CHOICE CUTS: Shallow North Dakota – “The Apparatus Must Be Earthed” (1997)

By: Mark Tremblay

Years Active: 1992 – 2004?

Records to Date: 4

Genre: Noise Rock, Sludge

Labels: Sonic Unyon

The Band:

Biff Young

Dan Dunham

Tony Jacomes

The Review:

Shallow North Dakota is the band that started it all for the onslaught of Canadian sludge/hardcore bands that followed. Everything from KEN mode to The Great Sabatini, their influence is undeniable. Even though this record was released about twenty years ago, “This Apparatus Must be Earthed” is still as heavy today. If you love riffs, this album is bursting at the seams with them. From the hardcore-tinged “Backbone” and “Cuz”, to the steam-rolling “Lubber” and “Replace the Herzog”, this album has a riff for you. Although often imitated, few have come close to the riffs of this band

The highlight of the album is Tony Jacomes, the bands drummer and singer; the patterns he is able to create while singing is simply astonishing. His vocals have this cheese grater quality to them that breaks through the syrupy nature of the band’s music. You can currently find these member in Crux of Aux and Backbiters.



Album Details:

Playing noise-rock outta Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Shallow North Dakota released 4 albums during their tenure, the last of which was a self released double LP entitled “Mob Wheel”

“This Apparatus Must Be Earthed” their 3^rd album was issued via Sonic Unyon on 17/06/1996, an album described by Allmusic as “a series of tracks so sludgy, heavy, stomping, metalesque, and generally hardcore that it's difficult not to be affected by them but an album that exudes a good deal of intelligence behind the album's hammering sludge”

“The Apparatus Must Be Earthed” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Backbone

2). Greenhorn

3). Cuz

4). Perna Du Pau

5). This Apparatus Must Be Earthed

6). The Lubber

7). Speed King

8). Old Type Rider

9). Outside Dakota

10). Replace the Herzog

11). Cigar Box



Choice Cuts: "The Id Will Overcome" - The Abominable Iron Sloth (2010)

By: Aaron Pickford

Years Active: 2004 - ?

Records to Date: 2

Genre: Sludge, Hardcore

Labels: Goodfellow Records,

Undergroove Records,

Black Market Activites,

Metal Blade Records

The Band:

Audrey Pope | Bass

Andre Sanabria | Drums

Justin Godfrey | Guitars, vocals

The Review:

Upon scanning through my music library for an attention grabbing record, I happened upon a record which is still a source of huge excitement for me coming some six years after its original release.  The band encapsulates a memory of a time when buying music was much more interactive, but most of all and most importantly, today’s subject of choice cuts, is all about sheer oppressiveness and an overwhelming brutality. 

The album in question, “The Id Will Overcome” by The Abominable Iron Sloth, was in some ways not destined to happen, coming some 4 years after their self titled debut, the band was dogged by difficulties, perhaps none more so than returning home after a difficult UK tour back in 2006-7 ( I saw them in Sheffield).  The Sloth would also go through line up changes, a change of label and band name, but alas The Sloth (The Abominable not The Indominable) returned with Justin Godrey assembling a new line up, a new home in the shape of Black Market Activities and the resultant album was just colossal.

Aubrey Pope (Bass) from the band recalls of the recording “Basically Guy of  BMA reached out to Justin I believe and said he was such a fan of the last album that he wanted to put out the next one, no matter if he lost money on it. He just wanted to make it happen. He flew us out to Kentucky I believe, to work with Chris Owens. We slept in the studio there for a week and basically wrote half of it while recording. Dre (Drum) had already been in the band and I joined when Justin moved back to California. We had been friends since I was in high school before The Sloth started so it just made sense to throw me in the mix I guess.”

