Jonathan Goldsmith may portray The Most Interesting Man In The World, but Kent Stump is, hands down, The Heaviest Man In The World. No . . . I’m not referring to his physical weight, I’m referring to the man’s omnipotent heft as a musician and a producer. Maybe more the latter than the former, for . . . you see, Kent has manned the helm for some of the heaviest tones ever put to tape.
Some of the dudes past work includes Stone Machine Electric’s brilliant self-titled debut, the first Blood of the Sun album, Ripple Music’s very own Mothership debut, and an EP from the Texas outfit known as She Devil . . . and then, of course, the entire catalog from his own band, Wo Fat.
For one minute, let’s just look at the output with his own band, Wo Fat. Three albums (Psychedelonaut, Noche Del Chupacabra, and last year’s epic, The Black Code) that run the gamut of doom metal through the vast wastelands of psychedelia to the improvisational breeding grounds of heavy blues. These albums have it all . . . riffs, killer drum work, riffs, tower toppling bass, riffs, menacing vocal appeal, riffs.
Everything the man touches just buckles at the seams with heaviness, in part due to a bands already heavy sonic texture, but in equal or greater part to Stump’s critical ear to tone and dynamic. He sets the studio mics up just so, and with a seemingly inherent sense of what will become, the man just makes everything dense, although, without making the music airless.
I’m sure I don’t need to beat y’all over the head with this one . . . just one listen to any of the said recordings will do that job for me. Hell, I reckon that (ha . . . look at my inner Texan coming out) if Kent Stump was manning the helm of a One Direction recording, that too would be just as incredibly heavy as his past works.
There you have it. Pope’s Heaviest Album isn’t one particular album but the collected works of Kent Stump.
--Pope
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