Grails preview

Grails
Empty Bottle, Chicago
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Grails’ Doomsdayer’s Holiday cover art has boobies on it. Naked boobies. This would be cooler if the woman with said boobies wasn’t riding one of those convenient-store mechanical animals (an elephant, as far as we can tell), in the middle of a forest, wearing some sort of gorilla mask, and smothered in moonlight fog.

That artwork pretty much sums up Doomsdayer’s Holiday. A little titillating, but mostly goddamn creepy. Maybe that’s what Grails should have called the record instead, or at least used as a one-sheet tag line. Songs like “X-Contaminations” and “Immediate Mate” are every bit as hazy, trippy, eerie, and confusing as the cover. Surprisingly, though, Grails keeps its tunes relatively short. That’s unexpected given how often the terms “avant metal” and/or “psych metal” get thrown around for this quartet, meaning it’s best to prepare miles for droning chords, waves of buzzing feedback, and eons of sparse space, but only two of Holiday‘s songs “Acid Rain” – much prettier than its title implies – and “Predestination Blues” – vocals from Sun City Girls’ Alan Bishop) pass six minutes. Interesting considering the kind of downtempo, weird-beard “metal” (a stretch even for non-purists) Grails is connected to: bandmember Emil Amos is also half of Om and Earth/Sun O))) producer Randall Dunn was one of two (with Faust’s Steven Wray Lobdell) engineers on the album.

— Trevor Fisherhere to download Grails’ “Stray Dog.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly