Spider Goat Canyon - Always Heavy

I'm travelling up through the midlands of England after a massive weekend in Oxford. I am suitably broken. My head wrapped in headphones, my hand shakily clasping a huge bottle of tepid water - and I am subjecting myself to brutality, because it's good and I deserve it.

Bro Fidelity Records is a Melbourne label that fossicks from a particular earthen vein of heavy rock. Most of the bands involved – Hotel Wrecking City Traders, Daggers Mid Flight, River Of Snakes, Fire Witch – all feature members from the same cloistered coven, all intent on creating dark yet rhythmic metallic rock that pummels in submission that seduces onto the rocks of despair – or just plain kills. Another band in this ilk is Spider Goat Canyon, and their album Always The Heavy fits this modus operandi from the album title down. 6 years in the making, and marking the last recordings with guitarist Steve Brick, this gargantuan release is a release of tension, a steeling of resolve, a Pyrrhic victory to those (un)lucky enough to hear it. A broiling concoction of drone, doom, 70s to 90s metal and elongated space rock, the album starts with a weird yet ominous instrumental track, ‘Rat Tooth’, with what sounds between a strangled sax and a strangled voice hovering in the middle distance, a muddied doom riff slowly coming into start focus by song’s end. ‘Needle Drivers’ brings the dronal vocals, while ‘Crunk’ takes metal with a glass-ripped vocal assault. ‘Vertigo’ is a faster, feverish trip – and all three major deviances has been laid out and flayed. Some of the music reminded me of my childhood (the aforementioned, early Metallica-aping ‘Needle Drivers’, the sinuous bass giving a Tool resonance to ‘Chadrick’) and some more recent predilections reared their heads (the droned feedback of ‘Heart Attack’; the cataclysmic instrumental breakdown the brilliantly deranged ‘Men’). By the time the mammoth punches of ‘Secret Valley’ and ‘Embryonic Gillslits’ hit (both approaching 20 minutes), the noise journey this trio take you on is tantamount to undertaking the Twelve Tasks of Hercules, a penance being paid, seemingly, just for being alive. But in many ways that is exactly what Always The Heavy is – a black mass, repenting for the sins of the past, present and future, yet with a twinkle in the eye that is upturned towards the stratosphere and beyond. All plains are crossed and conquered, all voices have been heard and silenced. A colossal album from start to finish.

HC/HWCT split

I’ve been waiting for some time to get to this split record between UK malcontents Hey Colossus and Aussie instrumental destroyers Hotel Wrecking City Traders – but not as long as the two bands have been trying to bring it to fruition, with the bands staying in contact and shooting the shit about collaborations since 2006. They finally played together last year and the excuses became null and void – and here we are.

The A-side (which is redundant really because this is all A material) is taken up by 'Heaven Blows', Hey Colossus' ten minute atonal drone, spending the first third in cryogenic free fall, all manner of post-life matters passing before the eyes and between the ears, a meditative splitting of atoms, slowed down 1200%. The questions being asked doesn't matter - the pulsing ebb here renders them all obsolete. A real sonic palate cleanser from a band more renowned for tearing temporal rifts in time and space into much more warped parallel dimensions. The boys may have a new album already out - more on that soon - but it's imperative you dip into this.

Then double down on 'Droned & Disowned (Pt 2)', the Melbourne contingent smashing forth with a terse yet tightly calibrated twenty-minute leviathan. This is HWCT's bread and butter though, finding the grit and sinew in the elongated sonic crawl, finding the feral and fugue states in the funk, finding the clarity in the clouded haze. Forever restless, forever entwined in both darkness and light. The Matthews bros know when to let loose, when to distort, when to pare back, when to groove, when to cut. Telekinetic alchemy, the changeovers and dips into the rock abyss would be mind-boggling if it wasn't so expected from these guys. The funk cuts to the grind, and it's breathtaking - this is something I never tire of listening to.

You can get the split from either Wild Animals Records or Bro Fidelity Records – a must.

Double White Walls In Limbo

This year's Sonic Masala Fest was incredible, a real coup and a life achievement for me. So many things worked out right - the weather, the venue, the crowd, the bands. Although David Lynch's Q+A and the Oblivians shows took a few punters away, it was above all a killer day.

