
High on Fire, Cometh the Storm
High on Fire, Cometh the Storm
Apocalyptic in its vision and ambitious in its musicality, High on Fire’s first album since 2018 is an explosion of pent-up heavy metal energy from one of the finest and most progressive bands active today. Long established as a riff champion, Matt Pike has nothing to prove, but with bassist Jeff Matz on a songwriting tear and new drummer Coady Willis (Big Business, Melvins) filling the considerable void left by founding drummer Des Kensel’s departure, the band have created a masterwork. Pike and Matz’s long-shared interest in Middle Eastern music has flowered on Cometh the Storm, adding a richness to the band’s already complex music. It’s an urgent, exotic, and pummeling piece of work that encapsulates the chaos and unease of this juncture in history.
White Dog, Double Dog Dare
White Dog come from Texas. They play bluesy, smoky, straight-outta-’70 heavy rock in the vein of Free, Grand Funk, and Led Zeppelin. The music world is saturated with retro-rock cosplay bands, but these guys bring an original, true-to-life lyrical focus and a surprising amount of eclecticism, touching on country and prog rock and even a fake radio jingle à la Who Sell Out. Double Dog Dare is a compelling argument for why you should spin this and not just listen to the old-timers again, bringing some life and a little laughter to an old rockin’ sound.
Mutilated by Zombies, Scenes from the Afterlife
A concise, vicious blast of stripped-down death metal from Dubuque, performed with incredible dexterity and technical ability with zero frills and no showing off. Recommended for those seeking a breath of fresh air from an often far-too-monotonous style of metal.
Mdou Moctar, Funeral for Justice
“Desert blues” began when performers of traditional Saharan and West African string music encountered American blues music and western rock artists like Jimi Hendrix on bootleg cassettes in the '70s and '80s. They fused these modern sounds with their own traditional music, and eventually began to go electric as the style achieved more widespread popularity. Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar has advanced the sound in the 2020s, touring worldwide with an electric band and carrying on the genre’s lyrical focus on the struggles of the displaced and formerly nomadic Tuareg People. Funeral for Justice rocks harder and doubles down on the anti-colonial themes of 2021’s Afrique Victime- standout track “Oh France” takes direct aim at the European occupiers who made a mess out of Moctar’s native Niger and the continent in general. Mdou Moctar is making some of the most relevant and fresh-sounding “rock” music today, and will be touring America in February with an acoustic version of this album.
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, Four Guitars Live
Minimalist composer and guitarist Bill Orcutt formed the Guitar Quartet to bring his 2022 album Music for Four Guitars to the live stage. This album is a document of the quartet’s live performance at Le Guess Who? festival in the Netherlands in November 2023, in which all four artists faithfully bring Orcutt’s compositions to life, keeping a fine sonic balance and mixing the brief songs from MFFG with longer excursions. Never dull, grating, or excessively long-winded, Four Guitars Live is an accessible entry point for those curious about the possibilities and direction of modern electric guitar music.
The Melvins, Tarantula Heart
After 40-plus years as a band and an impossible-to-understate influence on the heavy music world, the Melvins could easily rest on their laurels, but have remained absurdly prolific. While their creativity is admirable, it can be easy to get lost in the sheer quantity of new material they put out. Tarantula Heart is the strongest thing they’ve done in years, possibly due to a new creative approach – recording live with two drummers, then rearranging the songs with new music as needed. Whatever happened, it’s fresh as hell, especially the 19-minute opener “Pain Equals Funny.”
The House Flies, Mannequin Deposit
The House Flies are an extension and expansion of Murnau, a long-running local goth/grunge/doom/rock guitar and drums two-piece. Now a quartet, their debut album Mannequin Deposit features overdriven bass underpinning guitar-washed songs exultant in melancholy, romance, and a wide smear of emotions. The music is gentle yet heavy, touching on goth-rock and shoegaze and post-punk without sticking easily to a single style. The House Flies will be a local band to keep an eye on.
