Forty Years Ago - Part Two - STONEHOUSE - Stonehouse Creek

This five part series of reviews were originally written as part of a much bigger article on a different website covering a number of albums that came out during 1971.

STONEHOUSE “Stonehouse Creek”, 1971 It’s often difficult to judge an album by its cover. However STONEHOUSE chose to throw their red herring in their first song which begins with a melodic pop song. The band then on “Hobo” show their hand at hard rock with piano playing in the background and high vocals that would be the envy of many a female jazz or blues singer in the foreground. “Cheater” is very much heavy rock due to the guitar tone and equals other heavy bands of the year. “Nightmare” has a huge guitar boogie feel despite the piano playing in parts of the song. The drums and bass compliment the huge guitar tone on tracks like “Down, Down”and leads that command attention. Often the production, which sounds tinny due to the sound of feedback left on the first few songs, means that unlike BLACK SABBATH’s “Master of Reality” it sounds somewhat dated and doesn’t demand the volume to be turned up all the way through.

Forty years ago - Faust S/T 1971

FAUST – S/T, 1971

Yearning for originality within music has always meant either exploring or inventing unfamiliar genres. German band FAUST are these days considered to be firmly part of the Krautrock gesture. The music is much more experimental than balls to the wall four on the floor rock music. In fact, it is difficult to consider the tracks on this album as songs. There are catchy moments such as the hypnotising vocals on “Meadow Meal that command “to stand in line, keep in line” but these are far and few between. On “Why don’t you eat carrots?”, there is singing over synthesiser flatulence and often it sounds like an instrument that was lying around the studio was noticed, picked up, played and then put back down only to picked up again later. There’s no denying that the tracks with all their variations in sounds and the risks taken are musically interesting but it’s not an album that is easy to go back to and have further listens whatever your mood unlike ALICE COOPER’s “Love It To Death”.

Sandrider - Sandrider

In Frank Herbert's Dune books, a sandrider is a person who has managed to capture and ride one of the gigantic sandworms that live on the planet Arrakis. The band Sandrider are closer to the worms themselves as they're much much heavier than any mythological beast jockey.

The Seattle band feature three of the city’s most unstoppable forces: drummer Nat Damm and guitarist John Weisnewski of Akimbo, and bassist Jesse Roberts of The Ruby Doe.

There's a slugdy sluggish Sabbath-esque heaviness to "Children" accompanied with husky yet buried vocals that bring High on Fire to mind. The band mine the musical vein of their homecity as there's a Mudhoneyish grunge feel to The Corpse with a Tad sized underbelly. A dirty filthy metallic spinetingling riff stabs through and cuts the grunge overlay in "Crysknife". "Voices" is a godzilla disgustingly heavy gingantic-sized guitar-oriented howler of a song. "Paper" just convinces that these guys love their grunge as much as their metal and is a fine sifting blending of both. "Scatter" should excite most alternative 90's music fans as the opening sounds familiar even if it's difficult to pinpoint exactly whether it's liberal borrowing from Jane's Addiction or the likes of grungesters Mudhoney.

There's a couple of songs like "The Judge" that are a little too long on this album However anyone longing for grunge with a slab of metal or a slab of grunge with a dosage of metal should check out Sandrider.



Listen to some of the album here.