You Will Get This Record...Then Pass The Time By Playing A Little Solitaire

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats' Mind Control is as Sabbath sounding a record as you can get without actually being Black Sabbath. In fact, it is easily the best Black Sabbath record of the year by far, this included.

Take "Mt. Abraxas:" it starts gloomy and doom, total homage to the first eponymous Sabbath record, then it gallops into "After Forever" territory. before sludging back down. After that "Mind Crawler" kicks in, with it's heavy and simple riffs backed by a barely audible but completely essential piano run. It's the kind of song that makes me get up and dance like Michael Shannon covered in bugs. And that's just the first side of the first record. There's nothing terribly complicated in this music. It's derivative sure, but it takes everything that was great about Black Sabbath and just nails it. It's heavy and it stomps and it is a little bit scary. You feel like something evil (or maybe just interesting) is going to ooze out of the speakers. (Aside: googling "70s horror movie girls" brings up a surprising amount of lesbian activity).

Speaking of lesbians, here's something to do: check out their website, specifically the Garbage Dump section, where fans upload images that might or might not have anything to do with Uncle Acid. It's.....strange...that's about the gentlest I can say about it.

Happy story about this record: I had first read about them when Steven Hyden mentioned them in a write-up he did about the state of metal citing primarily Kylesa (awesome), Deafhaven (OK) and Queens Of The Stone Age (tired). In fact that article is where I also first read about ASG and Blood Ceremony and Kvelertak, but I digress. Thanks to Spotify I was able to hear this Uncle Acid record and I dug it much. Then one day it disappeared off Spotify, with some message saying it could no longer be available in the US. FRAK! A couple weeks later I went down to Som Records on 14th Street in DC and lo-and-behold there it was, a vinyl copy of Mind Control, sitting on the shelf. I gasped..really...I gasped and probably squealed with delight when I saw it. I grabbed it lest another metal head lurked somewhere ready to pounce. It cost over $40 but I didn't give a shit. This record rules. Listen here for confirmation!

The Eldritch Dark

When all is said and done this year, I expect The Eldritch Dark by Blood Ceremony to by sitting at the top of my favorite records of the year list. They are one of the many bands that Spotify has recommended to me since I started using the service.

I have mentioned them a couple times here. First when I
saw them open for Kylesa; second when they made my mid-year report. In case you're just tuning in they are a four-piece from Canada fronted by a keyboard and flute playing lady. Naturally she is fine but that is honestly just ancillary to the music, which is a cross between Jethro Tull and Black Sabbath. Lyrically it is kind of silly, singing about witches and sorcery and goings-on in related forests, but that's part of the fun. It doesn't waste anytime, as album opener "Witchwood" (of course) demonstrates:

Black magic has come to Witchwood

Their devilry takes place within our lonely woods

Such strange words and stranger visions

Forbidden hymns to summon things one never should

The record continues in that vein. There's more about shape-shifters, and sisters up to no good, and the moon, and the dark, and magicians, and a song about Christopher Lee when he burned up The Equalizer in The Wicker Man. This kind of stuff always makes me laugh a bit. When I was a kid I used to think how dangerous it was to listen to things like Iron Maiden. It was more interesting than what you usually got out of rock lyrics. Blood Ceremony are the same way. The pseudo-witchiness comes across as kitsch more than anything else. It's not scary like Slayer is; when you see Kerry King you get the impression he probably does worship Satan. Blood Ceremony does it with a nod and a wink. And I mean this all as a positive!! Looking at the notes in the record it appears guitarist Sean Kennedy writes all the lyrics. That is somewhat disappointing. Lead singer Alia O'Brien is a looker and it's more alluring to think she wrote them, but that's really a whatever kind of thing. The charm is that you have a pretty girl getting all witchy and singing about devil hymns. She seemed like a nice girl when I saw them live.

The music is great through and through. It's a very folky kind of heavy rock. I've seen them filed under doom metal. It's not really metal...too much gets lumped under metal these days. It has mellow spots where the flute takes over but it has plenty of rock to keep the head banging, but it stays to a very 70s inspired brand of metal. Really very debut record-era Sabbath. The band is altogether tight. Good grooves, good melodies that are both bright yet sinister-esque. Great vocals. Guitarist Sean Kennedy played a beautiful Yamaha when I saw them which inspired me to look into getting one of my own. I found one on eBay which I got for a total steal. Granted mine is the low-end base model wile his was the high-end fancy one, but it plays amazingly well for a guitar I got mainly because I liked the look, so much so it has become my primary gig guitar. Sweet!

Anyway, here's the second track off the record, "Goodbye Gemini."