An interesting combination, really: Murder the Mountains, in my mind, emerges as an attempt (not entirely successful, but not entirely un- either, which really says something) to radically detune the White Album.... Pop hooks with clever, legitimate songwriting....
Red Fang put songs first (there's a clear continuing vocal melody, with narrative lyrics that seem to thematically match the mood of the music-- when was the last time that happened?), and only THEN riffs...
...though fear not, riffs there are, and all the way down to C-- bravo for writing riffs that subsonic, that seismic, that respectably de-tuned, while actually being memorable.
"Murder the mountain"-- sounds sinister, but not sure what that entails-- some sort of deforestation project? They're coal miners of some kind? ANYhoo....
"Hank is dead" QOTSA-ish riff and vocals... vibes like the Partridge Family as backing band for sludge band in 2011-- there's a suspiciously-wholesome vibe to gang chorus....
"Throw Up," at 1:55 fires up a riff that sound like sonic spaghetti you might've eaten at some important dinner date: it just kept coming, and coming, and coming, winding itself around your fork....
"Painted Parade" has a cool Blink 182-gone-wonderfully-wrong vibe: surf rock for tsunamis... "Number 13" has a great, lazy, THC-dripping version of a Stevie Ray Vaughn riff: then trots back into 1950s strut territory with the verse....
"Into the Eye"-- very swank, cool opening riff in only two notes (Eb to C#), then into a 6/8 time thing like something from the 1950s or Danzig's "She Rides."
Nutshelled: David Bowie's backing band, en route to a concert, can't make it and the only musicians on hand are Swans....
OR!
Til Lindeman (Rammstein singer) writes scores for Bowie's backing band...
OR!
Godflesh unplugged.
Highlights:
"Fallen" sounds like Eddie Vedder's alterna-sludge project....
"Dead Inside" starts with the identical drum fill from 1988's Operation: Mindcrime track "Spreading the Disease," yet slower and more sinister, and is quickly revealed to be the only thing those tracks have in common/ singer sounds like Til Lindeman, both in his timbre and his manner, which sounds like the exhortations of a semi-psychotic yet charismatic shaman or druid priest over his followers (and there is a tribal/ teutonic vibe to the songs, the energy is distinctly brooding Visigoth-ly, like a warriored tribe sitting around caves and cookfires, waiting for a battle...)... at around 5:00 the songs drops into an ugly funk'd groove, guitar and bass pounding in alternating riffs like a giant unholy piston in Kali's engine of death...
Hypnotic, ambient, repetitive/industrial alterna-sludge....
Both very worth your time my liege.
--Horn
Buy here: Red Fang
Buy here: Descent
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