Stoner Rock #60

 

Some tunes for you to peruse.

Hope you enjoy!

ULTRA'S SUNDAY STONER SOUNDS

CANADA !!!!!

First up: RUSH and then LOVERBOY!  

sHEAVY and ELECTRIC MAGMA

sHEAVY, from Newfoundland, home of the Beothuk!!!
Every album by Sheavy is highly worthy, but Disfigurine in particular is underrated.  Here is the epic "War on Titan".  Evan Chaulker kills it, especially his melodic soloing in the last minute and a half of the tune.  I have to think Evan was a big Michael Schenker fan.  This album represented new ground for Sheavy at the time.  

Now, from Toronto, it's ELECTRIC MAGMA.  They sound like nobody else, and nobody else sounds like them.  That right there is difficult to accomplish after so many years of the evolution of  rock music.  It's hard to imagine that a band this great is so obscure, but I'm tellin' a few people about them; how about you?  

So many great Electric Magma tunes are NOT posted on Youtube, but this one is:  it's called "Bongtastic Beerfoolery."  

Check in for some more international stoner rock next Sunday morning.  Until then, study your heavy metal textbooks, dammit!!!!

-Ultra   

(ps: did anybody google Beothuk?)

SHEAVY – The Best of Sheavy : A Misleading Collection

Two new Sheavy albums in less than a year’s time – I feel like it’s my birthday.  Sheavy is one of my top four stoner rock bands.  (Nightstalker, Sheavy, Solace and Wo Fat.  Why those four?  Because they’re my favorites, that’s why; just a matter of taste.)  Anybody who says that Sheavy is trying to sound like Sabbath doesn’t know their Sabbath very well.  Yes, there are a few tunes that are clearly Sabbath inspired, but just a few (Electric Sleep is clearly inspired by the first two Sabbath albums, and Last of the V8 Interceptors contains seems to be inspired by Never Say Die).  The band members are big Sabbath fans, just like so many of us.  And Steve has a similar voice to Ozzy, but no one who knows their Sabbath would ever confuse Steve’s voice for Ozzy’s.  Did you ever watch the “Simpsons did it” episode of South Park?  The main idea of the episode is that the Simpsons have been around for so many years and have had so many great creative ideas, no one should be faulted for taking inspiration from particular Simpsons shows.  That being said, I don’t think this new album sounds much like Sabbath at all.

                A short list of what’s cool about “The Best of Sheavy, a Misleading Collection”:

                                It’s called “The Best of Sheavy” but it’s all new material

                                Who the hell knows who is on the album cover?  

                                It’s really heavy

                                It does deserve consideration as Sheavy’s best album

                Evan Chalker is rapidly becoming one of my favorite guitar players.  He is extremely subtle about the way he kicks ass, but boy is he a talent!  His solos are sparse but SO tasteful.  His tone is impeccable at all times, and he pretty much always plays the perfect thing at the perfect time.  The track names are as follows:  track one is 0000000001, track two is 0000000011, track three is 0000000111, and so on (track 10 is ten ones).  I don’t think they are supposed to represent binary numbers, because the numbers would translate to: 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127, 255, 511 and 1023.  The last Sheavy release took me by surprise and took me a while to appreciate.  This album, howev er, I fell in love with on the very first listen.  On my first listen I “favorited” eight out of the ten tracks, and by the second listen they were all marked as favorites on my mp3 player.  I would describe the sound of this album as a cross between the two previous albums, Disfigurine and Moons In Penumbra.  There is great transition between the tracks – in fact, you might think that tracks one through three were just one tune, as each just flows right into the next without hesitation.    

                Dan Moore was such a great guitar player, yet Steve Hennessey managed to replace him with a talent just as great.  Evan’s style is different than Dan’s, yet Sheavy has managed to maintain their heaviness and distinctiveness.   I am grateful that there is a band as cool as Sheavy out there, and I am hopeful that some of you will go out and support this band by picking up a copy of “The Best of Sheavy” at fredsrecords.com or allthatisheavy.com.  Sheavy should be selling out major venues, but is playing small clubs, and recording performances at a high school auditorium and a Masonic temple.  If you like what you hear in the video, check out the band’s complete discography (you will be blown away), and spread the word - SHEAVY!!!

