Latest INTERVIEW

JOE HASSELVANDER BOLDLY GOES WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!

Salems Pot

Riding Easy Records

"Also, we have always been bored by seeing bands playing the same riff for an hour in their favorite t-shirt"

You could be living under a rock if you're without Salem's Pot by now. In 2014 I had discovered them and it literally makes sense to listen soulfully to them any chance now that I get. They hold fluidity and constantly grab my short attention span. The opening track, "Tranny Takes A Trip" off PROUNOUCE THIS! is infamously named after a store in London, and it easily relates to the debauchery of our wild, uninhibited days you purposely evade every subject at all costs even though lurking within us all are sex depraved former sex maniacs playing a role and living a lie to put on this front that no one is believing. Similar styles of Backyard Babies and their Swedish nieghbors, The Hellacopters are heard in these New Blues Doom blood hounds from Scandinavia with primal psychedelic pausing doom. Sci Fi movies from the 60's and 70's would have killed to have them in them. Werewolves On Wheels would have eaten any forbidden fruit just for filmscore rights.  

Its as if these overlords of the fifth dimension took an acid hit with King Crimson and Pronounce This was left to profit. This LP deserves a spin and in time Salems Pot will be yours and mine.  They'll make you live again and remember there is still individuals  we never met or heard with concepts, traits and similarities that we can relate with simply through their music, and the chemistry and components are instantly a connection and hit. Speaking of all these hits, ISalems Pot are so bitchin, you would instantly look past the front singer dressing in drag and presenting their take on the Doom Metal scene. It wont be the first time Doom was done in Drag but it could be the last time we hear from them on Riding Easy Records, so be ON IT, and in lack of better words, OWN IT!

-Highway Poet  

Kadavar - Abra Kadavar

Nuclear Blast Records

2013

Its on the tip of my tongue who Kadavar clearly remind me of, and by the the end of this review, if it doesnt clearly dawn on me, they have clearly done a successful job of releasing a second album with no coined strings attached. Second albums are crucial, and usually no matter how bad it sucks, will forever be the fans' favorites. As ripe and royal asses as music fans can be, second albums separate a casual listener from a lifelong fan. Lifelong fans are loyal in that allowing any new outsider fans after a bands forth or fifth album is prohibited even if that album is disliked by the lifers. German-based, Kadavar have a mighty task on their hands starting this late in the game while attempting to own up to bands, such as, Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, and Pentagram. However their label reps are dead-set on introducing them under this genre. I'm sincerely impressed with ABRA KADAVAR songs like "Doomsday Machine" and "Rhythm For Endless Minds" and if it sounds like Ive already been a lifelong fan for the bands before them by saying their style should flow without labeling, then so be it.  Sleaze Rock fans fromThe Gaza Strippers and Zen Guerilla would surely applaud this album. Supersuckers and Backyard Babies fans dont buy every Black Sabbath and Hawkwind album there is, therefore why even limit space cadet, gamma ray rockers. Kadavar to Doom and Stoner fans by labeling them? Fans from Sweden to Savannah, GA are righteously entilted to brace this album without any preconceived notion . It sends, transcends, descends, and makes amends for the plethora of bad Black Sabbath-esque bands there is. Brace yourself and for just once, becasuse Kadaver sound like them.             -SMC

Leather Nun america- Kult Occult

PsycheDOOMelic Records

2011

Let it rip! Here is a band with an album in front of us that from the looks of it has several odds stacked against it from appearance. Not only is the band name, well, already another spoken for band's name, but the album title lacks proper grammar along with orginality. Will there be any authenticity upon unraveling this 2011 release on PsycheDOOMelic Records? You bet your shaved, virgin, leather, straddled, spanked, doomed ass there is! This album is what modern day Doom Metal is meant to mold into with withering, vocal fades, trickling tripped-out Doom solo leads, lyrics with an edge of sorrow  so deep it was mustered up with the strength of pure iron muscle chords to power the entire album through what might appear as a heartbreaking, economical Depression of Murderkults, snakes and Leadcatchers. Pure-bred American Doomage in the making right before our eyes of the cover of  Leather Nun America book. Vocals are somewhat tricked -out and trampled the hell out of by hooves of apocalyptic horsemen, but harrowing enough to scare a corrupt, Catholic school girl straight in her penny loafers.. These fellas certainly weren't bottle-feeding yesterday, and the hard knocks they learned along the way on previous albums, such as, Absence Of Light and All Your Kin reflects in their album producing arena on  a multi-faceted, notch & level, but without the fancy pitch and various pedals and knobs, where will it leave this band standing live on stage without the glitz and glamour of a recording studio? In my personal findings it takes a lot of balls to stand on stage with a rare, negative no-bullshit recorded Doom bloodtype metal, and man up to the positive honesty of a hollowed, muffled live metal mix where timing and stage persona are essential and Leather Nun America (Maryland members and non) can do this with fortitude yet could use some shots of tequila and mesacaline to expand their creative minds and heat up the seats under their Satanic bible studies with or without an audience present. Looks dont get you anywhere with this album but their hands, feet and metal  get you far and high.

-HIGHWAY POET

Blackfinger - Self Titled

Church Within Records

2013

Master and Doom Pastor, Eric Wagner (ex-Trouble) has had the last sermon of a Doom revelation that has long been foretold about for years now. Blackfinger was FINALLY released on radio December 16, 2013 in front of a congregation of elite, devouted listeners via intraweb, and will be packaged in January 2014 by Church Within Records, and digitally comprised online by Dark Star Records.  If two labels doesn't signify this hefty, oversize load needs yellow flags to turn the years corner, than what else does? I was priviledged to interview Wagner in front of a giant mixing board back in his hometown, Genoa, IL in Febuary 2011 when he played All The Leaves Are Brown for me and two of my all female, camera-crew.  It literally blew all three  brunettes head yellow, and I can't tell much difference from listening to it in its purest form in person then, than the staggering amount of sonic engineering heard on the MP3 format now. Solar-flare size vocal vortex pulls are certainly unnecessary for a man of Eric Wagner's voice status, but the impending amount of Doom you can't help to override on this debut  album from artwork to the inner core of a digitally remastered and remastered demo I first heard.  Yellowood stikes me as song name that could have very well took center stage for the entire album name. I Am Jon rings in the new year with an echo that could very well be heard ringing down the halls and walls of Valhallia. It is evident that Wagner's audience that stood on standby last month to hear its debut were not just dopey stoners and slacking droners, but the grandfathers, veterans and countrymen of Doom Metal themselves. Chances are it was overproduced as Eric admitted to tiring and becoming sick of it himself. but this doesnt drown out not water down the substane of this album , wahtsoever.                                                                -SMC