War Dogs of the Pacific - Publish or Perish

It had been two years.  Two long years since the forces of good, those souls making interesting and vital music, had been forced to evacuate the Philippine Islands.  The evacuation had been necessary in the face of the unrelenting onslaught brought down upon the islands by the invaders, those evil entities creating mindless drivel in the form of music subsidized by Unclear Channel and Nonvitalcom.  Before I was forced to leave I made a promise to the loyal listeners in the Philippines.  I promised to return and liberate their ears, and I keep my promises.

Right now I’m standing in the rear of an amphibious landing craft making its way towards Leyte.  Outside of the crewmen steering and monitoring the LCP the only other passengers are the three young men who make up War Dogs of the Pacific.  Although they may look inexperienced, these men are grizzled veterans of their own island basement hopping campaign.  When I heard their music, I knew immediately that they were just the band I needed.  At the conclusion of their show, I approached and recruited them into my sonic warrior brigade.

For three days prior to the planned landing my air forces had been dropping thousands of musical care packages into every populated area of the island.  Inside these packages were copies of War Dogs of the Pacific’s new album Publish or Perish.  My strategy was to expose as many people as possible to the sounds of this band.  This in turn would break the populace out of their musical stupor and lead to mass discontent.  To channel those feelings I included one other item inside those care packages, a flyer announcing the band would be playing a free concert on the beach near the town of Palo on this date and time.

In an unbelievable bit of logistical magic, all of my landing craft hit the beach at exactly the same time.  I could see the seething mass of humanity expectantly waiting for us on the beach.  The front ramps on all the craft were lowered into the waiting surf, and with a determined battle cry my men sprung into action.  Five minutes was all it took to assemble an elevated stage and get the band’s equipment up and in working order.  My main engineer gave me the thumbs up, and I let the band know it was show time.  They each gave me a feral grin and went to work.

War Dogs of the Pacific refer to themselves as a pop punk/post-hardcore band, and who am I to argue?  Due to my unfamiliarity with the bands name dropped as important influences to their sound, I’m just going to jump right into the things I like about this group.  I certainly love the fact that their album begins with some serious musical subterfuge.  The first song, “People Are Gonna Get Hurt”, begins with a plaintive bass line that is joined by a rather delicate guitar melody.  It’s very disarming and guarantees the casual listener will be caught completely off guard when the drums and distortion effects explode into the song around the thirty second mark.  From that point on the song transitions into a full blown rocker until the entire band’s ammunition is spent.

Another aspect that I particularly like about War Dogs of the Pacific is that they sound like a bigger band than they are in reality.  Now don’t misunderstand, I’m not referring to studio trickery employed to confuse the listener.  Not at all.  The guitar, bass, and drums are easily delineated upon an even remotely close inspection.  No, some bands just produce a sound that can only be described as massive when played back.  War Dogs of the Pacific, in my opinion, is one of those bands.  Trust me when I say these three men know how to make quite a ruckus!

Vocal duties are split between the bass player and guitarist.  While the bass player (Joshua Charles Boardman) takes more of the burden than the guitarist (Martin Erroll Slomka), both are important to the overall sound.  This is where the post-hardcore influences appear easily in my mind.  Several times across the album I get a definite Fugazi vibe from the dual vocals, and that is certainly not a bad thing!  Honestly however, I can see someone listening to this music and not caring for the vocals due to their gruff nature.  Respectfully, I think this type of person is an idiot as it is that very gruff nature which makes the vocals so ingratiating to me in the first place.  The tonality fits perfectly with the music, and there is no lack of memorable vocal lines all throughout the album.

Outside of the tremendous first track there are a couple of other standout songs, although in truth not one of the eight compositions on offer fails to impress.  “Playing to a Click” features non-stop furious riffing and a fantastic chorus that keep the heads bobbing and weaving and the fans singing along.  “Anchors Away” blasts out of the gate, but then gradually devolves into near silence before rapidly building back up to a distortion filled eruption.  The finale of the album, “Bridgeburner”, is epic.  That’s all I can really say.  It is an epic, wonderful ride!

After the band had finished their set, I took the stage myself to deliver a few words I had prepared for the occasion.  “People of the Philippines: I have returned.  By the grace of the Almighty Ripple Effect quality artists are heard again on Philippine soil – soil consecrated in the good taste of our two peoples.  We have come dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your daily listening habits, and of restoring upon a foundation of indescribable strength, the musical liberties of your people.”

Exit, stage left, to roars of applause.

--Penfold

The Band has made the entire album posted at www.wardogsofthepacific.bandcamp.com for free digital download

Black Elk - Always A Six, Never A Nine

Since Racer and I have been doing this whole Ripple Effect blog thing and reviewing all of this great music that we’ve been discovering, there’s been this weird phenomenon going on where we’ll both receive a piece of music that we listen to once . . . twice . . . three hundred times and we know somehow, in some whacky way, said piece of music is one of the most important pieces of music that we’ve stumbled on. The problem is . . . we just don’t know what to say about it.