What “The Id Will Overcome” presented to the listener was predominantly anguish and misery, due in no small part to the tortured performance of main man Justin Godfrey, but the despair of the record was matched by the sheer weight of the music that accompanied it.  The drums were minimalist, unobtrusive but snappy, with a dense and organic feel, which married well with the obese nature of the riffs, and what they lacked in technicality they made up for in sheer elephantine girth, coupled with a bass tone that undulated your skin into pulp.    

The lineage of the band can be traced most notably to heavyweights Will Haven, and Armed for Apocalypse but the band was very much cut from the cloth of Godfrey, the driving force and sole original member.  The album was ugly; it was visceral but most importantly completely absorbing.  Perhaps similar in tone vocally to Iron Monkey, The Sloth were not your atypical sludge band, this was not southern fried but rather leaning more to the lineage of Will Haven, inherently down tuned and groove oriented but vitriolic and hateful. 

Album highlights of which they are many include “A Nation of Ignorants” which immediately locks you in with spite, riffs lacerating you like barbed wire and then the track veers into a maelstrom of violence and groove.  The aforementioned minimalism of the record, to me is what truly resonates; the album is sparse and dissonant, with riffs hitting you with blunt force, managing to devastate with weight and repetition rather than pace.  As a whole, when firing on all cylinders, The Abominable Iron Sloth, take a broken bottle, make you eat it and somehow make it enjoyable.  Worship at the alter of The Sloth and remember “A Family That Slays Together, Stays Together”

Album Details:

“The Id Will Overcome”, is second full length and was released on April 27^th 2010 via Black Market Activites, the press wire remarked “raw, intense anthems rear their heads up out of feedback swells, like violent storms exploding out of thick Pacific Northwest gloom. With minimal tools - filthy guitars, primal drums, and unnerving vocals that convey true horror - AIS create brief, majestic epics that force heads to bang and teeth to gnash. Imagine the infectious simplicity of early Nirvana and the unhinged gut-spilling of Eyehategod.

The album was Recorded at Headbanging Kill Your Mama Music, Louisville, KY, by Chris Owens and mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance.

“The Id Will Overcome” CD//DD track listing:

1) I Destroy
2) A Nation Of Ignorants
3) Slugs In A Salt Circle
4) Two Black Helicopters
5) Mongoroid
6) Nineties Male
7) The ID Will Overcome
8) Big Iron Door (Lyrics by Charles Manson)
9) Tramp Stamp
10) Killimanjaro Dreamin'
11) Heterodox Nonconformists
12) The Timely Death Of Billy Mays

Band info: facebook

Choice Cuts: Neurosis - "Through Silver in Blood" (1996)

By: Chris Bull

Years Active: 1985 - Present

Records to Date:  11

Genre: Post Metal | Experimental |

Progressive | Sludge | Ambient |

Hardcore | Crust

Labels: Neurot Recordings |

Relapse Records

The Band:

Scott Kelly | guitar, vocals, percussion

Steve Von Till | guitar, vocals, percussion

Noah Landis | keyboards, synthesizer, sampling

Dave Edwardson | bass guitar, backing vocals

Jason Roeder | drums, percussion

Pete Inc. | visuals

Additional musicians

John Goff | bagpipes

Martha Burns | cello

Kris Force | violin

The Review:

It has been 20 years since the release of the monumental 'Through Silver in Blood' and its power and influence is as strong today as it ever was.

From the opening mechanical noise of the title track (Noah Landis' first appearance on a Neurosis record) it's evident that something special is happening. Managing to make a 12 minute song simultaneously feel like a flash and a lifetime, this is the sound of a cohesive unit firing on all cylinders. Tracks like the raging 'Eye', the decadent 'Aeon' and the incredible 'Locust Star' strike a chord with the audience with their sheer force and ethereal overtones and are still met with rapturous cheers and applause when they're played.

The epic 'Purify' and 'Strength Of Fate' serve as lengthy legs of the journey while brief interludes of 'Rehumanize' and 'Become The Ocean' serve as pit stops that enhance your awareness along the way. It closes with the often overlooked and underrated 'Enclosure in Flame' and leaves your spirit obliterated...but refreshed, regenerated and ready to begin again, awakened.