One of the best parts was hanging out with the three dudes from White Walls for the weekend. Their set was decidedly loud - as is their MO - yet I had forgotten just how smooth it all is, how easily it is to be cocooned within the intricacies inherent within the noise. Their self titled album has been a favourite of mine for some time now, and finally their follow up Afterthoughts In Limbo (which is mammoth as a double LP and is out on the band's brand spankin' new Pet Moth Records label) is just around the corner. Below are three tracks off it ('Crossing Roads' having been pushed into the ether last week as a biding time gesture while the vinyl orders take their time getting shipped), and their eloquent and devastating take on shoe gaze rock is as jaw dropping as ever. If you haven't put your order in to get a piece of Afterthoughts In Limbo, go here right now. And if you are in Melbourne May 30 and haven't got anything going - get to The Corner where White Walls and Hotel Wrecking City Traders support the gargantuan Japanese giants Boris.

A Loose River of Alcoholic Snakes

Ben Wrecker from Melbourne destructive rock label Bro Fidelity sent me this to the Facebook inbox last week, and it reminded me that I haven't yet talked about my love of one of their roster's albums. But before we get to that, let's focus on perennial brutal blasters Hotel Wrecking City Traders and their latest single 'Loose Alcoholic.' Seven minutes and forty nine seconds of visceral propulsive rock, corkscrewing into your brains and setting things on fire, an aural incendiary bomb. The two-piece (Ben on drums, Toby on guitar) is joined here by Raul Sanchez (Magic Dirt, Midnight Woolf) taking on the indecipherable howling, itself another bludgeoning bile-flinging instrument of death. The repetitive growl of the riffs and explosive drumming here is the key though - there is nothing innately loose about this at all.

Now to the band that this brought back to me with a vengeance (and the photos may have given it all away...). The cantankerous trio River Of Snakes (who features the aforementioned Sanchez, The Loveless' Elissa Rose and Mr Bro Fidelity himself on the drums) brought an album out back around July 2014 called Black Noise, and it is a heady amalgam of introspective, downer Australian pub rock, squalling no-wave destruction and bottom-heavy blues, coming out like a black wave of aggression tempered with maniacal grins. 'Beauty' is my key track, but the Kim Gordon channelling on 'Hacksaw', the nihilistic desolation of 'Slater' and the fuzzed-out Ratcat echoes on 'I Wanna Be Your Baby' ensures the album gets off to a killer start. 'Middening' should be much bigger seeing the love for Brisbane miscreants HITS' latest record Hikikomori before fading out into a purgatorial ambiance, and tracks such as the cathartic crawl of  'I Lied' and straight up RnR of 'The Words I Love You (Ain't Enough) ensure the album steams the full distance into the rock abyss. 

Wrecking The City Again

Melbourne's Hotel Wrecking City Traders are back! Well they haven't actually been dormant, but they finally have their new LP Ikiryo (out through the band's Bro Fidelity label) ready to thrash out to the world, a mere six years (?!) after Black Yolk blasted the doors off. Recorded in two days in January, and the tight timeline fits with the leaner, more focused delivery of the five songs on display here. Opener 'Breath' is a power behemoth, holding down some straight-up metal riffs before launching forth like a tightly coiled serpent at the jugular, before dissolving into a doom-lite crawl that shadows Pelican at their most languid. It's these tonal shifts at almost a nanosecond's notice that is the most obvious change up in the duo's arsenal - they are more melodic and in tune with each other's playing due to their tireless touring and shows in Japan. 'Riley' is a sinuous beast that surreptitiously moves into Toby's repetitive groove, the alternations coming from Ben's rolls and fills. 'Dance The Hempen Jig' feels the most like old HWCT (not that anything on Ikiryo is far from the wellspring of the band's oeuvre), albeit in a concise, calibrated form, before the album closes with the darkness of 'Tetryl' and the sprawling title track taking us into the sinister outer spaces. Welcome back, boys.

Get Ikiryo here.

IT'S LIVE!!! - Hotel Wrecking City Traders @ 'Pojama People', PBS

Here is one of the coolest instrumental bands in Australia, live on the Pojama People show on Melbourne's PBS radio station. One song - a 46 minute version of 'Ode To Chunn.' Stalwarts of the Bro Fidelity clan (home to the likes of Fire Witch and River Of Snakes), Hotel Wrecking City Traders are relentless harbingers of demonic doom, yet with a melodic lilt that draws you inexorably to the knife's edge. It's electrifying stuff, executed with cutthroat precision and cataclysm. In short, it's awesome. I think I might try and bring them back to Brisbane...