Sure, we could throw together a bunch of clever words that highlight our faux intelligence and have the reader reaching for a dictionary (faux means not real,) but that doesn’t necessarily tell you what the music is all about. We want you, oh dear reader, to go out and pick up these albums that we write about coz’ we want to share the excitement that we still find in music. So . . . enter Black Elk.

Black Elk’s album Always A Six, Never A Nine has been in and out of my player for something like two years. I feel a little bad because I’ve wanted to write this thing up all this time, but I knew that whatever I wrote wouldn’t be quite correct, wouldn’t be adequate enough. Always A Six, Never A Nine is an album that takes time to understand, even though I’m still not totally sure I do. But, I do finally feel that I’m in a place where I can at least throw together the right combination of words that best describes the music contained within to give you the best possible understanding of what you’re gonna get into when you buy this beasty-beast.

This album is defies categorization, however, it has elements of post-hardcore, noise, drone, doom, and several avant elements to boot. If you can imagine, Always A Six, Never A Nine would fall somewhere in the no man’s land between the primordial droning sludge riffery of Neurosis and the wildly eclectic avant garde sounds of We Insist! Black Elk has this way of lulling the listener into a state of complacency, carving out our existence and leaving a hollowed out husk, devoid of emotion and then . . . suddenly shoving all of the human elements and emotions into that mesmerized form, shocking our systems into a overly heightened sensitivity, and bringing us back to the immediate futility of our reality. The music has these great metallic moments, but is far from any metal I’ve ever heard. The music also has this great anti-everything attitude to it, but it’s not like any punk music I’ve ever heard. The music has a free form ambience and emotion to it, but it’s unlike any jazz that I’ve laid ears upon. Black Elk simply defy any standard musical categorization.

There are a few songs that I gravitate towards more than others, but the album as a whole is still a stunning experience. “Hospital” is downright killer! The songs opens with a bizarre guitar intro that is quickly accompanied by vocals that sound like they belong to someone strapped to a table with a leather strap shoved in their mouth. Maniacal and laced with paranoia, the vocals have an edge of all sorts of creepy . . . and the way they burst from dude’s mouth in time with the power and aggression of the music is a thing of cryptic beauty. The song has a deranged quality to it, but it’s not out of control. As the songs roils through a chaotic frenzy of heaviness, note the subtle bass lines juke and the warden of inmates. There’s an underlying melody that stands in striking contrast to the darkened lunatic outbursts. By the time the song fades into unconsciousness, odds are you’ll be a little winded and wondering what the hell just happened.

“Pig Crazy” follows along the same lines as “Hospital,” driven by throbbing and pulsating rhythms and highlighted by layers of feedback that creates an eerie texture to the overall sound. The vocals are tortured and frightening, almost like having a conversation with a schizophrenic . . . never knowing if this person is going to turn on us and use violence as some means to an end. The music on this one shifts between heavily distorted guitar riffing to quasi-psychedelic soundscapes, lending an even eerier element to the paranoid visions of the vocalist. This is one of those songs that acts like a sharpened instrument to carve out our being and quickly replaces everything for maximum emotional shock. I love the breakdown towards the end of the track when the guitars completely drop out of the mix and we’re left rumbling along with the bass and drums. That bass tone is thunderous and imposing, giving the listener the impression that something terrifying was lurking around the corner of the next time change. And, for certain, you want to walk down that darkened hallway with both eyes wide open!

“She Pulled Machete” is a drunken narrative about a chick with a machete. Plain and simple. But only Black Elk could pull off a song like this. I love the imagery in this one . . . it doesn’t take much to imagine a guy at some desert truck stop in New Mexico or Arizona, sitting in a Dodge Dart with a fifth of whiskey, sober enough to question what’s going on, but just drunk enough to sit in the dark trying to piece together the puzzle . . . and this all may not be how it plays out, but in my mind, dude’s gonna get chopped up into itsy-bitsy bits and left as coyote chum. Gotta’ love music that let’s your imagination run crazy like that! And damn . . . she sure is sexy!

Always A Six, Never A Nine is the hairy chest on a super model. It’s bizarre and beautiful, it’s unreal and fascinating . . . it’s art! Black Elk have created a monstrous epic of an album that’s haunting and horrifying, a mind fuck in so many ways . . . kind of like David Lynch at his freaky best. It defies logic, it defies reality, yet . . . at the same time, it captures reality in all of its imperfection. It’s an album of serene madness and chaotic elegance, a contrast in every conventional thought. It’s a nightmare choreographed to sound and custom made for each individual listener. I can’t listen to it at night in fear that it will awaken some ancient evil buried deep within my psyche. I must have more!  -  Pope  

buy here:  Always a Six, Never a Nine
Always A Six, Never A Nine (mp3)

www.blackelk.net

www.crucialblast.net/blackelk_alwaysasix.html