Queen Elephantine / Elder – Double CD EP (Concrete Lo-Fi Records)
By Jay Snyder
February 17, 2007
I love split albums. In most cases you’ll get two pretty sweet established acts fighting it out for top honors and more often than not serving up some pretty ass-kicking, non-album tracks. Then you’ll have cases of two sort of under the radar bands pairing up and delivering killer music that is about as hard to come by as most of the releases in their career. I would put the
Lost-it/Igon split that I just reviewed into that category. Then finally, there are the split albums that serve as the introduction to two awesome bands that you are probably going to hear a lot more about in the future. I would put this split album between Hong Kong’s Queen Elephantine and Massachusetts’s Elder into the third category for certain. I haven’t heard anything about either band but stumbled across info on this split on the good ol’ net.
Queen Elephantine are up first with their four parts of “Ramesses”, which are all separate tracks but really deliver their best impact when listened to as a cohesive unit. The first part of this four piece epic is an instrumental track with clean guitars and mesmerizing rhythms that set things up for the second part’s heavier, more distorted swells of sound. It is still a psyched out affair though and doesn’t really dwell into the realm of all out heaviness. The vocals kind of have an early Josh Homme flavor to them and it fits nicely with the spacey, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd elements in their sound. The vocals are mellow and smooth but with enough strength in the delivery to make them not just part of the background. Every once in awhile they feel slightly forced but for the most part it’s a solid delivery that usually comes across well enough with the music. The bass plays a prominent role in building up the track and the guitar plays distorted, buzzing riffage that eventually builds into a strong, and 70’s psyche groove. I really think fans of Titan and the recent Mammatus record would dig on these guys a lot in addition to fans of the older stuff just because they have so many psyched out, 70’s prog influenced tendencies. The third part is another psychedelic affair that builds up slowly and hypnotizing with plenty of awesome guitar lines and tribal drum rhythms. The vocals make a brief, melodic appearance in the beginning and the entire track just sets things off into a dreamy atmosphere. An out of place gravelly, vocal enters right before the mid-point (I’d drop that stuff in the future) and things start really building in intensity as the rhythm section locks in a massive groove and the guitar provides ambient background, before the distortion kicks in and things get heavy until the end. The final part of “Ramesses” builds up with bass, drum and ambient guitar before turning into the heaviest part of the jam with distorted riffing, screaming/shouted vocals backing up the melodic voice. Phew, these four tracks are a real workout and it’s interesting to note that this stuff is all improvised. The sound quality sounds like a good live recording but gets the message across without a hitch and adds to the charm of these songs. Very nice tracks by Queen Elephantine for sure even though a few quirks could be ironed out for future releases.
The other side of the split turns up the heaviness big time with Elder’s, hateful doom/sludge that combines classic influence with sprawling heaviness and touches of psychedelic atmospheres, metal and vicious vocals. “1162” is a sludge fan’s wet dream with furious, Sabbath tinged riffs, huge bass, screaming vocals, elephantine tempos (hehe, I had to) and some awesome lead work that sounds straight out of the Maryland doom scene. Goddamn, really sweet track. The track is also a meaty 10 minutes long and never loses your attention or the swinging doom that it begins with for even a second. “Red Sunrise” mixes thing up a bit and maintains an upbeat, early Soulpreacher and even a Sofa King Killer kind of vibe. It is definitely sludged-out and crushing but has swinging grooves and southern friend riffs n’ leads to make this madness a toe-tapping good time! They slow down and knuckle drag almost until the end after a certain point before switching back to another blues/doom groove, giving the track a great Jekyll and Hyde type of feel. Hell there is even alternating singing and pissed off screaming at the end of the track for the ultimate finale. The singing is good too, so it doesn’t offset the sludge factor at all. “Black Midnight” is up next and it a sprawling effort roping together many varying influences. The track starts off with a grooving, epic southern riff that almost reminds me of something Rwake might have unleashed in the past before the band bring in huge, Sabbathian riffage with shouted from a mile away vocals akin to something like “Blood of Zion” on High on Fire’s mighty “Art of Self-Defense” album. There is southern doom and Sleep and early HOF all over this track and the combined result is fantastic to behold. I even feel that there is some Vitus style heaviness going on in the later part of the track when the band bring in slow, crawling doom that will lay waste to empires before descending into a massive groove once again. Seriously, I don’t know how these guys do it. They look like really young dudes and as far as I know they haven’t been around too long at all but they are jamming out MASSIVE sludge/doom epics like they are seasoned pros. Their final track is an untitled jam that starts off with an almost black metal feel and kind of reminds me of some of the Fistula related projects with a blazing riff and a cold as ice feel, topped off with sneering vocals but the track eventually brings in elements of psyched out, sludge-ridden guitar work, that caps things off on an excellent and varied note.
Damn, this is a surprising split. If you are looking for pristine recording quality then you probably will be turned off by this, but fuck it. I like the way it sounds and it’s not that muddy or anything. Queen Elephantine sounds live on the floor and Elder are heavy as hell and have a grimy but clear production so that you never lose track of what is going on. I wouldn’t call it muddy, just grimy bringing forth the filth perfectly and layering the psychedelic elements with a layer of mystery.
This is a damn fine split all around, and serves as a great introduction to two bands that are well-worth checking into. I’m going to be spinning this one a bunch in the coming months so definitely give it a check if you are in the mood to check out some brand new psyche and doom music. The length of this review is ridiculous but this is a pretty epic piece of work, especially by two bands I have never even heard a mention of until a mere few weeks ago. Killer stuff, don’t be stingy and miss out on this one. You’ll be sorry.
Visit the Concrete Lo-Fi Records website at www.clfrecords.com
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