Our
punk/metal/drone comparison timeline concludes. And as the young
people say, dude, where ya been? You've missed sections taking us up
to the Sixties, the Seventies and, logically enough, the Eighties. But it's here where the dial really goes up to
eleven...
Kyuss:
'Thumb' (1992)
The
Doors may have gone to the desert to find their mojo, but Kyuss
essentially came from there. Long-haired freaks
from Palm Desert, California, they started out playing generator
parties in some sandy stretch of nowhere, or anywhere else where the
authorities weren't. As guitarist Josh Homme commented “there's
no clubs here, so you can only play for free”. If Homme's successor
band, Queens of the Stone Age, came to be better known, to me its
Kyuss who had the edge.
Kyuss
made the music of giants, but laid-back cool-guy giants. (As if to
prove the point, Homme was 6' 4”.) Even with the diss tracks, of
which this is one, I still picture them boldly toasting one another
with beer flagons the size of barrels. They mostly remind me of the
Frank Quitely cover to 'All-Star Superman', (below) which
shows the mighty-muscled man of steel not in some heroic pose but
relaxing nonchalantly.
This
is the opening track off 'Blue For the Red Sun',
and if Sabbath were the soundtrack of blackest night Kyuss wrote
paeans to the brightest day. For the day can be pretty mighty too. It
doesn't start up so much as shimmer in, as if arriving through a heat
haze. If Sabbath were the soundtrack to a breakdown, Kyuss always
came across as assured. For all the heaviness, the weightiness of the
band there always seemed space for... well space
in their sound. Which is pretty much the definition of the term
'stoner rock' the band became so associated with. (Presumably
because, out in the desert, they encountered a lot of stones. I
expect that was it...)
Meanwhile,
across the water in Liverpool, four mop-haired youths were about to
change the course of popular music as we know it...
...whoops,
sorry, wrong list...
Sleep:
'Holy Mountain' (1992)
Even
when you make up apparent micro-genres like 'stoner rock' it always
ends up not precise enough. It's like isolating the atom, you only
end up having to split it anyway. While Kyuss were a rock band
assured enough to stretch out riffs, Sleep simply dealt in riffs.
They play music so metronomic you think you'll never wake up.
Alas,
record company indifference caused the band to split early. The
rhythm section went on to form Om. Whose direction, as the name might
suggest, was less metal influenced and still-more trancy. With
sleeves and lyrics that reflected religious mysticism, they make the
music all those New Age fakers seem to imagine they are making. Their
defining moment might well be playing a five-hour gig in Jerusalem.
Probably
the finest Sleep album is the follow-up to this, 'Jerusalem'
(aka 'Dopesmoker', but its one long track which
makes it a little unwieldy for our format. So I've gone for 'Holy
Mountain'. Given the music we're talking about, it surely
must refer to the cult film by Jodorowski.
Electric
Wizard: 'Funeralopolis' (2000)
The
one exception to the West Coast rule mentioned earlier and – as I
expect you've already guessed – they're from Dorset. If other bands
combined Black Sabbath with all sorts of then-unexpected things,
Electric Wizard's mission statement was almost to sound more like
Black Sabbath than Black Sabbath did. Their name came from combining
the Sabbath song titles 'The Wizard' and
'Electric Funeral'. But a better name still might
have been just to condense the name Black Sabbath – Blabbath or
Blasab.
Sunn
O))): 'Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia)'
(2009)
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I
would be the last to suggest that this list, or any other aspect of
musical development, makes for some kind of linear progression. As
the diligent reader will already have discovered, all that's here is
more journey than destination. Nevertheless, somehow I feel like it
had to end like this. Music comes from the drone, the single held
note, the way all the land masses we live on know came from the
original super-continent Pangea. Those thudding riffs were like the
first breakaway continents, separate but still grand and massive. So
it kind of stands to reason music will revert to the drone from time
to time. In music, you can go home again. And it
sounds something like this...
This
track was named the Heaviest Song of All Time on The Jason Ellis Show. You'll see why. If you could get any more encased in sound, I simply
can't imagine it. As you might expect from a band named after a brand
of amplifier, there's also an abundance of feedback and
electronically generated sounds. They make music from the equipment
you make music from, and make no bones about it. Live, they are wont
to hold their instruments aloft like religious artefacts (see up top). One of the
many things about the band which might sound ludicrously
ostentatious, but works in context.
Yet,
in effect if not always in source, they can also approximate music
concrete – weaving together natural sounds. The guitar line here is
so primal and such a force of nature that it barely sounds human-made
enough for you to imagine it being composed, its more akin to
rockslides or earthquakes. And other sounds on the album,
'Monoliths and Dimensions', do seem to have
natural sources – such as the tightening of the rigging of a ship.
Perhaps the genius of the thing is the way it stops you even
noticing.
Similarly,
rather than black, Satanic, nihilistic or any other of those terms
that are so often slung at them, Sunn O))) seem more the perfect
pitch-point between crushing force and transcendence. However
pulverising the riff or guttural the lead vocals, put it with the
choral singing and the two just fit together. Drone and ambient music
is often divided into 'light' and 'dark', whereas as is probably
obvious by this point I prefer 'weighty' and 'weightless'. ('Light'
works best in terms of 'lightness', absence of weight.)
Yet
the advantage of the light/dark analogy is that they're part of a
spectrum. It can suggest our natural state is twilight. I love the
way the official heaviest track of all time is followed on the album
by an ambient piece dedicated to Alice Coltraine. Not content with
just sounding like punk and metal coming together, Sunn O))) are like
the soundtrack to the marriage of heaven and hell. The whole myth of
Lucifer the fallen angel effectively plays in reverse in my mind
whenever I listen to this. I could happily have it played at my
funeral.
(More
from me on Sunn 0))) here.)
Okay,
who's missing from the list? Many people will cry Discharge, but to
me they're a bit like rock'n'roll - they demonstrate how something
can be influential without actually being particularly good. I can
hear the metal crossover in them of course, but overall they still
sound just like another ranting crusty band. (I came of age in the
Eighties, gentle reader, where we had no shortage of such a thing.) I
have of course also missed out the 'big four' of thrash. With Slayer and Anthrax, it may well be
they're decent bands who just aren't to my taste. While Megadeath
were just rubbish. And Metallica were not only rubbish, but rubbish
produced by a bunch of arrogant self-important arses who I would
cheerfully wish the pox upon.
On
the other hand, I've probably missed out much good stuff through
sheer ignorance. My listening prejudices have most likely resulted in
a list that details punk meeting metal more than the other way round,
and I'd welcome any suggestions for a companion metal list. (Tool
should be in there? Faith No More? Helmet? Or Celtic Frost?) Reader,
please don't be backward in coming forward...
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