Artist: Thinning The Herd
Title: Oceans Rise
Type: Album
Label: Unsigned
Damn, sometimes it’s just good to hear some uncomplicated, balls out, stoner rock! Forget comparisons, arty reviews, or muso dissections of every beat, Thinning The Herd simply, in every sense of the word, rock! Free from any press release, and devoid of any aggrandising blurb, a single online download link arrived for this unsigned New Jersey act, with none of the usual PR bollocks. Well, I may be 100% wrong, but every note of this release invokes long hair, massive beards, tattered jeans, Gibson guitars, and a rolling fog of whiskey and THC!
Album opening title track ‘Oceans Rise’ blasts in with the sound of breaking waves, a feeling mimicked by the laid back riffs, bass, and stoned drum beat of the music, thoroughly encapsulating the sense of an inexorably rising ocean in four minutes and seventeen of some of the most finely crafted rock I’ve heard for years. The vocals are a bourbon filled tremor, and the guitars fall in with a JD soaked blast, perfect accompaniment for a swirling, stoned pit! The pace ups to a solid stomp in track 2, ‘Look Behind’, the laid back dirge replaced by a headbang inducing stomp. With ‘Defiler’, dirty blues take over, the lung burning cigarettes of the lyrics chemically enhanced by a stoner buzz of fuzzy guitars and laid back bass, the drums sounding like every beat is blasted out between alcoholic blackouts. Truly superlative!
‘Chill In The Air’ is laden with mid paced dirge, whilst next track ‘Binge’ mixes an accessible rocky drum beat with some excellent fuzzy riffing. By the time the album finishes with the dirty Southern delivery of ‘On Fire’, a lethargic/lysergic litany of crack, booze and religion, Thinning The Herd have thoroughly proven their skills, dragging each note of the track to its natural maximum, the distorted solo being a master class of sustained stoner minimalism.
In Thinning The Herd, New Jersey has thoroughly cemented its history of superlative stoner rock, adding to the canon created by the likes of Solace and Monster Magnet. I’ve no idea if this act will ever get to the UK, but I’ll have my eye out if they do, and encourage all to buy this album and revel in their lo-fi reverb magic. Forget the overindulgent meanderings of super-groups like Down, these hungry sounding newcomers are the real deal!
http://www.myspace.com/castrosbeard
