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Posts Tagged ‘Black Moth’

Watch: ’Skull & Pistons’ by Sky Valley Mistress

Posted: 20 January 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: Black Moth, Master of Reality, New Heavy Souds, Quens of the Stone Age, Skull & Pistons, Sky Valley Mistress, video srteam

Sky Valley Mistress recently caught our attention supporting Black Moth at their Leeds farewell show in December, and having signed to New Heavy Sounds, their debut single and its attendant video feels like the passing of a baton.

Sky Valley Mistress spent 10 days recording at Dave Catching’s Rancho de la Luna studio in California, hanging out with the likes of Hutch (QOTSA’s ex sound man), Bingo (Mojave Lords), Chris Goss (Masters of Reality), Peaches and Arctic Monkeys who also dropped by during the stay.

Footage from their time out there is featured in the video for new single ’Skull & Pistons’. Guitarist Sean ‘Starsky’ Berry comments, ‘Skull & Pistons is about Max’s (drummer) leather jacket and the cool things he’s done in it, the video shows the band’s coolest journey to the desert to record their debut album, it was an obvious choice for a debut single and although this jacket is literally now falling of his shoulders it makes a cameo in this film.’

Watch the video for ’Skull & Pistons’ here:

Sky Valley Mistress are 4 young upstarts from Blackburn, Lancashire, who have been honing their chops over the years up & down the country, and showcasing their blistering live set at Download, Camden Rocks and Sound City along with supports with The Subways, Cadillac Three, Earthlings and Band Of Skulls amongst others.

In fact, SVM could easily hold their own against the likes of Jim Jones, Rival Sons, Royal Blood, BRMC or any other rockers greasy or otherwise.

Still only in their mid 20s, you can only assume, on listening to this debut, that these young turks made that journey to those legendary crossroads and did the dirty deed with the dark one himself, such is the level of musicianship and vocal prowess on show here.

So how did they hook up with Dave Catching? That’s a story in itself. It was Halloween & the band all went to an Eagles of Death Metal gig in fancy dress as members of EODM and their friends. After the show the band blagged their way backstage. The boys in EODM loved their costumes and SVM gave Dave Catching some of their tracks and asked for him to check them out.

Dave later came back to them and said he really liked what he heard and that if they were thinking of doing an album they should record at his place in California, the legendary studio at Rancho de la Luna.

And so it eventually came to pass.

The result of that meeting of minds and souls is the full spectrum stoner rock ‘n’ roll assault of ‘Faithless Rituals’.

‘Faithless Rituals’ will hit the world on 20th March 2020.

Upcoming shows:

Wed 29th Jan – The Jacaranda, Liverpool as part of Independent Venue Week

Wed 18th March – The Fulford Arms, York

Black Moth / Venus / Sky Valley Mistress – The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 6th December 2019

Posted: 8 December 2019 in Live
Tags: Black Moth, Farewell, final shows, Hard Rock, Leeds, Live Review, Sky Valley Mistress, The Brudenell Social Club, Venus

Christopher Nosnibor

Tonight was always going to combine celebration and commiseration: in the decade since their inception, Black Moth have gone from Leeds-scene hard rock revivalists to a stoner / doom colossus of an outfit at the forefront of an albeit disparate movement, with fans spread internationally.

I first caught the band at the Cockpit, playing early doors at Live at Leeds, around the time of their 2012 debut The Killing Jar. Back then , they were solid, with clear potential, but were still in development as alive act. That would change quickly, and that potential was rapidly realised, with the band landing support slots with ever-bigger headliners and the albums growing heavier and denser along the way. I felt a certain pride seeing them more than hold their own supporting The Sisters of Mercy in 2015. This was a band in bloom, a band with immense confidence and tunes to match, a band capable of conquering the world.

And they fucking should have. But, life. Harriet’s frank interview with Kerrang! on the eve of their two farewell shows puts the bands end down to life – the reality of operating a band when the members are split between two cities, and of working rehearsals and tours around day-jobs and the responsibilities of adult life. It was her call, and not one she’s taken lightly. But the fact of the matter is- as I’ve said before – if you’re not Ed Sheeran or Coldplay or whoever, you’re not going to make a wage off making music or anything creative.

You can only go on international tours on annual leave for so long. Employers will only cut you so much slack, however much of a cult following you may have. And so Black Moth’s curtain call is for perhaps the most depressing of reasons: the economics of late capitalism.