While many bands up to and throughout 1996 had travelled well worn paths to reach the top of the mountain, Neurosis had been carving stone, digging earth and building, slowly and meticulously for 10 years, through this, everyone realised Neurosis had made their own mountain and were now at the top. While many feel that this and 1999's 'Times Of Grace' remain their best work, they seem to have missed the point, 'Through Silver In Blood' is a one of a kind album, trying to repeat it would be a foolish and unrewarding move. There will never be another Neurosis, they've continued to push the envelope, adding more earth to their already towering mountain, they sit, godlike, watching the world spin.

Album Details:

“Through Silver in Blood” is the fifth album from Neurosis. The album was released on April 2, 1996, and was their first record to be released under Relapse Records.  The album was recorded at Brilliant and Coast, SF and produced by Neurosis and Billy Anderson. Mixed at Different Fur, SF and mastered by George at Fantasy, Berkley. Following it’s original release there has been 22 versions released in total, with pressings by Iron City Records, (1996) Music For Nations (1997), Rocris Disc (1998), Ritual Records (2002), Relapse Records (2006), Neurot Recordings (2009), Relapse Records (2011) and more recently (2016) the first repress on vinyl for 10 Years to celebrate Relapse Records 20^th Anniversary

During an interview with “Chronicles of Chaos” in 1996, bassist Dave Edwardson was asked “What is the most important thing that you want a Neurosis fan to get out of this record? To which his response was

DE: “For people to be inspired by it. Maybe with the emotions we reveal people can relate to it and get through that shit. To have a part of it speak to their deeper self or soul. That is what we'd like to see come out of it.”

“Through Silver in Blood” track listing:

1). Through Silver in Blood

2). Rehumanize

3). Eye

4). Purify

5). Locust Star

6). Strength of Fates

7). Become the Ocean

8). Aeon

9). Enclosure in Flame

Band info: facebook

Choices Cuts: Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (2008)

Years Active: 1989–1997, 2003–present

Records to Date: 14

Genre: Drone, experimental rock,

         post-rock, minimalist

Label: Sub Pop, No Quarter, Or,

Southern Lord, Blast First/Mute

The Band:

• Dylan Carlson – electric guitars, amplifier
• Steve Moore – acoustic grand piano, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer electric piano
• Don McGreevy – bass guitar, double bass
• Adrienne Davies – drums, percussion

Guest musicians

• Bill Frisell – electric guitar on tracks 1, 4, and 5
• Milky Burgess - slide guitar on "Junkyard Priest

Review:

There are some records you forget about, there are some records that make the Top 20 list of the year. There are some records that are inextricably linked to a time and a place. Then there’s a few small bundle of records that transport you to your own personal universe. Earth makes such records as a matter of course, and ‘Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’ is at the very pinnacle of that, the transcendent space Dylan Carlson and his cohorts occupy. Like most of the records featured in Choice Cuts, this is best experienced in the vinyl format; delicately pulling out the record from its leather bound case and reverently placing it on the turntable is a tactile experience to be savoured. But even if you’re just mundanely hitting play on your iPod, the end result is the same: complete bliss.

The reason for this serenity is simple – Earth can do more with one note than most bands do with a million. At a tempo of a sunlit siesta they languidly yawn and stretch a chord progression as heavy as long-forgiven sins, and it’s utterly gripping. ‘Omens And Portents I: The Driver’ is like spotting a coiled snake in the desert. You’re not sure if it’s sleeping or if it’s waiting to strike, but you’re immediately struck by the beauty and the power of control as the snare gently rattles and guitars plugged into dusty valve amps. There’s no rush to impose themselves here; like a mountain, there are there dominating the senses. Elsewhere, heavy piano chords give the feeling this is a somewhat more classically inclined work, and rightly so. For all the talk about being pioneers of drone, there is really nothing like Earth. No one else who can see the way to combine psychedelia and gospel organ music together with slow cyclical chords into one coherent vision that is ‘The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’.