SHEAVY is
Steve Hennessey - vocals
Evan Chaulker - guitar
Jason Williams - drums
Glenn Tizzard – bass

My Sheavy collection  (Celestial Hi-Fi and Sychronized are out of order, but I'm not taking the picture over!  I am also missing a physical copy of Blue Sky Mind – keeping my eyes open)

Ultra Review: Double Shot Day!

SHEAVY: Moons In Penumbra

    I thought that Sheavy had run its course.  No updates to the website in a couple of years, no news.  Then in December I saw on the band’s website that “Moons In Penumbra” was available (first on cassette?! and then on CD), and I felt like Christmas had come early.  I ordered the album from the record store in Newfoundland as directed on the website.  Sheavy is one of those bands where I need to own the physical copy of each album.  Not only do I want to be able to show off my Sheavy collection to my friends, I truly want this band to have my money.  They have fans around the globe, yet are so small-time that bad weather delays CD shipments, and a brand new album comes out only on cassette!

     Now about the album.  On first listen I was completely underwhelmed.  When I heard “The Machine That Won The War”, and “Republic?” the first time, those albums blew me away immediately and continued to blow me away listen after listen.  “Moons In Penumbra” was nothing like these.  I thought it was slow and unimaginative.  I had expectations but they were unfulfilled.  I told my friends who love Sheavy how disappointed I was. 

     I have had albums that “crept up on me” before, so I didn’t give up on the album.  Sheavy is one of my all-time favorite bands after all.  I added Moons In Penumbra to my weekly playlist, shuffled in with a bunch of other albums and listened to it with volume and high quality speakers.  I find this a particularly great way to explore an album.  When a song comes up in a shuffled mix, it can catch you off-guard, and enter your realm of perception through the back door.  This allowed me to hear each tune without my preconceived expectations for what Sheavy should sound like.  I should have known that Sheavy would not put out a sub-standard album.  Moons In Penumbra is less about the riff, and more melodic than I had expected.  Steve Hennessey’s vocals are flawless on this album.  Evan Chalker’s guitar playing is subtly heavy and melodic at the same time.  The album’s production quality is excellent.  I have continued to include Moons In Penumbra to my weekly playlist week after week, and appreciate it more and more as time goes by.

    Final assessment:  If you love Sheavy you must own this one, just like you needed to own every other one.  Moons In Penumbra will not be what you expect, but give it a chance and appreciate the fact that Steve Hennessey has managed to surround himself with great musicians album after album.  I’m not sure where Moons In Penumbra ranks in the grand scheme of things for me;  it is not my favorite Sheavy album, but it is of very high quality and it’s new Sheavy, which means it’s going to keep getting lots of plays.

 SHEAVY is
Steve Hennessey - vocals
Evan Chaulker - guitar
Jason Williams - drums
Glenn Tizzard - bass

THE ULTRA ELECTRIC MEGA GALACTIC: 
Self-Titled Album

     Awesome.  Non-stop, unadulterated ass-kicking from beginning to end.  This album really made me appreciate how bad-ass Ed Mundell really is.  I have always loved Monster Magnet and each of the Ed Mundell Atomic Bitchwax albums, but still didn’t realize what a great song writer and how versatile he is.  This album is entirely instrumental, with the occasional sound-bite.  It is like a Karma to Burn album without any awkward moments.  There is a nice variety of up-tempo jams and mood music, with Ed tearing it up the whole time.  If you are having friends over, try leading off a playlist with “Exploration Team”; you’ll hear a lot of “this is awesome – who’s this?”  “The Third Eye” is an eleven and a half minute masterpiece that keeps evolving without getting monotonous.  There is even an updated version of “Hello To Oblivion”, a track from the popular “High Volume: The Stoner Rock Collection” released by High Times records back in 2004.  There was a lot of attention to detail in the recording of this album, and it deserves volume and a set of high quality speakers to be played through.  Enjoy! 

THE ULTRA ELECTRIC MEGA GALACTIC is

psychedelic guitar from Ed Mundell, (Monster Magnet, The Atomic Bitchwax).
Members include Rick Ferrante (Sasquatch), Collyn McCoy (Trash Titan, Otep)