Bison BC - Lovelessness

Fact of strangeness: Bison antiquus was an animal hunted by paleo-indian peoples in the Rocky Mountains.
Now it's a group of long-haired sludge-rockers from Vancouver. Their 4th album titled "Lovelessness" is another triumphant terrorizing doom romp. The album explores alternative textures as well as conventional doom and sludge subtexts, and sublty interjects a bit of hardcore on top!

1."An Old Friend"- The overlying harmony creates an atmosphere almost reminiscent of Fall of Troy, but quickly devolves into High on Fire territory with bombastic axe-cutting riffage. A twist on the Savannah-style sludge indeed. The piece features shouted, aggressive hardcore style vocals as well as 2 thick mid-rangey guitars panned hard left and right respectively. The drums are spaced whilst the bass is panned dead-center.

2."Anxiety Puke - Lovelessness"- Opening with a fast paced demonic punk feel and devolving into a total doom fiesta. It slams you with the maiden-style harmonies and HoF style battle axe riffs. Its length allows the track to fall into grandiose dissonant riffs before hitting into 6/8 death-march viciousness!

3. "Last and first things"- The cliched ambient noise followed by seriously aggressive doom riffs. The influence of that Savannah style can be heard once again with punctuated, tribal repetitive riffage.

4."Blood Music"- The longest track on the album. The track suffers from length do to quantity of riffs rather than truly expressing one elongated idea. It fluctuates between doom and sludge riffs, all of intense pounding quality, It does have a couple distinctive harmonized guitar lines however.

5. "Clozapine Dream"- The shortest track of the record. An emphasis on the 80s hardcore-style vocals is found. Quick, sludgy, and reminiscent of Kylesa.

6."Finally Asleep"- 70s doom meets 80s thrash. Nasty melodic lines mark the intro however, it devolves eventually into a pounding thrash rhythm the intro is recapitulated later. I cannot express further how epic the guitars intermingling on this track sounds.

Overall the record does not hold up to the prowess Bison launched with Dark Ages or Quiet Earth in terms of its innovation. The band does manage to make a solid and tight record, however, they should consider staying away with the more popular sludge convention. They really shine with their mastery of thrash incorporation, and should focus on exploiting their boundless energy.

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BISON B.C. Lands Custom Beer

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based act BISON B.C. is getting what every band dreams of — a custom beer! For one night only, Bison Beer will be served when the band joins the bill at the former Storyeum building (151 Cordova Street) in Vancouver tonight (Friday, December 5) as part of the Transmission Conference.

According to Matt Phillips, CEO of Victoria's Phillips Brewing Company, it was producer Tyl van Toorn's idea. "I don't know how serious it was," Phillips told Straight.com, "but I guess there were some negotiations going on to get them to play, and Tyl said, 'We'll get a beer done for you.'"

Phillips Brewing relabelled its popular Phoenix Gold lager with amended cover artwork from BISON B.C.'s "Quiet Earth" album and added the line "Please Don't Throw Me At the Stage."

Phillips said that the company is producing "about 30 dozen cases" of Bison Beer, but wouldn't say how many were going straight to singer-guitarist James Farwell and his cohorts. "There's some stuff that I just don't know if I can disclose," he told Straight.com.

Commented the band: "We wanna say a huge thanks to our bros over at Phillips Brewery on Vancouver Island for making a dream come true. We think this is pretty fucking rad."

Album Of The Day- Bison B.C.-Quiet Earth (2008)

The Album Of The Day is "Quiet Earth" by Bison B.C.



Review:

"Imagine yourself walking down a quiet path in the middle of a dusty plain when suddenly you hear a rumble in the distance. At first you just ignore it, it’s probably thunder or something equally as harmless. You continue walking but the sound gets louder and louder and before you know it you’re beneath the smashing, crushing, beating weight of a stampede of giant creatures bent on grinding your bones into dust.

That is the sound Bison bc brings to the table with their Metal Blade debut album “Quiet Earth”. Calling this album Quiet Earth is tantamount to referring to Slayer as a pop band but any and all damage you suffer at the hands of Bison bc is well worth it. Quiet Earth is not so much a blend of rock, doom, metal, chaos and noise as it is the musical equivalent of the end of the universe.

The first explosion of this end comes with “Primal Emptiness Of Outer Space” which intros with a slow sludgy build up, one that seems destined to explode into a fast paced verse. This is just one of the surprises Bison has in store for you on this album. The song explodes but at the same sludgy tempo which is oddly unsettling. Bison bc seem to thrive on creating this kind of unsettling tension in their music. The band never stops adding things to their songs, layered guitars, explosions of percussion and then this screeching vocal line all of it tied up by a sheen of sheer chaotic noise. This balancing act is a tough one but Bison bc make it look easy.