Words by: Steve R. Jones

You can pick up the record everywhere now

Album Details:

‘The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull’ is the fifth full-length studio album by the band Earth, released in 2008 via Southern Lord Records.  The album was produced with Randall Dunn, recorded and mixed at Avast/Aleph Studios.  The artwork is by Arik Roper, who as previously worked with Sleep and High On Fire, to name but a few. The title of the record  is a reference to Judges 14:8 in the Bible. It tells the story of Samson, who tore apart a lion and when he returned, noticed a swarm of bees and some honey on the lion's carcass.

'The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’ track listing:

1). Omens And Portents 1: The Driver (09:06)

2). Rise To Glory (05:47)

3). Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine) (08:01)

4). Engine Of Ruin (06:28)

5). Omens And Portents II: Carrion Crow (08:04)

6). Hung From The Moon (07:44)

7). The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (08:15)

8). Junkyard Priest (Bonus Vinyl Track)(07:13)

2XLP pressing is 4980 total. (3k black, 1k clear (for European Distribution only), 980 Gold (mailorder).

For more information:

http://www.facebook.com/thronesanddominions

http://instagram.com/earthseattle

http://www.thronesanddominions.com/

http://twitter.com/earthseattle

Choice Cuts: Tool - Ænima (1996)

Years Active: 1990–present

Records to Date: 4

Genre: Prog, metal

Label: Tool Dissectional,

Volcano, Zoo

The Band:

• Danny Carey | drums, percussion, samples
• Justin Chancellor | bass
• Adam Jones | guitars
• Maynard James Keenan | vocals

Additional musicians

• Marko Fox | vocals on "Die Eier von Satan"
• Eban Schletter | organ on "Intermission"
• Chris Pitman  | additional synthesizer on "Third Eye

Review:

As a body of work, ‘Lateralus’ is always hailed as progressive metal band Tool’s shining moment. The record is constantly praised for its ambient flowing soundscapes and its unmatched flow which transports the listener like a lost dreamer through a wave of mad, weird and in some cases cerebral moments which weave together seamlessly.  However, the album which I think captures the band at their most awe inspiring is their preceding work ‘Ænima’

The album is everything that makes the band so great in one 77 minute burst. Containing some of the bands best work self contained, with the likes of the crushing ‘Hooker With A Penis’, the soaring ‘Stinkfist’ and the Scientology bashing title track in which front man Maynard James Keenan delivers one of his most powerful and rapid vocal performances of his career. But ‘Ænima’ was also the point where the band began their expansion into the progressive metal behemoths that they soon became, with the likes of ‘Pushit’ being a hint at were the band were preparing to head musically and the majestic closing track ‘Third Eye’ which features excerpts from the late great Bill Hicks.

Even though the album contains more expansive work than their previous album ‘Undertow’, the riffs from that album certainly made the journey over to Ænima. The likes of ‘Jimmy’ contains some of the filthiest, crushing and most punishing riffs that guitarist Adam Jones has ever written and in turn stopped the album becoming too stale.  Bringing the record back to crowd in between the bizarre sound effect laded interludes, featuring such things as a crying baby and an angry voicemail message.

Overall, “Ænima” to me is everything that my favourite band is capable of in one place. Sure ‘Undertow’ arguably has better songs and ‘Lateralus’ and ‘10,000 days’ have more to offer from a musically stand point, but it is “Ænima” that put the band on the map and show cased everything the band could do and how well they could do it.

Words by: Dan O’ Brien

Album Details

Ænima is the second full-length studio album by Tool. It was released in vinyl format on September 17, 1996 and in compact disc format on October 1, 1996 through Zoo Entertainment. The album was produced by David Bottrill.  The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart upon its initial release, and was certified triple platinum by the RIAA on March 4, 2003.