This is a new segment of awesome live recordings - if you have any that you think fits the bill, by all means send em out way on sonic.masala@gmail.com or through our Twitter or Facebook pages. Nathan and I are off the day job for two weeks, which means you will hear more from us over the next fortnight. That said, I don't intend to be that lucid, so you might wanna strap yourselves in. Night folks.

Purest Evil Instilled In The TTTDC

Here are a couple of take-no-prisoners releases from balltearing Melbourne labels We Empty Rooms (DEAD/Fire Witch) and Bro Fidelity (Hotel Wrecking City Traders/Fire Witch) that have been slaying eardrums by the thousands...

Melbourne's TTTDC (what does it all mean? I have no idea. Best guesses in the comments section!) is a voodoo doll spiked incessantly with downtuned guitars, stream-of-consciousness drumming and surprisingly melodic vocals that don't sound like fucking Birds of Tokyo or some other such toe scum. They are so big they already have a Greatest Hits record. Well that's what this LP is called anyway. Greatest Hits is both indulgent (wailing metal guitar solos!) and degraded (deafening feedback!), all recorded at the Tote one rainy Monday. No better way to start the week, recording your soon-to-be Best Of. A manifesto of festering ideas, these doom trippers are as happy scorching your soul as they are crooning your hole. Brutally sexy. (Seriously, tell me what TTTDC is, mindfuckers!)

Then there is the speed-fuelled bile vat from the aptly titled acidic giants Pure Evil Trio. Cognitive Dissonance is also an apt title for this EP, a screeching maelstrom of intellectual gnashing of teeth, all done with the kind of gum-bleeding ferocity that thrashes all competitors into an early grave.  All so abrasively unlovable, right? And yet there are moments of enjoyment here too - mutated punk anthems lurk under the blood-drenched howls of mindless discontent. Hold it up to the light and watch this opaque disease glow. Wollongong's answer to The Locust?  Listen and forever wonder where your mind went.

Splitting Songs, Bro

Here are two releases from Melbourne's Bro Fidelity Records that are well worth your time. The first is this split 12" between Spider Goat Canyon and Hotel Wrecking City Traders. Created for a joint tour of Japan, it's a nigh on perfect split - SGC create a diabolic menace throughout their three tracks (and on the excellent 'Brotherhood' never truly lets that menace off its leash, thus heightening the tension tenfold), whilst the two track behemoth that is HWCT plays with post-metal formulae, a force to be reckoned with - all recorded in one day too. Buy it here.

Spider Goat Canyon - Brotherhood
Hotel Wrecking City Traders - II



Then there is this three-way split (which comes in tri-colour 180g vinyl in primary colours, get it here) between Southern California's Waterways, UK's Sons of Alpha Centauri and Hotel Wrecking City Traders. Its quite varied - Waterways' four tracks are much more song-oriented, and despite occupying the A side on their lonesome aren't as a strong a pull here, although 'Piece of You' and 'The Blacksmith' pack a punch; Sons of Alpha Centauri are more quintessential post rock, definitely Mogwai acolytes that instead of fucking up the formula more than hold their own on 'Pulmo Victis'. You can grab that here.

Waterways - Piece Of You
Hotel Wrecking City Traders - Pulmo Victis

Wrecking Sounds

I have a few records coming outta Melbourne’s Bro Fidelity label coming up over the next couple weeks – starting with Daggers Mid-Flight/Hotel Wrecking City Traders guitarist Toby Wrecker’s solo record Sounds of Jura. Nine tracks of guitar/drums improvisation that wavers between hard rock, desert wash, drone annihilation, meditative acoustics and (astonishingly) brief moments of beautiful clarity. Basically Wrecker did a whole bunch of home recordings over the past two years, merely mucking about and playing with the format, and the decision to put them into one solid package is a great one (for us, at least). Plus the reason that it became reality? Wrecker asked Mauro Italiano, a buddy from Turin, to do a cover for him, despite the fact they hadn’t spoken in fifteen years. The end result is below.

 
I love Sounds of Jura – grab it here. What gets me is that each song is its own sonic planet, and although most songs show a level of brevity often beyond these stylings, they are inhabitable, awe-striking, and brave. Let’s hope more of these “happy accidents” are in the offing.

Toby Wrecker – Entering The Overlook
Toby Wrecker – Avoiding The Pleasantries