Posts Tagged ‘Magnetic Eye’

Watch: ‘Try’ by Elephant Tree

Posted: 11 June 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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ELEPHANT TREE are having a party and they’re inviting everyone to hitch a ride and join in! September 2024 marks ten years since Magnetic Eye’s release of the beloved British stoner doom quartet’s first album Theia (2014), and in observance of that milestone, the label is proud to showcase three releases celebrating one of the label’s landmark bands.

Theia (Anniversary Edition) and Habits (2020) are presented as reissues without additional audio content, but in new physical formats. The former comes packaged with updated artwork and significantly expanded background content (see below for more details).

The third release entitled Handful of Ten is a new full-length containing brand-new tracks, demos, and b-sides, and includes two of the first new ELEPHANT TREE tracks in numerous years, recorded specifically for this compilation. All three albums have been scheduled for release on September 6, 2024.

As a first delicious taste from Handful of Ten, the Londoners release the video single ‘Try’. You can see the video here:

…and order the album here.

ELEPHANT TREE comment on ‘Try’: “This was really a cathartic exercise in playing something a little different, written with an initial cast-away attitude after a few pints on a sweltering summer’s day”, guitarist and singer Jack Townley writes on behalf of the band. “We don’t play faster songs often, let alone get space to add them to records. The subject matter is about someone conforming to try be a model citizen, not wanting to step out of line in fear of the repercussions. He tries his hardest to not express his alternate views while others around him conform and in the end it all boils over, leaving him feeling ‘forever lost’.”

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Leather Lung – Graveside Grin

Posted: 16 March 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Magnetic Eye – 15th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Emerging from the punk and hardcore scene of Boston (that’s Massachusetts, US, not the arse end of nowhere in rural Lincolnshire) in 2012, according to their bio, Leather Lung ‘quickly gained an excellent reputation in their local scene, as well as plenty of critical attention through a string of EPs’. And yet it’s taken them till now to complete their debut album. They’ve been busy launching their own lager, ‘Dive Bar Devil’, which has proven popular, and honing their sound, ‘a thick, chugging concoction of stoner metal, doom, and unrelenting sludge, blended into a refreshingly heavy brew with a catchy kick.’

They’re straight in with the big, thick guitars and hefty riffing. It’s mid-paced, weighty, heavy and gritty, and packs a punch. ‘Big Bad Bodega Cat’ is as loud and dumb as it sounds, a blown-out monster blues-based riff lumbering heavy as the backing for raw-throated vocals. It takes some nuts to sing such daft lyrics with such sincerity, and this, I guess, is a large part of Leather Lung’s appeal: they sound a lot more serious than they really are. The fact that the trash-talking ‘Freewheelin’ Maniac’ which comes on with some big-bollocked bravado about ‘getting the fuck outta my may’ shares so much sonic territory with Melvins is a fair indication of the territory Leather Lung occupy. Sure, it’s heavy, but it’s fun, too.

‘Empty Bottle Boogie’ is another example of the way they use the form for fun, landing slap band in between Motorhead and Melvins, before diverting on a melodic prog-metal mid-section and then flooring all the pedals for maximum overdrive to power on to the finish.

In something of a shift, ‘Guilty Pleasure’ starts moody and acoustic, blasts into black metal, spins through a brief electro passage before going full Slipknot. And it not only works, but the transitions are effortless. This should not be possible. It shouldn’t even exist. It’s testament to their abilities – and brazenness – that it does, and that that they carry it off.

Where they really succeed – is in balancing melody and aggression. ‘La La Land’ could easily be a Tad outtake, with a slugging grunge riff and a ragged vocal roar. In contrast, ‘Twisting Flowers’ harks back to seventies metal played through a more contemporary stoner filter.

Graveside Grin was worth the wait: Leather Lung have succeeded in producing a set of songs which is varied, and at the same time, consistently heavy, with a lot of attack and snarly, gnarly energy, with just the right level of irreverence and knowingly OTT extremity and violence. Win.

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Khemmis – Down in a Hole

Posted: 8 August 2020 in Singles and EPs
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Magnetic Eye

Christopher Nosnibor

While reviewing Hymn’s new album, Breach Us for Whisperin’ and Hollerin’, I found myself undertaking a massive detour: having decided that for a few brief bars, Ole Rokseth’s vocals bore some resemblance to Layne Staley’s, and unsure of the spelling of Staley, fatally turned to Google, after which I squandered little short of three hours reading biographical details of the late singer.

And lo, lurking in my inbox was Khemmis’ cover of Alice in Chains’ ‘Down in a Hole’, the first track to be aired from the Dirt (Redux) album forthcoming on Magnetic Eye Records via their ‘Redux’ series (which has previously reimaged albums by Pink Floyd, Hendrix, and Helmet -although the title is a little misleading. There’s no real restoration involved here: this is a covers album, where a different band tackles each track to reconstruct the album not through remixes, but rerecordings.

I’m shamefully ignorant of most of the artists on here, although Thou are clearly a strong opening act, covering ‘Them Bones’, and label regulars These Beasts and Forming the Void also appear.

Anyway: Khemmis express that they were keen to ‘stay true to parts of the song, particularly the chorus, but that we also needed to make it our own.’ Sidestepping the TV karaoke cliché where every week the judges commend the contestants for making a well-known song their ‘own’, Khemmis have actually fulfilled their ambition by bringing layers of atmosphere and expansive guitar harmonics to the verses while retaining the integrity of the choruses. And while there are guitar flourishes aplenty, it’s apparent that this cover is born out of a genuine appreciation of the original.

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