Wednesday, July 3, 2013

... Worth a few bucks : TEN FOOT WIZARD / COLOSSUS / SUPERHALO

TEN FOOT WIZARD are a Heavy Blues Rock band from Manchester (England) with a penchant for tasty groove-heavy riffs and “Return to the Infinite” is their debut album released a couple of months ago.
From the first notes of opener “Rise from your Grave” one can quickly feel that we’ve got here a band whose bluesy beard rock owes as much to classic stuff like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or even The Doors, as to more contemporary acts like Clutch, Orange Goblin, Kyuss or Danzig…
I would add “but not only…” because the music of T.F.W. is definitely more than a vulgar addition of influences without inspiration, textures and flavor ! Edgy, thick and burning for the most parts with hooky guitars and warm whiskey-soaked vocals, the tempo can occasionally slow down, the tone getting darkened and eying towards sweet and throbbing psychedelia (“Six Feet Rising” and the excellent title song “Return to the Infinite”). Also what makes TFW interesting and slightly different - from many upcoming bands from the genre - is that there’s nothing Metal at all that can be found in here, just blues and groove blended with pure heaviness !!!  With T.F.W. we've got here another english band of the highest order…





COLOSSUS is a Swedish trio from Stockholm and their 1st album “Wake” has been released in April via Perennity rds… The guys describe their music as Progressive Sludge - which must be right if we consider some influences heard here and there from Mastodon, The Sword, Tool and Baroness…

Before thinking about anything progressive, the first thing to have in mind is that COLOSSUS is a massive and roaring machine, with vibrant guitars and impressively hammering drums !!! progressive, yes, but with a well measured sense of intricacy and variations in the moods, rather than a technical demonstration of unbridled instrumentation and/or a succession of different chapters within a single song who in the end often lead to loose its dramatic essence. The guys focus on the dynamic and catchiness of their songs with strength and conviction and they are pretty good and promising at it.

Even if the apparition of LG Petrov from Entombed, on “Pillars of Eternity”,  is certainly a nice wink to their early (death) Metal years as fans, there’s no special highlight here, but everything flows well and the band delivers cohesively an hard hitting debut !!!


Our 3rd band today is SUPERHALO from Poland, again another country and again another style of heavy music !!! "Czerwona" (the Red) is the debut album of this 4 piece from Porazin and it contains 11 songs for a total length of a short forty minutes... There's a lot to get from this album, a refreshing stoner'n roll assault, at times dry and hallucinatory, at  others raw and punkish, even a few parts can be serioulsy mellowed and almost poppy... This is cohesive though with a potent and hazy live sound, also the fact of having vocals in polish certainly helps to enhance it ! 

It's been a very long time since I heard singing in polish, what i heard back then was raw and furious HC/Punk which certainly didn't served the hidden and relative (?) beauty of this language, cause here it's often very lyrical and melodic, dry and low droning too which is giving a special touch to an overall that generally sounds pretty american and Hommesque in particular... 

Need some good kick-ass songs with a subtle Desert Rock touch interspersed with nice melodic moments ? then you simply have to check out this great album !

 https://www.facebook.com/SUPERHALO





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