Album Type : Full Length
Date Released : 25/10/2013
Label : Self Release
We Are Here, album track listing :
1. Indian 04:56
2. Amnesia 03:07
3. Smoker 06:06
4. Columbus 04:12
5. Anchor 04:14
6. Seven 09:17
2. Amnesia 03:07
3. Smoker 06:06
4. Columbus 04:12
5. Anchor 04:14
6. Seven 09:17
Bio :
NYC psychedelic doom trio, BLACKOUT,
is pleased to announce the release of their We Are Here debut! Recorded at Vacation Island Studio with
engineer/producer Rob Laakso (Diamond Nights, Swirlies, Kurt Vile),We Are Here offers up six gristly hymns of bottom
heavy, head-throbbing, red-eyed awesomeness. Appropriately described as “thick,
riff-led heavy psych that blends Sleep‘s stoner heyday and classic Melvins
stomp with a touch of Rob Crow‘s vocal compression in Goblin Cock,” by The
Obelisk who further commends their “riffy stoner traditionalism,”BLACKOUT is in it to win it and
will undoubtedly be knocking on your door like a hairy, black clad Jehovah’s
Witness who wants to smoke you out and listen to Sabbath records.
Comments the band in a collective statement: “We are really excited to
get this record out. We’re not a methodical band and our biggest hope was that
the record sounded like us in the jam room… heavy, slow, and drunk. So that’s
exactly what we did… drank lots of beer and let Rob do his thing. The whole
session was pretty blurry but we’re psyched with the results.”
The Band :
Taryn Waldman | Drumz
Christian Gordy | Vocals/Guitars
Justin Sherrell |Bass/Vocals
Christian Gordy | Vocals/Guitars
Justin Sherrell |Bass/Vocals
Review :
Sometimes, you need a little bit of honest-to-goodness
primordial metal. No pretence, no
airs and graces, just crushing doom, feedback-saturated hunks of raw
metal. This is where Brooklyn
three-piece instrument destroyers Blackout come in. Their debut LP ‘We Are Here’ has bashed me
like a club and dragged me back to its cave to examine its crude, yet creative,
works. Put on your best animal skins-
it’s about to get primitive.
From the onset of opener ‘Indian’, the feedback wails and bawls like a mammoth caught in a
razorblade snowstorm. Then this RIFF –
and it thoroughly deserves every capital letter here – pounds in with a metric
ton of musical weight. If this RIFF were
a vehicle, it would be one of those massive earth movers you see in
quarries. If it were an animal, it would
be a mammoth. An angry, smoke-spewing
mammoth. As far as doom album openers
go, you will not find a better one than this, in my eyes. It’s perfect.
‘We Are Here’ feels like a bold statement in many senses. The music tolls its presence on the scene
with glorious, distortion-choking intent: check out ‘Smoker’ to not only hear, but feel the band’s explosive
desires. Guitarist/vocalist Christian
Gordy seems to call to us from the dawn of Time on this track, goading us to
greet him in his spacey verses, only to be met with a Big Bang punch in the
choruses. Feedback is the fourth member
of the band too: used to such screechingly good effect it strums on the
heartstrings of every EyeHateGod fan out there, who will no doubt find a new
love in Blackout.
If the five preceding tracks make a bold statement,
final song ‘Seven’ makes a bold
statement while riding on the back of an iron-armoured Tyrannosaurus Rex. At over nine minutes long, it is a doom epic,
emulating classic Sabbath and also throwing in its own fuzz-filled mania which
I find so ridiculously appealing.
Drummer Taryn Waldman and bassist Justin Sherrell are just amazing on
this: the former slamming on her drums with a tribal passion, while the latter
pours on the deep bass lines like he’s laying down the final notes of
mankind. It’s heaviness on a truly
mind-imploding scale, and the most beautiful ugly music I’ve ever heard.
Blackout are just starting on their musical odyssey,
and ought to have their snail-paced doom demons listened to by anybody with a
desire to hear great music. ‘We Are Here’ is six tracks of the best
primeval doom metal this year has to offer, an album just waiting to show your
speakers what amazing things it can do for you.
Listen, and let your mind be transported to a better time and
place.
Words by : Chris Markwell
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