Album Of The Week : U.S Christmas - Eat Of The Low Dogs

Since I have spent the last three weeks drifting indolently across the Iberian peninsula (see jacktstravels.blogspot.com) I had to put Album of the Week on a brief hiatus. For me, travelling always brings out the best in any music, and the soundtrack to me fruitful meanderings in Spain and Portugal was the album by U.S. Christmas, psychedelic rockers from deepest Appalachia.

As a rule, I'm very discriminate about buying music. I have a list of CD's that I want to buy as big as Dave Mustaine's ego so I don't often just buy any album on a whim - it needs to merit the money I spend on it. With Eat Of The Low Dogs it was different. I heard the song Silent Tongue on Last.fm radio and was so enamoured by it that I had to buy the record based on just that one listen. And I wasn't disappointed. In fact, that very track pales into comparison when measured against some of the other behemoth songs on the album.

U.S. Christmas are on Neurot Recordings (record label of extreme metal masterminds Neurosis), and if Scott Kelly and co. give your band their blessings then they must be worth shouting about. Both bands share the same lonesome, bleak landscapes but project them in different fashions. Like Neurosis, U.S. Christmas have the ability to take a few chords, milk them to near saturation point and create a simple yet awesome song - take Say Sister for example, only four chords are used up until the epic, gorgeous, undulating outro section. There's not a chugged power chord in sight, and it would be unsuitable to call this metal at all, even if the vocals are raspier and harsher than your average rock band. The band owe a lot more to 70's space rock legends Pink Floyd and Hawkwind than any 80's and 90's metal.

I can see some listeners objecting to the use of the perhaps ostentatious modular synth and the heavily echoed vocals, but for me it adds depth to the sound. Nate Hall's vocals are strained and beautifully impassioned. As he screams "And I don't ever change" in Uktena you really feel a haunting conviction in his voice. The guitars and used delicately and abstemiously, never over-indulging, and focusing on creating an eldrich atmosphere and giving awesome texture to the record. The overall sound created is one of a band jamming out live, yet the songs are never desultory.

The follow up to this album, Run Thick In The Night, as been very well received by critics, and a support slot for Neurosis's show last month in San Francisco shows that the band are heading on a upward trajectory. Great things are to come from these guys.

9/10

Highlights : Say Sister, The Light of All Time, Uktena

See also - Pink Floyd - Us And Them, Hawkwind - Hall Of The Mountain Grill, Neurosis - Stones From The Sky.