Let’s be honest: Weed Is Weed as band’s moniker… You might have a clue what this stuff would sound like / would be dealing about, don’t you. Besides, the band consists of members currently or formerly involved with the likes of Earthride, Spirit Caravan, Bobby Liebling’s Ram Family, Pentagram and Land Of Doom, so you cannot deny it anymore: this must be hazy and psychedelic Doom. And indeed, it is!
Atlanta based Volume IV, featuring Joe Carpenter of Nihilist, has just announced the release of their Ripple Music debut album, Long In The Tooth, which will be coming out in the US on March 11th, and is scheduled to hit the European stores on March 14th of 2014!
Live albums are not something I typically go for. Of course there are exceptions. With a live CD, it has to be quite something special in my opinion. Unfortunately, this live recording does not offer anything that you can’t get from listening to their studio albums Growers of mushroom (their must-have debut) and their follow up Unleashed.
Imagine a blend of Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, The Black Crowes, AC/DC and some other bands, and you’ve got Stone Axe. This album was recorded at the 2011 Roadburn Festival, but it could just as easily have been a studio recording, because the public is hardly to be heard on the album, and the performance of the band does not much differ either.
With this Deluxe Edition, Ripple Music brings us a rerelease of Stone Axe’s second album. As a matter of fact it’s the complete original album, expanded by a second CD, with tracks that were previously only available on vinyl, or were part of a compilation, and some tracks that were never before released. Is this alone worth buying this album? I’m not sure. After all it’s more of the same stuff, being seventies inspired rock, reminiscing to many of the great bands that existed or sprouted in that period of time.
If you like your heavy metal with a serious dose of blues, then this band Iron Claw is just what you’re looking for. They originally toured the UK between 1969 and 1974, but never officially released an album, and finally disbanded. In 2009 at last there was the release of a self-titled CD by Rockadrome.
When Ripple Music were planning to start an own record label, they immediately thought of Iron Claw, and contacts were made. As it happened to be, the band also had plans to reform, and so they did.
