. . .
Somewhere out there Makh Daniels is drinking too much. His band Early Graves is on tour. What do bands do when they tour? Wait around. What do bands do when they wait around? Drink. When Early Graves tour, they try to stock enough whisky to last a month. They usually run out after a week.
Daniels says Goner (Metal Blade/Ironclad, 2010) is about alcoholism “and all the bullshit that comes with it”. That’s an understatement. This record skips the buzz and the shenanigans. It starts with the blackouts and the mysterious bruises – and ends there, too.
Goner is one hell of a downer. Every other line is about giving up. Music hasn’t seen such self-loathing since the ’90s. But when Trent Reznor sang the phrase “crown of shit”, it almost sounded elegant. When Daniels sings it, he’s drenched in the stuff. Delivery is key. It’s how Iggy Pop made lines like “I wanna be your dog” into poetry.
The Stooges also come to mind sonically. Recorded to 2 inch tape, Goner has the most violent sound I’ve heard since Iggy Pop’s remix of Raw Power. Crust punk, old-school hardcore, and Entombed’s Wolverine Blues go at each other’s throats. Feedback erupts all around. Goner is 26 minutes of falling down stairs.
“Goner”
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This is all fine, but a lot of bands these days can apply the hurt. Daniels is Early Graves’ trump card. He’s the poet laureate of the gutter. His tour diaries are some of the finest road writing around. In “Faith Is Shit”, a religious friend tries to convert him. He says,
You said that you could be saved if you let him in your heart
I shrugged and said I could never tell heaven and hell apart
You asked what happens at the end of our life
I said hell is a hangover and heaven is an endless black night
He also sounds like he is about to kill. Intransitive verb, no object necessary. It could be you, me, Daniels himself, doesn’t matter. For how much he says it, Daniels isn’t giving up. His howl is too pure. His craft is too honed. This life does have a pursuit: death. Early Graves, indeed.
“Trauma”
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. . .
EARLY GRAVES – SUMMER TOUR 2010
w/The Funeral Pyre
7/15 Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
7/16 Philadelphia, PA @ The M Room
7/17 Brooklyn, NY @ The Union Pool
7/18 Pittsburgh, PA @ Belvedere’s
7/19 Toledo, OH @ The Black Cherry
7/20 Milwaukee WI @ the borg ward.
7/21 St Louis, MO @ Fubar
7/22 KC, MO @ Aftershock
7/23 Lincoln, NE @ The Manor
7/24 Denver, CO @ Blastomat
7/25 Cheyenne, WY @ Ernie November
7/26 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Outer Rim
7/27 Garden City, ID @ Brawl Studios
7/28 Spokane, WA @ Mootsy’s
7/29 Seattle, Wa @ The Morgue
7/30 Portland, OR @ Plan B
7/31 Bellingham, WA @ JINX artspace
8/01 Salem, OR @ TBA
8/02 Reno, NV @ Ryans Saloon
8/03 SF, CA @ Submission Gallery
8/04 Los Angeles, CA @ TBA
8/05 Riverside, CA @ TBA
8/06 Whittier, CA @ TBA
8/07 Long Beach, CA @ TBA
8/08 Echo Park, CA @ POWER OF THE RIFF FEST
. . .
Amazon (MP3)
Amazon (CD)
The End (CD)
Relapse (CD)
Metal Blade (CD)
Amie St. (MP3, currently less than $2)
. . .
I bought Goner based on your last article on them, and indeed, I loved it. However, just now thinking about it, its left my rotation as soon as it came, and I’m not altogether sure why. Still, good stuff!
TheChaosPath, that’s interesting to me. Do you listen to other stuff like this super-regularly? What’s your range of interest in the metal subgenres?
Excellent piece Cosmo. My favorite genre has always been metal, but my favorite bands have usually been punk bands; Misfits, Stooges, Clash, Television, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Saicos (Peru), Grong Grong, Radio Birdman So when I learn about some aural link between the strong sounds of extreme bands and any of my fave punk acts, I am all over it. I think I didn’t get to Early Graves, because I did not get the physical promo. Maybe I should go out and buy it myself…
Weren’t these guys some kind of tech-y metalcore band at one point?
I always mispronounce the album title in my mind, as if it rhymes with ‘boner.’ It might be hindering my enjoyment of the album. Either that, or I’ve finally reached the point in my sobriety where I can only find enjoyment in Rush and Toto.
Helm – I like a little bit of everything, although my strongest interests in the technical and/or the weird. Instead of giving genres, I think listing some of my favorite groups would be more telling, as some genres I may LOVE, but really only like a band or two out of it: Opeth, Arcturus, Death, Carcass, Morbid Angel, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Shining (NOR), Dismember, Three, Spiral Architect, just to name a few.
However, if I find something out there that I can strongly associate with what I listened to when I was a teenager, I can definitely get into it. In the case of Early Graves, I was able to draw a strong connection to Repulsion and Disrupt, both of which I loved back then and still do. Another thing that helped was that in the first article that Cosmo did on this band, the song that was featured (Give Up was the title, I think), the guitarist was playing a chord progression that involved allowing the B and E strings to ring open while it moved around, which is a technique that I’ve used fairly frequently in the stuff I’ve written in the past.
Is this crust-meets-Entombed thing the latest hot sound? So many great bands (Nails, Black Breath, Trap Them) are in this vein and Early Graves sounds like another winner. Being compared to Repulsion and Disrupt is huge praise, gonna check ‘em out.
Band are total & absolute posers, they realised being apiary didn’t cut it anymore in the current musical climate, heard trap them and thought hey let’s be cool and be a “crust” band. Chris is a little rich kid faking “punx” I wish they were goners.
Metal Blade is putting out some weird shit these days.
