Teachers' Sons - "Teachers' Sons" LP Review (Space Rock / Doom)

Brooklyn Teachers’ Sons are a doom /space rock band who just released their brilliant debut full-length LP as a limited-edition (ltd. to 200) colored vinyl pressing. In an era of digital downloads, you have to love a band that has the b*lls to release their first record on vinyl (there is a digital download card included for those without a turntable which includes the full album plus a digital-only bonus track).

There isn’t a lot of background information about Teachers’ Sons on the ‘net – the band’s Facebook page says: “The three members of Teachers' Sons are from small towns in West Tennessee and grew up together in the hidden fields therein. All sons of elementary school teachers, the three all took different routes in life to end up together in the "big city" creating music, more as a form of release and self-medication. Songs contain subject matter dealing with what goes inside the subconscious of the best and worst moments in the lives of those who have completely lost control of reality and themselves. Horrifying and uplifting (sometimes at the same time), the music is intended to leave the listener feeling a peaceful anxiety.”

To further clarify the “doom” label mentioned above, this isn’t the crushing, epic doom of Sunn O))) but rather the organic, slow-burning and brooding doom of bands like Woods of Ypres crossed with the space rock of early Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. The disc starts off with a languid and hazy 60s psychedelic number, “The Chosen One”, which combines moody guitars with murmured hazy vocals and layered multi-part harmonies. While this may sound like a typical 60s psychedelia, it is rather unsettling – especially when the lyrics are talking about the ‘fire waiting for you’. Some of the other standout tracks are “Dim The Lights”, which is a blackened doom number that opens with a voice-over about a murder victim and builds up a creepy atmosphere in both the back- and foreground before coming to an abrupt end. “Admiral Benbow” is guitar driven and is somewhat reminiscent of The Devil’s Blood with its big 70’s stoner rock riffs. "Not Too Far Down the Road" and "Shootout at the Hills" fall back into space rock and both numbers have acoustic segments and feature multi-part harmonies. "The Cancer" goes a step further into Teachers’ Sons' desolate universe with a Sabbathish electric doom number which has an undercurrent of free-flowing psych/prog leads. The disc goes out with "The Beast", which is a space rock number with an aggressive undercurrent (reminiscent of early Pink Floyd) that features intertwined guitars, minimalist drums and reverb vocals .

While the last Woods of Ypres record that I reviewed offered some sense of redemption on its final track, Teachers’ Sons doesn’t stray far from the lonely and desolate landscape that they started with on the LP’s first track. The band’s Facebook page says “Teachers' Sons is a project that redefines the space-time continuum with emphasis on what happens in the regions of the subconscious that contain the repressions of uncontrolled actions.”





Links:
Teachers' Sons

Woods of Ypres - "Woods IV: The Green Album" CD Review (Earache Records)

At the end of last year, Earache Records announced the signing of Canadian black metal act Woods of Ypres. The band has been around since 2002 and Earache will reissue the band’s fourth full-length, Woods IV: The Green Album, which was originally independently released in 2009, on March 22nd.

The Green Album clocks in just shy of eighty minutes and the organic sound, clean vocals and delicate instrumental interludes hide a pronounced sense of self-loathing and loss found within the lyrics. The band frequently garners comparisons to Type O Negative which is likely due to singer David Gold’s clean baritone vocals but there only seems to be a touch of Type O's style of goth-metal in the Woods of Ypres' music. The majority of the songs are slow burning, brooding doom (a la Candlemass) but the music doesn't fall into this bass-heavy genre. Rather, clear production brings out Gold's upfront vocals along with prominent guitars which range from metallic chugging and thrash riffs to delicate acoustical work. Adding to the mix, some tracks have soft interludes that use piano, violin, oboe and other 'non-traditional' instruments.

Lyrically, The Green Album focuses on the breakup of a relationship and the disc starts with "Shards of Love", where Gold is narrating both sides of a dialogue with his former girlfriend as she is packing to go as he is "pouring my heart to you trying to get you to stay". From here, Gold seems to resign himself to his fate and delivers the self-recriminating "Everything I Touch Turns To Gold (Then To Coal)" where Gold's vocals are complemented by additional harsh vocals. The gloom and doom lyrical themes lead into a wicked sense of 'tongue-in-cheek' irony as the disc progresses into "By The Time You Read This (I Will Already Be Dead" (with the lyrics "By the time you read / I will already be gone / Do not reply to this") and "Wet Leather", which Gold says "should obviously not be taken seriously, but instead as a song about a negative frame of mind that comes and goes ― when everything seems hopeless, pointless, "life is just pain and piss, everything is a scam," akin to something off of Sentenced's Cold White Light album." (quote from an Exclaim.ca interview with David Gold).

While Gold takes the listener into his downward spiral for the better part of the disc, the disc ends on a note of closure and rebuilding with the songs "To Long Life In The 'Limbo Union'" and the somewhat smarmy "Move On! (The Woman Will Always Leave the Man)".

One of the strongest cuts on the disc is the stellar "I Was Buried In Mount Pleasant Cemetery".



Woods of Ypres are playing a 10-date CD release tour next month that stops at The Bowery Electric on Wed., March 16th.

Links:
Woods of Ypres