4am, apparently) Beasts Of The East festival (tickets here) on November 2nd at Club Europa in Brooklyn.

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In the “everyone’s doing it, so why won’t they?” department, Cave In bassist Caleb Scofield took a shot at his ex (or “on hiatus,” as it were) bandmates and ever-so-subtlely revealed his desire to reform the band. The interview, published on Exclaim.ca was actually about his current project Zozobra — whose thundering low-end stoner metal album Bird of Prey dropped a couple of months back (listen to “In Jetstreams” and The Blessing” from their prior album Harmonic Tremors). But the subject matter quickly turned to Cave In:

Where do you stand with Cave In? Any chance of a reunion, since everyone is doing it?
If Cave In were to play live again I’m not sure it would be a reunion. I think it would be more of a return from an extended hiatus. If it did happen I know for a fact we would have at least three new songs to play.

Obviously Zozobra is the heaviest of the post-Cave In bands. What do you think of the quality of their output, especially the new stuff?
I would normally take this opportunity to make a sarcastic joke about those guys but I won’t. I have to be honest and say that both Clouds and Steve [Brodsky] have just put out some of the worst shit I think I’ve heard in a long time. I wish those guys would stop fucking around with that nerdy fucking stoner party rock, 16-bit-sounding bullshit and just get Cave In back together.

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Are you hip to Zozobra yet? Well goddammit–be the fuck down; they’re AWEZSOME with an unnecessary Z in the middle…last year’s Harmonic Tremors was really excellent, and this year’s recent release Bird of Prey is quite good, although it did take me a few listens to get really into it (and I do still need like I may need a couple more to fully dig on what the album has to offer).

The project is the brainchild of Caleb Scofield, the former bass player of an on-hiatus-for-two-years-now space-rock/alt-hardcore band that Vince will forever be on the nuts of, as well as the underappreciated Old Man Gloom (a SSTGST alum — the very first of this year, if I’m not mistaken), but Zozobra really has its own sound, a sludgy, often monotone, pedal note-heavy groove thang that keeps its riffs somewhat simple but the tone decidedly bombastic.

If you’ve never heard Harmonic Tremors, by all means track down a copy; if you dig, then move on to the recent record. If you don’t dig, I guess I’ll still be your friend, but I will openly talk shit about you behind your back.

ZOZOBRA – “The Blessing”, from Harmonic Tremors (2007)

[Visit Zozobra on MySpace]

[Read a January 2007 Boston Phoenix article on Cave In side projects (Zozobra, Clouds, Octave Museum, etc.]

Catch Zozobra on select dates of the Champions of Sound 2008 tour this fall, with Pelican, Kayo Dot and Stove Bredsky (Steve Brodsky of Cave In) also on the bill. Tour dates after the jump.

-KW

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At least someone from Cave In is currently doing something with balls. And holy fuck does Zozobra have balls. Zozobra, the sludge/doom/skullcrushing brainchild of Caleb Scofield (also of Old Man Gloom) hasn’t waited long since last year’s Harmonic Tremors to follow up with a new album Bird of Prey, a punishing slab of metal full of fuzzed-out, low-end Isis-like riffs and an unmistakable sense of melody not heard since Cave In’s early work.* No surprise then that Bird of Prey was recorded and mixed by Isis drummer Aaron Harris, who also plays drums on the record.

MetalSucks can exclusively debut (at least for the 2 seconds it takes you steal, seed, and torrent it) the new track “In Jetstreams” from Bird of Prey. Enjoy this sucker.

Zozobra – “In Jetstreams” (mp3)

-VN

* I love Cave In’s later work too, for the record, if not moreso. But it’s different, ya hear?

Seminal Boston band Cave In have an intruiging history, one that took them from sweaty basement DYI hardcore shows to spaced-out progressive mettalirock to major-label bidding war and then all the way back, all within the span of a few short years. No heavy band from the Northeastern US seems to be as widely loved and respected yet criminally overlooked as Cave In.

Cave In started out playing a blistering, dense hybrid of hardcore and metal and morphed into progged-out, cerebral space-rock seemingly overnight. The band’s early sound filtered Metallica and Slayer riffs through aggro-calculus-core chugga-chugga akin to Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan, two bands whose histories are closely intertwined with Cave In. But what made the band so interesting was the way they grew over time to weave art-metal experimentation, melody and psychedelia into their otherwise brutal, mind-bending assault. The result was a truly progressive, artistic, brutal and most importantly one-of-a-kind sound that was unmatched during the band’s run and remains astonishing and relevant to this day.

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