Roaring out of the gate with a gale of noisy, feedback-drenched guitars and thundering drums,
Brimstone Howl seem determined to prove they're not just another Nuevo-garage band on their third full-length album,
We Came in Peace. And while the songs lean to the fast and loud side and the chord changes are in the classic style,
Brimstone Howl add a large portion of spookiness to the formula here, with
the Velvet Underground (circa
White Light/White Heat) and
the Cramps (circa
Songs the Lord Taught Us) audible as clear musical reference points. Musically,
Brimstone Howl take to the dark netherworld of this music like a duck to polluted water, and Calvin Retzlaff's propulsive drumming and Nick Waggoner and John Ziegler's big, menacing guitars work wonders with these tunes, while Jim Diamond's spacious engineering and production only adds to the impact. But while the music clicks, lyrically tunes like "Obliterator," "Child of Perdition," and "The World Will Never Know" come off as unfortunately pretentious, with the wordy images of a doomed world sounding less like dark poetry than the blog entries of some goth-obsessed eighth grader.
Brimstone Howl are clearly smarter and more talented than that, and a healthy percentage of
We Came in Peace works despite the lyrics (Ziegler's vocal delivery helps), but if this band is going to make the great album they may well have in them, they really need to find a better wordsmith before they head into the studio again. ~ Mark Deming