LP Review: Rhythm & Booze by PIST

It was March ’14 when our ears were introduced to the savagely groovy metal riffs on Manchester, England’s, PIST, with their debut EP Riffology, in our New Band To Burn One To section, and it’s with great joy that the long awaited release of their debut album captures everything that we first loved about the band: brutal, drink infused riffs, husky, angered vocals, and a percussion section that leaves you moshing around every dark, beat-down dive you’ll find these guys demolishing.

The aptly named Rhythm & Booze record kicks off with what will soon be regarded as the band’s trademark sound on the track ‘Shitstorm’: a compact amalgamation of razor riffs played along a fuzzy metallic edge, pounding drums, and a screaming vocalist that wants to rip your face apart while at the same time pouring a beer down your neck and partying till dawn. ‘Dirt on Me’ is fucking brutal! It’s perfect party music for you and your stoner/metal/rock friends to smash beer cans together and through each other round in the party to end all, well, weekends. The one thing you cannot say about PIST is that they don’t give it everything they’ve got, because they do, and then chuck in the last of the drip tray too. ‘Detached’ has riffs that make your guts curdle, teetering between sludge and metal, all the while keeping a Southern Rock styling, which can be strange to hear from lads from a northern city in England.

PIST aren’t just about drinking, fighting, fucking, and partying (although if they were that’d be enough) they’re also great songwriters and musicians, raining in their animalistic instincts to create solid songs that form a well-rounded record, and not just a long onslaught of noise over belching.

As the record closes with the delightfully named ‘Cunt Lip’ and ‘Chunder’, you soon realise that the eighth beer you’ve somehow managed to down in one has made you aware of the hairy dude across the bar, who is eyeing up your woman and is calling you a pussy, and that he wants to brawl, and that everyone in the room is up for a good old punch up, and you let yourself go into the flow of the night’s brutality. This is all come about through Rhythm & Booze, and it was worth it. You can thank PIST for your black eye!

Rhythm & Booze is out now through When Planets Collide.

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Sunday Sludge: Yellowtooth - "Disgust"

I can't say I've "visited" Michigan City, Indiana. I had to pull off Interstate 94 last fall when my son nearly shit his pants on a return to Illinois from Michigan. The exit didn't take us far into town, and I left without giving Michigan City another thought. I'd failed to recall that Heavy Planet years ago featured the down-tempo, beer-guzzling sludge trio Yellowtooth as a New Band To Burn One To. It's too bad; these guys would get along great with my wife.

Just this past week, Yellowtooth released Disgust (Orchestrated Misery Recordings), a ten-track diatribe of shit-caked southern indigestion that buzzes better than a lipper o' Skoal. The sound is thick and damp, while the mood is dark and malevolent. There's no shortage of everything you'd expect from an excellent sludge record, but the band set themselves apart by leaning toward doom, nodding to southern rock forefathers, and spitting a barely detectable whisper of harmony here and there. Tasty stuff.

Wizard Dust opens with an immediate chop-riff-chop dynamic that is nearly buried by a low bass grumble. Henry McGinnis provides a gruff, glass-chewing vocal that perfectly marries the filthy sludge churn. His guitar pulls away from the mire just long enough to break into a middle-finger solo, sailing over a hard-hitting rhythm and shooting straight up your ass. That intermittent chop is revisited on Prophetic Ramblings. Quick and thick with a dusty shred and murky low-ends, the track keeps a torrid clip. The choppy back-and-forth is led by Peter Clemens' bass, strung through the album like hot razor wire.

The heavy-handedness of Burning Daylight and Traitor demonstrate a penchant for an arcing pendulum of doom. Burning Daylight's judgment day sound is evil and unforgiving. The slow burn gives way to a guitar gallop as listeners are dragged by their heels. Yellowtooth are laughing every time you squeal, as the under-lighted vocal creeps alongside buzzsaw riffery. Traitor, on the other hand, punishes slowly. Ed Kribs' drums were recorded in medieval Romania on this drudging doom return. Ominous clouds break on a lifted tempo as McGinnis' fretwork burns down villages. Oh, and that simmering, electric bassline can't be ignored as gargantuan riff-stomps drive in the dagger.

There's a surprise or two as the album's thorax hits its stride. 75 Black Pontiac is a (kind of) hopeful and harmonious change of pace. The massive riffs haven't fled, but the rhythm isn't slung as low as the other tracks. You could say guitars are responsible for the massive directional shift, but you'd be impatient and proven wrong. Yellowtooth return to the grip of stomach-knotting sludge, while a stoner roll and sweet solo later juxtapose the wet-blanket vocal prevalent throughout. Following a similar trajectory is On the Trail of Lewis Medlock, which is only slightly more accessible than what we've come to expect from Yellowtooth. Southern-fried rock elements abound and we never quite leave the bog, though there's slightly more melody here as the tires spin. A vengeful stomp through thick, dense timber relents and Clemens' bass again simmers.

The riff-driven, crackling-ember patience of Soulstalker's opening moments is quickly met with a layered toilet-gurgle, picking up on a grinding sandblast. The engine purrs with malignance, guitars break free and cruise through Dimebag-ish pullback, and Kribs' double kick-drum attack sets the pace. But the Dimebag influence is most noticeable on the smoke-blown, smoldering romp of The 11th Hour. The track is Yellowtooth at their finest, peppering rhythmic drops amid the hollow guitar fuzz. We move from a cool southern jam into a fever-pitched sonic assault, chugging home on ashy swill. These fuckers just set fire to everything the first nine tracks achieved. This closer has it all.

Disgust is a changeling; it's gonna sound different every time you hear it. Whether it's the choppy, stoned rhythms stealing the keys and going off the map or guitars climbing the bell tower, there's a truckload o' stickiness here. Yellowtooth take their pedigree (these guys cut their teeth in some pretty awesome bands) and chuck it from an overpass. This filthy tumbler pairs well with road sodas as you kick up gravel and take out some dickhead's mailbox with a crowbar. "Southern-fried stoner-sludge-doom"? Fuck it. It's heavy. It's bad-ass. And it's perfect when you're chasin' Beam with Busch Light.

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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."