EARTH
Hex Southern Lord ________________________________________________________
It appears that Seattle drone
merchants Earth have tired, after 4 very long albums, of simply holding
the same note for ten minutes at a time. Sure, there’s plenty of exactly
that on “Hex”, but most of the hypno-metal gags mutate into actual
rock songs, some even with vocals, and everything. They’re insane, of
course, creepy backwoods country-fied death blooze stuff, but songs
nonetheless. In fact, the oar-in-the-muck instrumental “An Inquest
Concerning Teeth” is a dead-ringer for a zombified Temple of the Dog
(well, they are from Seattle), and the swamp-psyche death-train of
“Raiford” could be a particularly nasty-assed Santeria brain-boiler. Toss
in the desert-storm of “Land of Some Other Order” and the just-before-dawn
creepy crawl of “Tethered to the Polestar”, and you’ve got the most
accessible and nervous system-friendly Earth album so far. And since I
thought these guys only made music so that people have something to listen
to when they go quietly mad, I am quite pleasantly surprised by the whole
thing. If you can get your head around the image of Nick Cave in a
Melvins
t-shirt, staring at his feet while he strums a Richter-baiting skull-fuck
riff, then you just might dig this one.
It appears that Seattle drone
merchants Earth have tired, after 4 very long albums, of simply holding
the same note for ten minutes at a time. Sure, there’s plenty of exactly
that on “Hex”, but most of the hypno-metal gags mutate into actual
rock songs, some even with vocals, and everything. They’re insane, of
course, creepy backwoods country-fied death blooze stuff, but songs
nonetheless. In fact, the oar-in-the-muck instrumental “An Inquest
Concerning Teeth” is a dead-ringer for a zombified Temple of the Dog
(well, they are from Seattle), and the swamp-psyche death-train of
“Raiford” could be a particularly nasty-assed Santeria brain-boiler. Toss
in the desert-storm of “Land of Some Other Order” and the just-before-dawn
creepy crawl of “Tethered to the Polestar”, and you’ve got the most
accessible and nervous system-friendly Earth album so far. And since I
thought these guys only made music so that people have something to listen
to when they go quietly mad, I am quite pleasantly surprised by the whole
thing. If you can get your head around the image of Nick Cave in a
Melvins
t-shirt, staring at his feet while he strums a Richter-baiting skull-fuck
riff, then you just might dig this one.