‘Ænima’ track listing:

1). Stinkfist (05:11)

2). Eulogy (08:28)

3). H. (06:07)

4). Useful Idiot (00:38)

5). Forty-Six & 2 (06:04)

6). Message to Harry Manback (01:53)

7). Hooker with a Penis (04:33)

8). Intermission (00:56)

9). Jimmy (05:24)

10). Die Eier (02:17)

11). Pushit (09:55)

12). Cesaro (01:26)

13). Ænema (06:39)

14). (-) ions (04:00)

15). Third Eye (13:47)

For more information:

http://toolband.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ToolMusic

Choice Cuts: Swans - Cop (1984)

Years Active: 1982 – 1997, 2010 – Present

Records to Date: 13

Genre: Noise Rock, No Wave, Industrial

Label: Young God, Neutral, Homestead, Caroline,
Uni/MCA, Invisible, Atavistic, Mute

The Band:

• Michael Gira | vocals, tapes, production
• Harry Crosby | bass guitar
• Norman Westberg | guitar
• Roli Mosimann | drums, production

Review:

A ritual of humiliation. An endurance test.  A glorification of submission, even as it is repeatedly proven weak, unsafe, and horrific.  An ugly tombstone over buried happiness.

The opening riff of ‘Half Life’ never ends, grinding you down as effectively as it grinds the laborer of the lyrics, passive and crushed by an obscene but far from otherworldly tyrant. In fact, the real-ness of their pessimism, unburdened (on this album, at least) by concerns for the metaphysical, adds an urgency to lyrics such as "ambition is senseless don’t make a wrong move work with a purpose"...sounding for all the world like a fellow prisoner of the Machine whispering the "rules" to a newcomer, an outsider, in an effort to help him understand his place and the hopelessness of any attempt to deviate from the Work. The constant downward trajectory of the main phrase drags you ever deeper into this machinery, into the hole. A pervasive atmosphere of meaningless toil and futility numbs you into accepting it.

The lurching stutter of ‘Job’ (track 2) splits this inelegant droning with a confused "waking up" that slowly solidifies into a grooving chant, an effort to regain some feeling of the natural, of something organic. From there it begins slipping into and out of rhythm while equally wavering between the elemental and the structural, between tearing apart and desperately gripping. The song culminates with an exhausted wearing down, carrying the burden of heartache as a mantra until collapse.

The third track ‘Why Hide’ opens on firmer ground, insistent bass and solid, compact drumming providing an ominous foreground for the exorcising of an overwhelming lyrical nihilism. Bathing in a crushing lockstep, Michael Gira shouts why hide the lie?? Over and over as if THIS was the moment he was waiting for to ask the question of his abuser. As if his oppressor was looking through him, dead-eyed, as he recorded the vocals.

Barely a pause for breath between tracks, but those silences are a welcome glimpse outside the isolation this album evokes. These are not dance songs. You are fitted for the collar from the first seconds and it never relents in its exertion of power and domination. The listener is never in a position of control, is never allowed to relate to the dominant perspective even when (especially when) those perspectives are shown. There are only brief moments where the pain and discipline let up to take a deep breath before intensifying. ‘Clay Man’ wastes little time establishing a musical corollary to the dissonant drive into sexual submission. The ghoulish lines "get into this car bow your head down" over painfully grinding mechanical drones twist the Work alluded to in previous tracks into an obedient acceptance. Unexpected chokes and lunges in the noise feel like the moment a bone breaks or a dentist wrenches a tooth free, the onset of a panic attack, an unwilling orgasm. The last minute brings with it an undeniable pulsing heaviness that, almost ironically, forces you to bob your head in time as it sucks the air from your lungs. Maximum volume, indeed.

‘Your Property’ disguises itself well as a rebellious shout at Control, until you realise it as the desperate howls of someone learning it was their own weakness that led to control in the first place. Authority is corrupt and corrupts, Authority is worshipped nonetheless. To be trapped in this is perceived as an ultimate weakness and the vocals grow harsher, the music more nakedly aggressive as it briefly loses a pretence of subtlety. Inward contempt is far more malign than any exterior assault.

