A week after Foo Fighters failed to win Tracks Of The Week with their return-to-action single Rescued, solo Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett did win Tracks Of The Week with Dead And Gone. So congratulations to him.
And congratulations to Rival Sons, whose Guillotine picked up the silver bauble, while Girlschool settled for bronze with Are You Ready? They are all magnificent.
This week is going to be even more exciting. We can feel it. So don't forget to vote via the form at the foot of the page, because your input is what generates that excitement. Thank you in advance.
On your marks, set... ROCK!
Black Rainbows - Children of Fire And Sacrifices
Give this track a whiff, and the tang of sweaty bodies, musky leather and a certain green leaf will be left hanging from your nose hairs; a potent stink. And yes, while it might meet all the usual tropes of stoner rock in a somewhat predictable way; we’re too busy tossing our heads around to care. A cement mixer of distortion-soaked guitars, sleazy vocals, and whalloping percussion tumble together in an unruly clamber to create a weighty slab of Sabbathian, party-heavy stoner doom, and it’s good stuff. An ideal flipswitch for turning any tame social affair into one where beers are thrown, and heads throb the next day.
The Dirty Nil - Celebration
Guitars shriek and sizzle like a switchblade sawing on metal, its burning sparks zipping into the air. ‘Tell me what you want in the whole wide world, I'll do it’ howls Luke Bentham to a feisty backing of chugging riffs, redolent of a spunkier Wolfmother, as robust drums keep things tight and on a steady, self-assured course. Electrifying and flaming in passion, the vocalist explains: “This is our purest love song, unconditional and without mercy”.
3Teeth - Merchant of the Void (feat. Mick Gordon)
This offering from 3Teeth is as hellishly provocative as a party of demons strapped up in bondage gear, and it even comes with a fiery video featuring corkscrewing snakes, oozing lava and towering flame-eyed monsters. And we know what you’re thinking; this would make one hell of a soundtrack for a gun-toting, intergalactic video game, wouldn’t it? Well, while it’s not lined up for any games just yet, it does in fact feature Mick Gordon, the composer behind the metal-infused soundtrack of Doom Eternal.
Stevie R. Pearce - Out Go The Lights
If you’re looking for some ‘good old fashioned rock’n’roll’, you might find Stevie R. Pearce under the dictionary definition with the related phrase ‘tasty riffs’. And tasty riffs here are aplenty, as meaty chords rip and tear in a jumpy, rocking groove, syphoning the same welcome familiarity of opening up a can of your favourite beer. In its accompanying video, Pearce steers his guitar around by its neck as if trying to tame a wild python, while yowling silky vocals in between granular growls as he bellows the song’s main hook ‘out go the lights’.
They Watch Us From The Moon - On The Fields Of The Moon
If there’s one way to greet this track, it’s with a slow-head nod, eyes shut, and with your mind floating off into some unknown space, guided only by its meditative, plodding riffs. Duo vocalists Luna Nemeses and Nova 1001001 (named after the binary code for the decimal number 73) encourage more cosmic wanderings, with their harmonising, almost-chant-like vocals echoing out into the abyss, like the distant hum of some kind of extraterrestrial siren enchanting victims to their untimely deaths.
Grand Royale - Status Doom
Grand Royale make room for mischief on this new track, as they joyously warn: ‘Here comes the maniac, hooray! Hooligan to the max’, before promising of how we’re supposedly ‘doomed’. While we’re not entirely sure what trouble it is they’re so wary of, Status Doom is heaps of fun, as riffs spin in a dizzy cluster, coupled with crashing drums and grainy vocals that rasp out through the wild, punky mix. This track promises that while chaos may always be right around the corner, in the meantime, we still have time to let our hair down, no matter what the future holds.
H.E.A.T - Will You Be
The arrival of H.E.A.T's latest single Will You Be is accompanied by the news that band are to release a new album – their second since the return of original singer Kenny Leckremo – on September 1. Extra Force will be a collection of of new studio tracks, unreleased live recordings and new recording of old favourites once sung by previous frontman Erik "I'm in Skid Row these days" Grönwall. As you might expect, Will You Be is an appropriately gleaming nugget of 24-carat melodic rock, mined direct from band's ever-bountiful seam of rich AOR gold.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - Buy My Round
With a Supertramp-meets-Todd-Rundgren-meets-Harry-Nilsson-on-Broadway kinda vibe, NRATNS's Buy My Round is a first collaboration between Night Sweats keyboardist Mark Shusterman and mainman Rateliff, and very good it is too, the kind of song written by serious songwriters who've spent years listening to other serious songwriters and absorbed all the good stuff. Lovely, grown-up harmonies too. "It’s something that had been bouncing around in my head for a while," says Shusterman. "So I was excited when Nathaniel wanted to help me finish it for this recording." More of this, please!