But on a more positive note, they’ve pretty much packed out the Brudenell, and have a brace of belting supports in tow – local acts who prove for any doubters that women can rock as hard as any men. Kudos to the Moth for the choice, and mega thumbs up to a brace of killer support acts.

The first, Sky Valley Mistress are strong, cranking out no-messing hard rock.

“As soon as I’ve got this hair out of my mouth, I’ll start singing.” You couldn’t call Kayley “Hell Kitten” Davies pretentious. She’s a commanding performer, confident and cool with the between song chat. It’s rare. big hair, big voice, big presence, big riffs, big tunes. But what decade is it? The drummer’s been teleported from the 70s and the guitarist is double white denim. These are visual distractions from a solid set packed with songs that are meaty and strong on groove.

Sky Valley Mistress

All-female quintet Venus pile in with a more shoegaze / indie sound driven by throbbing bass and sturdy percussion. Simultaneously crisp and dense, they chuck out choppy, short songs. And fuck, are they solid. They talk mental health, they rock hard. This is a band who get behind their beliefs and aren’t afraid to address issues and use their medium as a platform. They’re also as good as any band you’ll see around.

Venus

And Black Moth – well, they’re pure quality on every level. Detailed guitar contrasts with slugging power chords as they open with ‘Istra’, the first song from their final album, Anatomical Venus, an album that brought them to a wider audience and also served as their definitive statement. I guess if you’re going to call time on a band, it’s best to do it after your strongest album.

Everything about Black Moth that appealed at the beginning remains true, although the confidence they show in their performances now is as immense as the riffs. That isn’t to say Harriet’s turned into some egotistical rock-star type: she’s as down to earth as ever, and still air guitars her way through the breaks, and it’s clear they absolutely love doing what they do. Same as it ever was.

Black Moth

Tonight’s career-spanning at is delivered at appropriate volume. Proper headbanging down the front and halfway to the back. There’s a lot of love for this band. When they go heavy, they go HEAVY. The balloons are out for ‘Loomer’, and we’re reminded of the band’s February 2018 show in the same venue following the single’s release that prefaced the album. The atmosphere that night was jubilant, and while it may be something of a black celebration on this occasion, there’s still an overriding sense of enjoyment, and a rapport between band and audience that’s a source of joy.

Burst of metal confetti for closer and whole venue lunges and lurches exuberantly as the band power through a final encore of ‘Pigman’ and ‘Blackbird’s Fall’.

Black Moth’s departure is a sad one, but they’ve signed off on a high, bowing out at the absolute peak of their game. Respect.

Grave Lines – Fed Into the Nihilist Engine

Posted: 30 March 2018 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Black Moth, dark, Fed Into the Nihilist Engine, Grave Lines, Heavy, New Heavy Sounds

New Heavy Sounds – 4th May 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

Grave Lines’ second album is… heavy.

From a personal perspective, they impressed me no end when I caught them supporting Black Moth when their tour for Anatomical Venus landed in their hometown of Leeds. Mostly, because their set was brutal in its weight, the howling vocals sitting in the mid-range and low in the mix against a tempest of low-end guitar noise.

Fed Into the Nihlist Engine doesn’t disappoint, and captures the essence of the live sound. It also opens in the most daring fashion, with a fifteen-minute epic that blends ferocity and dirginess to form a perfect balance: at first coming on like Amenra in their haunting, atmospheric passages, before erupting into a full-blown assault of rage. Its crawling pace and sinewy lead guitar parts, paired with dense, chugging rhythm with major emphasis on the bottom end make for a punishing experience. However, over the course of the album’s nine tracks, Grave Lines demonstrate a remarkable range and a deep-seated sense of atmosphere and texture. It’s heavy – seriously heavy, in fact – but it’s also light: ‘Shame Retreat’ is a delicate acoustic song, simple and completive, and elsewhere, there are some beautifully melodic passages.

In fact, much of the weight of Fed Into the Nihilist Engine isn’t about crushing guitars, overdriven and overloaded and labouring amp-blowing riffs – not that there isn’t an abundance of these. No, Grave Lines explore the brooding a the shadowy, the quietly intense, the darkness of the gothic. ‘Self Mutilation by Fire and Stone’ sees Harding adopt an almost crooning goth baritone in places. ‘Loss Betrayal’ – at least for the first minute or so – sounds more like early iLiKETRAiNS with its chiming post-rock guitar and reflective stance. And then it all piles in, while on ‘Silent Salt’, the guitars grind and churn relentlessly from the start. ‘Loathe Displace’ is similarly disarming, stripped back, a wheezing, undulating organ drone providing the instrumental backdrop to Jake Harding’s surprisingly sensitive and tuneful vocals.