UA, you mean weird as in ‘hip’ and possibly ‘trendy’? ’cause yeah, this sounds good but it is also the flavor of the day…
I don’t know…I mean, they’re kind of limited in what they can sign. They can’t go too deep into the underground or they change the image/face of the label, so they’re kind of left with what’s rising out of all that and yeah, a lot of it’s going to be trendy stuff or second tier popular metal that I hope at least sells for them temporarily. But I never really pay attention to them unless I accidentally read a review like this one. Metal Blade still = old Slayer to me.
They just seem very unsure of themselves and which direction they should take the label in.
TheChaosPath, thanks for your reply. I won’t presume to theorize why this had no staying power for you, it’s a curious thing when it happens that I always find interesting. I liked a Sacred Blade record very much for a couple of months once and I recommended it through a review. Now I never listen to it (to the point where I skip the tracks that come up in shuffle too) and I guess I feel a bit ashamed about that still, heh. No idea why it didn’t stick!
Oath. Sacred Oath</. Not Sacred Blade. Sacred Blade are awesome. I wrote the comment above and then had my computer shut-down while I waited in the porch for some friends to come and pick me up and I was thinking “…Sacred Blade.. wait a moment!”. Here’s my sense of priorities that I had to boot up the computer again to make this correction so I wouldn’t feel like a moron for the rest of my night out for betraying the allegiance of Canada’s Megadeth-meets-Floyd space aliens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5eSpTMTP7k&feature=related
My ride’s here!
No problem Helm! My theory on why it didn’t stick is because I spend very little time consuming music these days. Most of my prime listening time is spent listening to NPR or various other podcasts, so when I do listen to music, it is either in the background while my attention is focused elsewhere, or if I can dedicate time to it, I prefer to listen to things that I know that I like. As such, I don’t really give new things much time to sink in like I used to, unless it just REALLY grabs me from the get go, like in the case of Shining (NOR), or Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. I guess its just a case of resting on my musical laurels and not bothering to put the effort into active listening. In the case of Early Graves, I’m probably not going to seek it out in my playlist… but if it happens come on while I’m on the treadmill, I’m certainly not going to skip it
TheChaosPath – Bands that hit hard like this often have a short shelf life. However, the depth of this record did not reveal itself to me until I sat down with the lyrics and read along while listening to the music. I was practically hyperventilating by the end of the record. The full picture – vocals, lyrics, musics – had come into focus, and it was staggering.
Josh Haun – Yes, they were once a forgettable technical metalcore band called Apiary, with a different lineup.
Rev – Perhaps post-AA you might like the supergroup Yoso, featuring members of Yes and Toto.
http://www.myspace.com/yosohq
UA – This is on Metal Blade sublabel Ironclad. I believe the arrangement is that Ironclad does A&R, Metal Blade does distribution. But Metal Blade is big enough so that its direction has become “all”.
Yeah. But what’s the best thing that can happen if you sign to Metal Blade? You go with Slagel to pick up Metallica’s dry cleaning?
Besides, if you call something “ironclad” it better be able to sink the Merrimac.
That’s a bad-ass jacket.
Helm, interesting the bit about Sacred Oath and Sacred Blade. I actually thought (and still think) SB are very good but I don’t find myself listening to them much for some reason while ‘A Crystal Vision’ gets pretty regular listens. Still any time I get back to ‘Of The Sun + Moon’ I feel it’s absolutely great so I haven’t gave up with it. It also took me some 13-14 years to start listening Metallica at all again.
I like the music…alot. Really grungy and fast with cool breaks. Problem is, I have no fucking clue what that dude is catterwalling about. I think i heard him say “everything” “gray” “fucking” and maybe “I love fucking best”. Ha. For all I know it could be the cookie monster telling me he loves fucking the best. Even better than cookies!
Certainly, sitting down with the lyrics would allow fora more interesting experience, but I rarely feel compelled to do so. I like the ease of getting it all in one, simple experience. When i was younger (whats that sonny!)I enjoyed reading the lyrics alot, at least once.
And, if the lyrics really were about the cookie monster wanting to fuck miss piggy or Prarie Dawn, i would probably like it more than if the lyrics were about shame, self loathing, misery torture sickness infested depression bubbles. God, the cookie monster shit is mundane. I know alot of you on here eat that shite like cheeseburgrs but i think it fucking sucks asshole vapor. The music, however, is fun.
@ Helm
Holy fuck, why haven’t I listened to Sacred Blade before? I have failed as a music critic.
Don’t kick yourself, they’re pretty obscure. The CD is pure gold (I mean there is no filler) and you can order it from Othyrworld (the quasi-continuation of the band) here: http://www.othyrworld.com/ . Biggest reason to order it (besides supporting the man) is that the booklet of the cd has the band in a grainy ’80s photo around a spaceship made out of spray-painted cardboard.
Gave the record a listen and wasn’t blown away with it like I was the first time I listened to Nails or Coliseum. I actually think it lacked the power of those bands. And the singer didn’t do me any favors. I think I’d need to see them live to actually form an opinion.
And I do think this crust-meets-Entombed thing is starting to get a little trendy, though it is better than most of the metal trends I’ve encountered lately.
Finally getting into this. Great stuff.
apiary was a completely different band, hence the name change. band is fucking excellent. chris is one of the coolest dudes ever. haters gonna hate.
rip, makh
This article is cursed.
rest in peace. so fucking tragic.
sad. not the first or the last time an artist essentially prophecies their own untimely demise. just sad.
“For how much he says it, Daniels isn’t giving up. His howl is too pure. His craft is too honed. This life does have a pursuit: death. Early Graves, indeed.”
Ironic.
RIP Makh Daniels