It’s hard to look at an album like Quiet Earth in a song-to-song way because it feels more like a juggernaut of destruction. I don’t mean a concept album because the topics of Quiet Earth jump from epic science fiction to the myth of the Wendigo so little is connected here. What does unify Quiet Earth is the sound itself, each song crashes into the other one pushing the record along almost forcing it to move against itself. The songs push and pull against each other building tensions and dynamics with every turn.

Within all of this chaos Bison bc keeps the groove going, it’s almost like a Chaos Theory math problem you can bang your head to. Interestingly enough there isn’t much in the way of traditional riffs on Quiet Earth but there are endless grooves. I’m not sure how Bison bc manages to unleash such savage grooves without any formulated riffs but sometimes you just have to let art flow over you.

It’s clear from listening to Quiet Earth that Bison bc write in a style that can only be described in the most scholarly manner as really fucked up. Things happen in Bison bc songs with no rhyme or reason almost as if their idea of structure is to have no structure. A song like “Wendigo Pt 1” is an eight minute opus the seems made up of a constant explosion of varied sounds all happening at one time while “Dark Towers” is a quick three minute groove fest that seems to grease the way for it’s neighbor track “The Slow Hand Of Death”. Quiet Earth is a metal record, a doom record, a noise record, and a prog record and somehow those elements add to the power of the album instead of getting in each other’s way. This is a phenomenal record that makes absolutely no sense at all. Fuckin A I love that!!

There are those that will hate this album because it’s not easy to define or because they could never use it as a song on Rock Band. Quiet Earth is a beautiful mess, a heavy groove laden total collapse of the song writing process. Like anything that is truly primal this album is unpredictable and at times a little scary.

To me that is what music is, something that slaps me around and wakes me up instead of cradling me in the arms of that which I’ve heard before. Bison bc and Quiet Earth have no desire to cradle you instead the music would rather crush your bones into powder and eat your organs. That, my friends, is what art is all about." (Iann Robinson, Nonelouder.com)


Track Listing:

01. Primal Emptiness Of Outer Space
02. Dark Towers
03. Slow Hand Of Death
04. Wendigo Pt. 1 (Quest For Fire)
05. These Are My Dress Clothes
06. Wendigo Pt. 2 (Cursed To Roam)
07. Medication
08. Quiet Earth

Listen

MySpace

BISON B.C. Launches Tour Blog

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based band BISON B.C. has launched a new tour blog at Exclaim.ca.

BISON B.C. was interviewed for last week's "The Metal File" podcast from Montreal's CHOM-FM. Download the show as an MP3 file at this location.

A new BISON B.C. track entitled "Slow Hand Of Death" has been posted on the group's MySpace page. The song comes off the band's new album, "Quiet Earth", which is scheduled for release on September 30 via Metal Blade Records. The CD was recorded with Jesse Gander (3 INCHES OF BLOOD, SUBHUMANS, MASS GRAVE, S.T.R.E.E.T.S.) at The Hive Studios in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

"Quiet Earth" track listing:

01. Primal Emptiness Of Outer Space
02. Dark Towers
03. Slow Hand Of Death
04. Wendigo Pt. 1 (Quest For Fire)
05. These Are My Dress Clothes
06. Wendigo Pt. 2 (Cursed To Roam)
07. Medication
08. Quiet Earth

BISON is:

James Farwell - Guitar/Vocals
Dan And - Guitar/Vocals
Masa Anzai - Bass
Brad Mackinnon - Drums

BISON B.C. To Release 'Quiet Earth' In September

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada's BISON has changed it name to BISON B.C. and will release its new album, "Quiet Earth", on September 30 via Metal Blade Records. the CD was recorded with Jesse Gander (3 INCHES OF BLOOD, SUBHUMANS, MASS GRAVE, S.T.R.E.E.T.S.) at The Hive Studios in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

"Quiet Earth" track listing:

01. Primal Emptiness Of Outer Space
02. Dark Towers
03. Slow Hand Of Death
04. Wendigo Pt. 1 (Quest For Fire)
05. These Are My Dress Clothes
06. Wendigo Pt. 2 (Cursed To Roam)
07. Medication
08. Quiet Earth



BISON is:

James Farwell - Guitar/Vocals
Dan And - Guitar/Vocals
Masa Anzai - Bass
Brad Mackinnon - Drums

For more information, visit www.myspace.com/bisoneastvan.