By: Stuart Benjamin
Evil Blizzard | facebook |
Evil Blizzard are back (other masked bands are available) with the eagerly awaited follow up to The Dangers of Evil Blizzard. Evil Blizzard are, to my mind, something of a throwback to the early days of British Heavy Metal (in a good way), when bands from ‘Oop North’ dominated world rock music throughout the 1960s and 1970s – lately it seems the Americans have picked up the slack with various stadium filling chancers and in the UK we’ve been struggling to catch up. Sure the popular music rags look to boyfriend bands like Royal Blood to fly the ‘British Metal’ flag, but Evil Blizzard are the real deal – a heavy band that drips psychedelia from every mucky pore.
Their debut caused something of a stir in early 2014, gaining the band many new followers and enthusiastic reviews, me included – Hell! Even Mark E Smith loved them and he hates everybody – so our expectations were running high as the scuzzed-out, psych-rock, gimp-masked Lancastrians crawl out from under our beds in the dead of night with their second album.
Everybody Come to Church has crisper, slicker, production values than it’s predecessor, my feeling is that some of the rough edges have been smoothed off providing the band with a more expansive, commercial sound. Now, don’t shake your head and tut at the phrase ‘commercial sound’, it does the band no harm as their appeal becomes more widespread. Indeed, their appeal should become more widespread as Everybody Come to Church is a very good record indeed: it’s lean, it’s mean, it’s hungry to devour you and spit out your bones.
True, I did miss some of the more fuzzed out scrappy, DIY aesthetic of the debut album. There was still something a bit garage band in The Dangers of Evil Blizzard that was charming, home-grown, and beguiling. However, Rock ‘n’ Roll history is full of bands who, following cult success with a first record, followed it up with a storming second one that everyone remembers more: Doolittle, Funhouse, Paranoid, For Your Pleasure, Rated R – we can add this one to the list. Everybody Come to Church differs from the debut in that it bites, rather than hypnotises; it roars obscenities at you, rather than whispers them in your ear. It’s a sound to fill larger arenas rather than pubs and clubs.
Not that it’s totally devoid of scuzzy, fuzzy, ideas – quite the opposite – once more the band draw on a stoner rock sound, baked in a pie somewhere between Public Image Limited and Black Sabbath, with a healthy dash of space rock sauce on top – the full effect of which is best appreciated when heated at gas-mark Loud or Louder. The mournful Ozzy-esque vocals remain in place, as do the four-million bassists, augmented by no doubt dozens of effects pedals, and some suitably cosmic keyboards and fanatical drumming. The whole Evil Blizzard unit bristles with aural artillery, plays tightly, and pulls no punches.
As you would expect with an album called Everybody Come to Church there’s a great deal of religious imagery to be found across the album. Throughout the band toy with the nature of organized religion as something twisted and sinister. It draws on our misgivings, our suspicions. It references the serial-killers who use religion as justification for their crimes, it draws on cults, on the potential for mindless brainwashing. It plays with the congruous links between religious ecstasy and chemical highs. Indeed, when you consider that we live in the times of the death-cult fanaticism of ISIS, it’s very easy to see day-to-day how the ideals and mores of religion are corrupted for the most despicable purposes – no doubt the irony of this isn’t lost on a bunch of guys who perform in boiler-suits and wear masks, because the record also plays with the fact that Evil Blizzard are indeed, their own cult, which as a fan/acolyte, you become complicit in joining.
One of the strengths of Evil Blizzard – fulfilling the role, perhaps, of Mediaeval jesters – is they manage to consider all this with a large dollop of subversive fun. The themes may have an underlying seriousness but they are dealt with using their trade-mark, vaudeville, straight-to-video comedy shlock-horror. They never seem to take themselves seriously, even though musically, they appear to have upped their game.
The album blasts off then with ‘Are You Evil?’ and any doubts that Evil Blizzard couldn’t follow up The Dangers of… is instantly dispelled. You do notice that wider wall-of-sound especially as the track builds to it’s maniacal laughing conclusion. It blisters across the stereo, basses at full pelt and drums pounding with machine-gun accuracy. The drumming on this record is just awesome, and I found myself drawn to it time and time again.
This is followed up with ‘Stupid People’, which works rather well as a companion piece to the previous record’s ‘Slimy Creatures’ – it’s short and rather brutal, and is probably the last word on a UK electorate who voted in a Conservative majority in the May 2015 general election – Lord knows if it’s about that at all, but it works as an explanation for me. ‘Bow Down And Pray’, slows the tempo – but only for a short while before it launches into its extended, increasingly loud and distorted groove.
Following their innate instinct for dub (well, wouldn’t you with four bassists?) ‘Spread The Fear’ is easily the kind of song that you’d hear John Lydon belt out, examining the notion of fear, the politics of fear, that keep a population mass subdued. So you do nothing? Doing nothing lets evil thrive don’t you know. The hypnotic bass-riff perhaps mirroring the all too easy hypnosis that we all fall into when we fail to challenge our masters.
You’ve probably heard ‘Sacrifice’ already as it was streamed on the Louder Than War website when the new album was announced. Arguably, it’s the sound of a band who decided to pack all their stuff in a van, drive to Sweden, and trample all over Goat’s lawn. You could argue that there’s a similarity between Evil Blizzard and Goat – mostly based on a shared love of band-as-cult dressing up, anonymity, and warped Eastern influenced acid rock, but I think the Blizzard lads just edge it on this track for the sheer raw power of the music. It’s muscular and altogether darker than Goat’s Earth-mother, Gaia, offering.
We then turn to ‘Balloon’, which appears to be nothing more than a song about blowing up a balloon and letting it fly high up in the sky. Lyrically childish, but it’s rendered rather sinister and unnerving in the hands of Blizzard. It’s the kind of trippy track that made them popular in the first place, as is ‘Laughing Gas’ a celebration of natural highs where the maniacal laughter returns. Both ‘Balloon’ and ‘Laughing Gas’ are incredibly good songs, proper psychedelic rock workouts that are the signature feature of this band. ‘Laughing Gas’ is probably my favourite track here, and will no doubt be a real crowd pleaser when thumped out live – and you’ll probably be hearing the repeated chorus of “You’ve got to breath it in! You’ve got to breath it in!” long after it finishes.
‘Watching’ toys with the idea of an omnipotent deity as stalker, always there, always watching, and probably getting off on it. The song is tied to the kind of dusty stoner rock sound that Kyuss dragged out of the desert. It has a tentative start, and builds slowly adding layers of instruments, effects, and vocals before it finally explodes, flying out of your speakers like shrapnel. And that’s it – after eight songs you’re done – I went back and played it over again.
So, what you’ll want to know is ‘Did the album live up to it’s expectations?’ Yes. I’ll even stick my neck out to say that this record is even better than The Dangers of Evil Blizzard. It’s fantastic.
There. I said it. The genie’s out of the bottle now.