Track six, ‘Cop’. This is where it gets dark.  It slithers in sinister, sleazy, initially maintaining a calm demeanour. Proclaiming "the punishment fits the crime" and judging the guilty in a combination holding cell/execution chamber over an unhealthy melody that, despite being nearly atonal, subtly reinforces the infectious reptilian menace of this song's mood. As the beating continues, the music keeps steady as a metronome, placidly describing atrocity with an almost-accessible laid back throbbing. Through the primary section the perspective never fully sets on victim or bystander until finally collapsing into a hypnotic, martial agony that (in a ferocious dichotomy) gradually but spectacularly crumbles and bursts until nothing is left.

After all the build-up of intensity, all the intentional and directed increase in depth and hostility, ‘Butcher’ is all hanging tension. A pause in a relentless attack on the Self juuuusst long enough to see outside and warn someone. "Don’t be a whore you could be screwing yourself", advice given from a position of intimate knowledge of a great darkness. The music never seems to resolve, solidifying the uncomfortable and unsettling feelings elicited by words like "you're in the wrong skin I don't recognise your smell" and "you're too close".

Halting, squalling bursts of feedback scream above a strangled, sluggish drone that sets the stage for the final catharsis of degradation. ‘Thug’ is confrontational and provocative in a sneering passive aggression. "Obedience pays if you use it right", but "the only real thing's misery"…..words finally breaking down into paroxysm and even a seven second fade out feels suffocating and endless.

Having this album on repeat for a few hours in order to write about it pulled me through a significantly more visceral and challenging experience than I expected, even having heard the record quite a few times before. It forces one to inhabit all of the negative spaces it describes in ways most art (and even a great deal of the hostile stimuli referred to in the lyrics) can't come close to replicating, and it left me shaken, stretched thin, and feeling sickly afterward in such a way that almost overwhelms any possible cathartic value.

Words by: James Harris

You can pick up the record everywhere now

Album Details

Cop is the second studio album by American post-punk band Swans. It was released in 1984, through record label K.422.  AllMusic wrote of the album: "Ugly, compelling and overpowering, Cop remains the pinnacle of Swans' brutal early days", calling it "quite possibly one of the darkest recordings ever done

Cop was remastered by Michael Gira in 1992 for release on CD along with the Young God EP. The currently available edition combines Cop and Young God with the albums Greed and Holy Money. The packaging for all issues states that the recording is "designed to be played at maximum volume".

'Cop’ track listing:

1). Half Life 04:18

2). Job 04:46

3). Why Hide 05:50

4). Clay Man 05:05

5). Your Property 04:48

6). Cop 06:47

7). Butcher 04:02

8). Thug 05:12

For more information:

http://swans.pair.com/

http://younggodrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SwansOfficial 

Choice Cuts: Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway

Years active: 1998-Present

Records to Date: 7 LPs, 1 EP, 1 Split

Genre: Post-Metal, Sludge Metal

Labels: Earache, Indie Recordings

The Band:

• Andreas Johansson | Bass
• Thomas Hedlund | Drums, percussion
• Fredrik Kihlberg | Guitar, vocals
• Magnus Lindberg | Drums, recording and mixing
• Erik Olofsson | Guitar
• Johannes Persson | Guitar, vocals and lyrics
• Klas Rydberg | Vocals
• Anders Teglund | keyboards and electronics

Other personel:

• Martin Gustafson | Backing vocals on "Marching to the Heartbeats"
• David Sundqvist | Intro loop on "Dim" and programmed drums on "Dark City, Dead Man"

Review:

For most bands, the first few albums usually show their influences on their sleeves before stepping out into their own sound. Cult of Luna's 2006 masterpiece “Somewhere Along the Highway” is their first record that significantly departed from the Neurosis/Isis post-metal template and fully embraced their differences between them and their contemporaries. A concept album loosely based on the novel Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Croetzee, “Somewhere Along the Highway” deals with themes of male loneliness and disassociation from society.

