Blood Lust - Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats

 

Provenance: A track of theirs was on a Classic Rock magazine sampler compilation, and it stood out so much that I was moved to start a thread about Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats on the music forum I used to post on, asking whether anyone else was aware of this band.

Well, bugger me if K.R. Starrs (Uncle Acid himself) didn't send me a private message to say that it was his band, and that he's glad I enjoyed what I'd heard thus far. As he posted with a hair metal-themed portmanteau username on the site (I did too), and had the good grace never to mention his band on the public boards (unlike some others - I'm looking at you, Carlos from Stonebreed) it was sheer chance that we came across each other.

Anyway, I have bought every album UA&TD have released - Blood Lust being their debut - and managed to see them live in Brighton, a gig which left my ears ringing for a couple of days afterwards. It was at this show where I encountered the rather startling Vodun for the first time, incidentally. 

Hey, live music - it weren't bad, were it?

Review: I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that 'I'll Cut You Down' is one of the best rock tracks of the last ten years. It's right up there with highlights provided by Ghost and Night Flight Orchestra, but to me it's all the more remarkable that it sounds like some ghoulish revenant from the Brown Acid series, a long-forgotten blast from 1971 rimed with murk and smoked with the lingering whiff of patchouli oil. I'm not usually keen on modern resurrectionists but I have a definite soft spot for anyone keeping the Sabbath flame alive, and 'I'll Cut You Down' is right in that wheelhouse.

'I'll Cut You Down' is the kind of brain-tenderising stomper I'll always love; eerie, charnel-house vocals, slabs of huge riffage and drums so ferociously primitive that they'd make the Stooges blush. If I had authored such a mighty piece of music I genuinely think I'd be tempted to call it a day. Once you've got the likes of 'I'll Cut You Down' under your belt, you can retire undefeated.

Fortunately, K.R. Starrs has more gumption than I'll ever possess, and so there's eight more tracks pitched somewhere in atmosphere between the gnarliest Hammer Horror films, the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, side two of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and the dying embers of Altamont. Yeah, Blood Lust hangs its hat on a very particular Seventies aesthetic, but there wasn't a better decade for curdled dreams, mental degradation and bummer endings. (Incidental note: one could posit that Black Sabbath and Steely Dan were two sides of the same coin, wrangling with much the same issues but from different perspectives; Sabbath embodying the howling death throes of an industrial working-class, whilst 'the Dan' tap into the irony, lassitude and weltschmertz belonging to a demimonde of sybaritic glamour - wot say you?)

Weren't we talking about Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats?

I can make this simple - if you like doomy stoner rock, you'll love this. If you like an epicene creepiness to your vocals, you'll love this. If you play this album loud enough, your neighbours will complain; if you play this loud enough and long enough, they will end up worshipping you. Do you want to be the Jim Jones of suburbia? Then get yourself a piece of Blood Lust.

Everything on here is stone cold killer material, right down to the unsettling bonus track 'Down To The Fire', but blunderbuss to my head, if I had to pick another highlight it would be 'I'm Here To Kill You', which sounds nothing less than a demented take on Van Morrison's 'Moondance', tapping into a hitherto invisible seam of violence lurking beneath the surface. So, Blood Lust - in terms of tasting notes this pairs well with psychonautic journeys to the centre of the mind, or simply lashings of the old ultraviolence.

Right-o, I couldn't let Ying-Yang Ballsteam provide the final review for 2020, but that's your lot for this year. Let's hope 2021 can clear the, admittedly, very low - almost 'pro-limbo dancer low' - bar that's been set by this shitshow, and that this time next year we're gambolling around like spring lambs, albeit with Windows 95 having been implanted into our arms. 

Possession - Vodun

Provenance: As is too often the case I place my trust in the hacks at Classic Rock magazine to inform my new music purchases. Not only did they give Possession a glowing review, they also made it out to be the antithesis of the meat 'n' potatoes rock that I've rather fallen out of love with.

So I bought the album, gave it one listen and was airily dismissive about it on Twitter. The sole response was a chastening reminder to me that I was actually talking about the creative endeavours of real human beings, as Vodun's drummer replied and, with more grace than I could ever muster, encouraged me to listen again.

I did. And a year later apologised, because I was wrong. Now, my memory isn't so spectacular that I was able to dredge a snotty tweet out of cold storage; the prompt came because I caught Vodun supporting Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats and they were mind-bending in the best way imaginable. I felt like I'd been assaulted by the time they left the stage. Vodun's second album Ascend is now out, so it feels like a good time to go back and appraise their first effort properly.

Review: The first time I listened to Can't Buy a Thrill by Steely Dan I was nonplussed. A couple of promising tracks here and there. Gerry Rafferty's City To City was, 'Baker Street' aside, not much to write home about either. I played ZZ Top's La Futura maybe twice before consigning it to the collection for eighteen months because it didn't have the immediacy of Tres Hombres or Eliminator.

Of course, Steely Dan are now part of my Holy Trinity, City To City is probably a top ten of all time album, and I think La Futura is ZZ Top's best since the aforementioned Tres Hombres. Which begs the question as to why I felt so confident proclaiming Vodun's debut to be neither here nor there? (Answer: because I am a wretch and a fool).

Still, how did I fuck up so spectacularly in the instance of Possession? The only excuse I can muster is that perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind, because this ain't your uncle's Afro-doom stoner metal album. Like all the best records, Possession demands concentration and rewards the listener when it is given.

Firstly, and least interestingly, the musicianship is top notch. It seems churlish in a three-piece to highlight two standout performers but I'm going to do it anyway; Ogoun lays down some of the most interesting drumming I've heard on a rock release in many years, and Oya is a terrifying vocalist. Live, these two are so overwhelming as to be destructive but it's on record where you can fully appreciate their nimbleness and dexterity. Ogoun is a powerhouse drummer, but much of the juice in Possession comes from the shuffling time-signatures and intricacy of her work. Integrating West African percussion within a metal framework is a potentially dicey affair, and could've sounded awkward or contrived. Instead, at its best, the fusion is hypnotic.

Certainly, what's more interesting is the mood this album conjures up. It's an unapologetic celebration of vodun cosmology, and why not? There are plenty of Christrian rock albums out there and a not insignificant number devoted to our Shining Lord Satan. I recall being very impressed when a school friend showed me a Hare Krishna album he'd been given on the street by a devotee (it sounded like a cross between Hawkwind and the Ozric Tentacles, i.e. per expectations). I have no more than a glib understanding of Haitian vodou or West African vodun so I fully expect not to grasp every resonance or nuance of this work. Nonetheless, this devotional centre gives Possession a concentration and unity that I feel all the best collections have.

It's hard to define what I mean; an album doesn't have to be overtly conceptional in execution, nor do the individual tracks need to be formally uniform. I used 'mood' in the first sentence of the preceding paragraph, and that's a close approximation. 'Character' or 'personality' might also be applicable, but neither strictly nor in their entireties. Whatever it is, Possession has it, like John Martyn's Solid Air or Nick Drake's Pink Moon, or even Acid Bath's When the Kite String Pops. It has a core, a power, a sense of purpose and a hint of mystery to it, all wrapped up in a heady blend of styles and spirituality.

I can't wait to hear Ascend - I can only hope I'm able to be a tad more mindful when I first give it a spin. Oh yeah, and go see Vodun if they play nearby, they are outrageously good live.