I’ve been trying to get my brother – who mostly shares my
taste in music and is my most consistent concert companion - into stoner rock,
but he’s been reluctant and indifferent.
Recently he articulated his major beef:
“all the bands sound like they’re ripping off Black Sabbath. If I wanted to listen to Black Sabbath, I’d
listen to Black Sabbath.” Fair enough
dispute, though after having listened to Pentagram
and sHeavy, plus Witchcraft & The Sword, adding in some Obsessed,
I’d say the more accurate critique would not be that they all sound like Black
Sabbath, rather that they all sound like each other.
Funny enough, let’s talk about Witchcraft. They’re from
Sweden, of all places, so add them to ABBA and Ace of Base, then add in Opeth
and Ghost BC. Supposedly they started
as a de facto Pentagram tribute band, which are for their part Washington DC’s
answer to – drum roll, please - Black
Sabbath. I can hear that. But I hear enough other stuff thrown in that
it becomes a bit different. Still heavy,
still droning, still riffing, but different.
Why? Because vocalist Magnus
Pelander, instead of copying Ozzy Osbourne, as sHeavy vocalist Steve Hennessy
does (while looking like early-era Whitesnake David Coverdale) – mind you,
Hennessy is the only one who comes close to getting Ozzy’s voice down - or even
copying Pentagram vocalist Bobby Liebling – who looks more like a long-haired Marty
Friedman than Ozzy Osbourne – he’s actually copying The Sword vocalist John
Cronise. See? Mixing it up by copying each other instead of
Ozzy, Tony, Geezer or Bill.
For that matter, I’ve yet to hear a stoner rock vocalist
who sounds anything like Ronnie James Dio.
Then again, Hennessy is the only stoner rock vocalist I’ve heard who
sounds like Ozzy. But sHeavy sounds so
much like Ozzy-era Sabbath that many of us thought their early track “Electric
Sleep” was a long-lost Sabbath song.
Listen to it yourself and decide.
Incidentally, Pentagram
won’t be touring much anymore these days, as Liebling is going to prison for
beating up his mom. Yeah. Liebling has been a heroin addict for a while,
but like most addicts swerves from periods of relatively clean stability where
he has his s**t together, to other times when he’s more of a colossal
screwup. It’s sad because musically the
albums, including the most recent, Curious Volume, are actually pretty
good. In fact, you’d never know what a
colossal screwup Liebling was by his music.
They’ve been around since the early 70s, but attempts during that decade
to get a record deal went south on two major occasions: he turned off Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley
(KISS, you know), and then Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman (Blue Oyster Cult,
you know). It wasn’t until the 1980s
that Pentagram finally released an album.
I managed to catch them live at American University and then the
Baltimore Soundstage, both times headlining. Anyhow.
Back to Witchcraft. They have five albums, Witchcraft, Firewood,
The Alchemist, Legend, and Nucleus. All of them are pretty much the same, of
equal quality as well as sound, with no major departures. There’s some softer interludes and change-ups
which break the monotony, so you can listen to an entire album without getting
bored – though a five album marathon might be pushing it. I haven’t been able to see them live
yet. They’re from Sweden. They need to ask Papa or Mikael Akerfeldt who
does their visas, as neither Ghost nor Opeth seem to have any trouble getting
into the US to tour.
Having absorbed their repertoire with much appreciation
and satisfaction, I’m now swerving back to The
Sword, who are from Austin, Texas.
Although I’ve yet to catch Witchcraft in concert, I’ve been lucky enough
to see The Sword a few times: the (new)
9:30 Club in DC in 2010, opening for Kyuss Lives at the Ram’s Head Live in
Baltimore (2011), headlining the R’N’Roll Hotel in DC in 2015, then opening for
Opeth at the Fillmore Silver Spring in 2016.
Not particularly energetic or exciting live, though: more of a band that
just comes out and plays their music.
Now they have six albums, plus a live album: Age of Winters (2006), Gods of the
Earth (2008), Warp Riders (2010), Apocryphon (2012), High
Country (2015), and an acoustic version of that album, Low Country
(2016). The Sword are somewhat faster than
Witchcraft, but share this deal where every album sounds pretty much the same,
making a multiple disc marathon somewhat dull.
Song Length. Black
Sabbath songs are relatively short, with “The Warning” from the first album being
the longest studio track and the extended “Wicked World” from Live At Last
being the longest live track. Witchcraft
have several 10-15 minute songs. The
Sword songs are about 5-7 minutes long.
And The Obsessed scarcely tax your patience, with songs which are 3-5
minutes long, fairly brief and intense.
Though if Wino’s on it, be it The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, or Spirit
Caravan, we’re talking some measure of doom involved.
Then you have Earthless. They’re coming around on tour next spring, so
I decided to listen to them again to determine if I wanted to see them for the
first time in concert. I only have two
of their albums, the split with Harsh Toke and Rhythms From a Cosmic Sky. Here we’re talking 15 minute instrumental jams. But it’s not mellow and laid back like the
Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers, rather it’s intense soloing like Deep
Purple’s “Child In Time” or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”. You kind of have to be in the mood for that kind
of thing. But it’s clearly different than
Black Sabbath.
Even bands which sound like each other, like Fu Manchu and
Nebula (thanks to Eddie Glass, a common member), there’s subtle distinctions. FM are more straight ahead and even somewhat
punk oriented, with shorter songs and subject matter about skateboarding or
vans, whereas Nebula have longer songs and are space-oriented. Bottom line is that you have to have the
patience and inclination to really listen to the music before you can begin to
distinguish them from each other – and from Black Sabbath – but the differences
are there. Black Sabbath obviously
serves as the starting point, but each of these bands take slightly different
directions. For some, Pink Floyd is the
opposite end they’re going for; for others it’s the Misfits or Ramones.
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