Running Man, Running Man
The rare case of a band whose live performance sounds just as good as their studio recordings, and vice versa, Running Man have crafted a warm, catchy, exciting, driving, rocking debut album that took a sound already well-defined on their first EP and smoothed it to perfection. There’s a lot that Running Man is and a lot they aren’t – for example, they’re influenced by classic punk but aren’t a punk band – and what we come away with is the best straight-ahead rock band in the Quad Cities.
Charley Crockett, $10 Cowboy
Charley Crockett’s story is such a classic rambler/troubadour tale that it sounds like a put-on – hitching and riding freights busking and working on communes and Northern California weed farms until his gradual and well-deserved rise to fame put him in the national spotlight. His sound from the start was a sort of cosmic American blend of all kinds of roots music; $10 Cowboy is, for the most part, a smooth (but not slick) combination of soul and old-school country with the man himself intoning tales of the rambling musician’s life in a voice worn just as smooth by the endless road.
High Noon Kahuna, This Place Is Haunted
Three seasoned musicians from the Appalachian confluence of the Maryland and West Virginia heavy rock community take a mutual affinity for warped, heavy surf-rock and blast off on a sprawling, stunning album that combines psychedelicized surf, noise rock, metal, and a bit of grunge with some other undefinables and unexpected catchiness. Surf’s up.
Winged Wheel, Big Hotel
An incredible wash of psychedelia, deeply in debt to the best of Krautrock but delivered in the spirit of true creative and improvisational freedom. Their first album saw a core of musicians who’d never played together in the same room creating remotely; for Big Hotel, the six members of Winged Wheel (now including Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley) gathered together to record live, improvising and creating songs that wash together in the best way, like a rain squall of spaced yet focused sound.
Goat, Goat
Goat are a Swedish band who bill themselves as “formidable psychic warriors, channelers of the mystic and proponents of a spiritual quest that transcends this realm.” On their newest album (and my first point of reference to the band), this takes the form of some gloriously rackety psychedelia, clanging and swaying like the most uninhibited Hawkwind or Amon Düül II of old, with a modern fuzzed intensity. Few bands with an outward interest in transcendence manage to do it while rocking this hard.
Samuel Locke Ward, Rando Gtr Box
The absurdly prolific Iowa 'zine artist and bizzarro musician explains his new album thus: "Each song on this record was written or improvised by turning my tuning knobs randomly and putting my guitar in a random and surprising tuning. Then I would write vocals to go over the top. The Goal was to disconnect from past habits, old ideas and 'book learning' to make a type of song I have never made before and to further connect with the joy and beauty of creation." The 60 howlingly funny, deranged acoustic songs that follow hold up a cracked mirror to American life both in their frequently atonal sounds and the characters and situations that Ward depicts. "I recommend playing this album in a random order."
Charlie Parr, Little Sun
In which the wry, wistful songs of a globe-trotting Minnesotan troubadour deeply and authentically steeped in the country-blues tradition are fleshed out by a full band, losing none of their power or poignance. His album release show at Codfish Hollow (the barn-turned-venue in Maquoketa, Iowa) was one of the best shows I saw in 2024.
Bill Fisher, How to Think Like a Billionaire
Armed with an '80s-style synthesizer and some judiciously applied heavy rock riffage, Michael McDonald makes a ridiculous piece of musical satire aimed at the out-of-control billionaire class and their doomed sycophants. It’s darkly funny, but there’s a desperate sadness in the often sparse arrangements, as the 21st-century death march trudges ever on to an unthinkable destination.
And Three Short Releases:
Frontal Assault/Ill Omen, 10 Beer Plan
Two of Iowa’s hardest-thrashing young bands split a 25-minute ripper that will please old- and new-school metalheads alike.
Godthrymm, The Light EP
Two tracks of misty and melancholy epic doom metal from England, playing in the proper Yorkshire tradition without sounding derivative.
Star Thistle, The Remnants of Star Thistle
Spare, beautiful, and emotional folk from a Canadian singer-songwriter who moonlights as the dark Americana purveyor Uncle Sinner.