But when they do hit the overdrive pedals, they really go in hard and heavy. The one thing they don’t do is uptempo. These are slow, deliberate slabs of sound that bludgeon the senses. This is the sound of anger. This is punishment. There’s a lot of grind and churn going down on Fed Into the Nihilist Engine: ‘The Greae’ has that early Melvins vibe about it, only shoutier, and it grinds on well past the seven-minute mark.

Fed Into the Nihilist Engine really works the contrasts and dynamics, but not in the way, say, Neurosis do – which I suppose is my way of saying not in a way that’s formulaic or predictable.

Ultimately, Fed Into the Nihilist Engine is a dark album. And yet, it’s a dark album that’s haunting, moving and achingly beautiful in its articulation of despondency and disquiet.

Black Moth / Grave Lines / Dream Tröll – The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 16th February 2018

Posted: 19 February 2018 in Live
Tags: 16th February 2018, Anatoical Venus, Black Moth, Brudenell Social Club, Doom, Dream Tröll, Grave Lines, Hard Rock, Heavy, Leeds, Live Review, Metal, Riffs, Stoner

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s clear we’re in very (old-school) metal territory here. Denim jackets with patches galore, and T-shirts emblazoned with pointy lettering. Studs. Piercing. Tattoos. Beards. At least I have a beard, even if it’s not very metal.

Dream Tröll (let’s not even start on that) have brought a fair few mates, most of whom are willing to participate in their awkward waving of rock ‘horns’. They’re polished (apart from the false start at the very beginning of the set) but seriously overblown in their Iron Maidenisms and the Spinal Tap posturing. Each of the guitars has additional strings – all the more to widdle on. It’s corny, cliché, and a bit cringey, especially the singer’s moves. The ten-minute overrun on a half-hour slot really doesn’t swing it for me, although no-one else seems too fussed.

Grave Lines, who’ve supported the mighty Moth on this tour are an altogether different proposition. Stripped back, minimal and uncluttered inn every way, theirs is a sound that’s dark, slow, and spacious. Dolorous bass notes boom a sonorous death knell. It’s heavy, the anguish and nihilism pouring in a copious spate from every note, every thunderous, crashing beat, every crushing, pulverising power chord. It’s epic and then some: the guitarist unleashes one of the most insane and brutal screeching solos I’ve heard in ages around eight minutes into the set’s opening song. Drummer Julia Owen looks demur but is a hard hitter, and hammers out some complex, machine-like rhythms. It all coalesces to create something grainy and intense that sits somewhere between Neurosis and Godflesh. Oh, and the guitar sustain! It really does go on forever.

Grave Lines

Last night of the tour, and the well-polished Back Moth are back home to celebrate their return. And it’s a triumphant one. They’re straight on, straight in, heads down and banging. On their third album and after extensive touring, they’ve got it nailed.

‘Istra’, ‘Moonbow’, and ‘Severed Grace’, all from the new album, Anatomical Venus kick start the set. The album isn’t even out yet, but they feel well-embedded, and the audience respond like they’re familiar favourites.

They don’t chat all that much, but instead let the songs speak for themselves. Actions speak louder than words, and guitars speak louder than anything. Harrier air-guitars unselfconsciously, and everything about the band feels natural. Moreover, they do really look like they’re enjoying themselves. And so they should. Especially when the members of Grave Lines race on stage and empty sacks full of balloons (black and purple, of course) all over during ‘Loomer’, giving the show an 80s Top of the Pops / party vibe, and the support act’s front man Jake Harding joins the band to perform ‘Tourmaline’: the dual vocal brings an almost Alice in Chains quality which accentuates the band’s more grunge-inspired leanings, and reminds that Black Moth, for all of their classic hard rock credentials are a band with some range.

Black Moth

If my numerous of Black Moth from over the last few years – and, indeed, over the span of much of their career – could probably be boiled down rather embarrassingly to riffy riff riff, it’s a fair summary of what they do, and now more than ever. With Anatomical Venus they’ve draw it all righter and kicked it up heavier, and with the new set drawing largely – and confidently – on the new material, the Moth really pack in the riffs to deliver a cracking set. If ever a band was at the top of their game, it’s Black Moth right now.

