October was another TOUGH month for us. So much music coming out, and most of it is pretty good. Here’s Jipsy’s Top 5 Heavy album, as submitted to the Doom Charts. Here’s her picks, with some late September albums that were too awesome to miss.
The Monster Riff Top 5 Heavy Albums for October
1. Sanguine, All Time High
This album is Desert Rock as it should be. Fuzzy, heavy, and warm. Sanguines second album got its title, All Time High, from the record breaking heat waves of our most recent summer, marking it in time as a memory for all us.
I am not particularly drawn to desert rock like many of my peers are. It isn’t that I dislike anything about the genre. If a friend is grooving out to some desert rock jams, I enjoy it right along with them. But I don’t seek it out or crave it like they do. All that being typed out, this album made me want to go back for seconds after that initial taste.
At first, the riffs seemed pretty light hearted, but they didn’t stay that way. Sanguine knows how to bring just enough power and grit to their jams to qualify for a heavy stamp of approval without straying to far from the comfort of their desert rock roots. Mixed in to the recipe they’ve stewed up is a fair amount of blues rock chording, stoner tones, and psychedelic grooves.
On Sanguines Band Camp page, they assure us of the following, “No guitar picks were harmed or lost during the recording session, because they were not even used. Only violin bow and guitar slide on some tracks.”
Sanguine, man, I love that band name!
2. 40 Watt Sun, Little Weight
This project from Patrick Walker is painfully beautiful. We already know Walker lives to make us cry from his work in Warning. Most of us have seen the memes that tell us if you want to make the toughest man sob, play him the live version of Watched From A Distance. Even as I write this, I have to pause the track so I don’t fog up my glasses. Listen at your own risk, friends!
In that same somber, haunting, and beautiful way that Walker grips the heart of listeners in Warning, he does it here with 40 Watt Sun. The musical arrangements are unique to this project, however. With the stylings of Roland Scriver – Bass Guitars, and Andrew Prestidge – Drums, the music is accessible and offers the vocals an inviting foundation. It is slow, gently heavy, and very present in the mix.
The opening track, Pour Your Love, is absolutely flooded with emotion and washes you away from start to finish. That song boasts the talents of Nicola Hutchison on backing vocals. It is my favorite track on in the collection. On the song, Feathers, we hear a Fender Rhodes piano played by Chris Redman. This album is simple beautiful. It is made for the heart and rips you open. The meaningfulness of the experience this album offers the listener is precious.There is plenty of darkness, melancholy, and grief, yet the music gives you just enough light to make you smile.
3. Chat Pile, Cool World
Chat Pile is a personal favorite band of this writer. In the vain of bands like Daughters and The Austerity Program, the music is intense, interesting, and intimidating. Chat Pile showcases vocals that are somewhere between frantic shouting and hysterical crying. There is a feeling of desperation, anger, even panic in the strains that pulls the music along for the ride. With the loose canon quality of the vocals and the sludge and doom feel of the music, listening to Chat Pile is like watching a psychological horror film; thrilling, scary, and memorable. Experiencing a Chat Pile album always leaves me on edge.
Chat Piles latest album, Cool World, was a big surprise to many of their fans because Chat Pile had said they wouldn’t be doing anything for a while just a couple years ago. But much to the glee of myself and the rest of their fan base, Chat Pile decided to go all in as a band and took that leap of faith so many bands are afraid to do. They made the music their full time priority and are now touring like mad!
I Am Dog Now, the first single release from the new album, had me thrilled enough to reach out to the band and I was able to get a phone interview. That was an enlightening conversation! I learned many a cool fact and will tell you all more in an upcoming blog post for The Clean and Sober Stoner. In the aforementioned blog post, I will also give a full review of this latest album.
My first run through the Cool World album was on a recent long car ride to a show with a bandmate (geeking out on new albums is a favorite thing for us to do on those long treks to dive bar gigs). We were thoroughly entertained by the new material and had several moments of unified delight at the intensity on this album. So many scary sounds, tribal rhythms, nasty riffs…oh, my. Chat Pile calls their style of music noise rock. I see what they mean when I listen to this new record with the fusion of grunge, thrash, and even some nervy jazz sounds. This is one eclectic heavy album!
4. Blood Incantation, Absolute Elsewhere
Blood Incantation is a new find for me, compliments of my fellow writer, Blake Carrera. He was rather confident I would dig this album, and he was correct. With elements of death metal, synth wave, and prog rock, it fits my interests well. It even has songs titled Stargate, which is one of my favorite movies (I have no idea if they are actually referencing that, but it is fun for me to think so). I will say one thing as a warning, if you have the ADHD like I do, best not to listen to this when you are hungry. The rapid changes and hops between genre elements will agitate you. However, on a full stomach, this is a highly entertaining thrill ride.
Absolute Elsewhere is a unique collection of scores that feel like mini movie soundtracks. This album is particularly unique comparatively for Blood Incantation due to the collaboration with the legendary Tangerine Dream. I didn’t realize Tangerine Dream was on the album until something caught my ear in the second track, The Stargate [Tablet II]. I pulled up the track list on my Title app and then it all made perfect sense! Tangerine Dreams iconic movie soundscape dynamic pulls Blood Incantations heavy, prog rock and metal blend into a cyber punk dream space.
Absolute Elsewhere, which takes its title from the mid-70’s prog collective (best known as a celestial stopover for King Crimson drummer, Bill Bruford), is a journey between new metal and synth wave inlike anything else I have heard on heavy albums lately.
5. Blue Heron, Everything Fades
Here is a great new find that I think many will get hooked on! Blue Heron went heavy on fuzz and sludge riffs on this album. The sound blends all the best of heavy rock, stoner doom, and a dash of post prog. I hear some nods to Kyuss, Greenleaf, and even a little Tom Waits at times, which is impressive! This is what every Heavy Album tries to be.
Everything Fades offers hammering guitar leads with plenty of desert inspired rounds to keep the listener drawn in. The vocals rang from clean to straight up gravel growls. The album has some meditative moments and many down right nasty riffs to hang on to.
Track 3, Swansong, starts with a nasally, fuzz drenched riff that marches forward into crushing rhythms held together with absolutely grunge soaked vocals. This song carries a fair amount of nostalgia that anyone Millennial, Gen Y, or Gen Next will revel in. Overall, I think this record has multigenerational appeal will be a fun shared listen many.