It begins with the minimalist atmosphere of “Marching to the Heartbeats” which displays sparse vocals and a surprising lack of percussion. An unusual slow tension build throughout the song flows directly into the next track “Finland” which starts with a military drumbeat under splashy chords; laying out a powerful melody which builds into the screaming vocals which dominated their earlier releases. The tension continues to build into an expected “huge riff” section and this is where Cult of Luna first departs from the expectations of the genre and lets you know this album is going to be different. Transitioning into another minimalist section where chords ring out over an almost jazzy backbeat, the strong melodies which are a hallmark of this album begin pouring in. Slowly building using songwriting reminiscent of classical music, by reintroducing instrumentation into a shift into the next section, while continuing to build tension so when the distortion kicks in, the payoff hits that much harder.

After the close of “Finland,” the third track “Back to Chapel Town” begins with an airy section reminiscent of the first track. However, unlike the previous tracks, Cult of Luna avoids a common album pitfall in this song by beginning to build a little quicker once the drums kick in, making sure the listener does not get used to a particular songwriting trick. In addition the previous songs switched between loud/quiet relatively frequently and once this track goes loud it stays loud until the end.

The fourth track “And With Her Came The Birds” is a departure from Cult of Luna's sound and from earlier albums in particular with a minimalist almost folksy vibe as the song progresses. The raw production of this album really shines through on the acoustic section in the middle of the track significantly enhancing the mood with raw acoustic instrumentation and confessional level vocals. Despite being one of the shorter tracks, and not involving the huge dynamic shifts of the rest of the album, this intimate interlude breaks everything up nicely and sets up the vastness of the closing three songs nicely.

The final three tracks are where this album really shines. Covering huge dynamic sweeps with epic songwriting ‘Thirtyfour’, ‘Dim’, and ‘Dark City Dead Man’ each make a powerful statement. I feel like you can't really review these tracks separately because they flow together so well. The sections in these songs are so moving you get the feeling that the entire album was a build to these moments. My personal favorite song on the album is the second to last track ‘Dim’. Which starts with a truly awesome instrumental section with some great counterpoint, and culminates with a huge grooving riff the type of which Cult of Luna explored further on their subsequent release “Eternal Kingdom.”

I was lucky enough to see Cult of Luna on their last US tour and they played the album closer ‘Dark City Dead Man’ and it was absolutely huge live. Interestingly there is a Czech pianist who does a cover of this entire album, which I linked below, that is also pretty amazing and helps shine a light on just how good the melodies really are.

In closing, this is what I would call a “deep” album in that it's a little hard to get into but the more you listen to it the more you stay with it. This is the kind of record that you might not be into until you hit a down moment in your life and need something to take you on a journey. I encourage anyone that hasn't heard it to wait for that moment, light up if that's your thing, lie down, and go somewhere.

Words & Recommendation by: Chris Tedor

You can pick up a copy in the usual places

Album Details:

“Somewhere Along the Highway” is Cult of Luna's fourth full length released via Earache Records on April 24^th 2006. The album was rated 5^th on Decibel magazine's top albums of 2006.

Music by Cult of Luna.
Produced and arranged by Cult of Luna.

Recorded Winter 2005 at the Octagon Barn and Tonteknik Recording, Umeå, Sweden.
Mixed at Tonteknik Recording.
Mastered at Tonteknik Recording.
Graphic design and photo associate Erik Olofsson

“Somewhere Along the Highway” track Listing:

1). Marching to the Heartbeats 03:13

2). Finland 10:46

3). Back to Chapel Town 07:09

4). And with Her Came the Birds 05:58

5). Thirtyfour 10:00

6). Dim 11:46

7). Dark City Dead Man 15:49