Black Moth – Anatomical Venus

Posted: 7 January 2018 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Anatomical Venus, Black Moth, Candlelight Records, Hard Rock, Heavy, Leeds, More Riffs, Riffs

Candlelight Records – 23rd February 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

Having caught Black Moth live early on, before the release of their debut, I’m in a position to attest just how far they’ve come and how much they’ve grown. And third album, Anatomical Venus shows their trajectory continues upwards and outwards: with each release, they’re bigger, and simply more.

If debut The Killing Jar was a rock-solid heavy rock album that revelled in the vintage riffery of Sabbath and its successor, Condemned to Hope was the sound of a band coming into their own and filing out their songs with heavier, denser chuggage, Anatomical Venues combines the strongest elements of its predecessors and brings an even harder, heavier edge, while at the same time bristling with even sharper hooks and stronger vocal melodies.

‘Buried Hoards’ blends grunge and goth to forge a dark grandeur, while the six-and-a-half-minute ‘Severed Grace’ finds Harriet bring a certain sneer and tantalisingly teasing edge to her delivery, which weaves its way around a serpentine lead guitar and super-dense bass throb. And across the album, Back Moth bring groove galore. Anatomical Venus leans toward the quicker tempo: ‘A Lovers Hate’ is less Sabbath and more Motörhead, a punk attitude informing the driving guitar-based assault. Compositionally, it’s stripped-back and simple, something that’s been core to Black Moth’s work from the outset: namely, that the riff is king. Front and centre, the riff. Simple, but effective, four chord workouts lie at the heart of most of the songs. In the world of both rock and pop, less is invariably more. Back Moth know this and exploit it well.

There’s no substitute for a beefy bit of guitar you can get your head down to. Not that they lack technical prowess: the solos are killer, but never overlong or excessively flamboyant. There’s simply no fat to be found on Anatomical Venus.

The album’s last track, ‘Pig Man’, lands somewhere between Lydia Lunch and Melvins, with a churning sludge metal riff and a sassy, semi-spoken verse… and noise. Cathartic, chaotic noise building to a climactic crescendo.

Black Moth’s strength has always been their knack for solid, hard rock that fundamentally plays to the rules – by which I mean, their focus has been quality over innovation. This is actually an admirable quality, because they’re a band who grasp what makes rock music rock. But Anatomical Venus sees the band extend their horizons, without losing sight of any of the qualities that made them in the first place. And in bringing everything all together, and making it tighter, tauter, and as dense and heavy as ever, Black Moth have delivered their strongest, most focused album to date.

AAA

Watch: ‘Moonbow’ by Black Moth

Posted: 10 November 2017 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: Black Moth, Black Sabbath, Candlelight Records, Heavy Rock, Leeds, Moonbow, Psychedeia, Psychedleic, Riffs, Riffy, video stream

Having recently announced that their new album Anatomical Venus will be released early next year, Black Moth have shared the first single from the record in the form of the psychedelic video for ‘Moonbow’, directed by Ben Foley (Foley previously worked with BM on their spectacularly kinky ‘Looner’ clip, 2015).

Vocalist Harriet Hyde comments:

‘It is an ode and an offering to the moon herself, in the hope that she will shine her silver blessings on Mothic ventures to follow. Ben Foley’s directorial work with us has gone from Looner to Lunar. His deft creative touch on ‘Moonbow’ drags the viewer with us through a psychedelic neon dreamscape – an intoxicating experience of lunar worship’

While their first 2 albums were released by New Heavy Sounds, Black Moth will have their latest / third studio album issued worldwide via Candlelight Records on February 23rd 2018, the result of an alliance between Candlelight and NHS.

Produced by Andy Hawkins (Hawk Eyes, Maximo Park) with Russ Russell (Napalm Death, Dimmu Borgir) handling the mix, this 10-track affair sees the Leeds / London outfit – vocalist Harriet Hyde, guitarists Jim Swainston & Federica Gialanze’, bassist Dave Vachon and drummer Dom McCready – further honing the various elements of their sound to make the hooks more barbed and the focus more collective.

Lead single ‘Moonbow’ provides the first taste of things to come, successfully combining wide-eyed wonder with true metallic weight, the whole thing supported by the aforementioned clip that delivers from the off in both intensity and colour. Watch the video here:

AAA

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Posts Tagged ‘Black Moth’

Watch: ’Skull & Pistons’ by Sky Valley Mistress

Grave Lines – Fed Into the Nihilist Engine

Black Moth – Anatomical Venus

Watch: ‘Moonbow’ by Black Moth