BISON — Quiet Earth (review)

Album · 2008 · Sludge Metal

4/5 · 2020-11-19
voila_la_scorie

When the Metal Gods created Mastodon, they looked and listened and were so impressed with the album "Leviathan" that they thought it would be cool to have another band creating music like that. So the gods winked at each other and set forth across the North American continent to find a city far away from Atlanta, Georgia where they would cast their mould once more. They crossed the 49th Parallel as they neared the western reaches of the continent and stopped just before the main landmass broke into islands at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and there they created Bison. Who soon went and changed their name to Bison B.C. so as not to be confused with (or actually sued by) other bands who were using the same name.

This is Bison B.C.'s debut album and their second release after their EP "Earthbound". If you are a fan of Mastodon's "Leviathan" and want something that pounds just as heavily and pulverizes just as effectively, then "Quiet Earth" is a good place to come. This is eight tracks of continuous sledgehammer slamming. The band knows how to hit the heavies with guitar chords, bass, and drums all slamming down at once to create these massive, explosive riffs that are like the impacts of some colossal beast stomping down on the landscape. Concrete structures shatter like dried clay, windows blow out like supernovas, and vehicles are launched into the air.

The vocals of James Gnarwell are quite similar to those of Mastodon's (I'm not sure which of the two vocalists it is though, but not the one who sang the "Blood and thunder" part in the song "Blood and Thunder"). In spite of the similarity, however, James Gnarwell does have his own distinct quality to his voice. There is a second vocalist who appears in "These Are My Dress Clothes" and whose voice is deeper and more like death vocals. They add another layer of interest, and it would have been nice to hear them again.

All eight tracks presented here are similar in their unrelenting thunder, but you will hear the intro to "Wendigo, Part 1: Quest for Fire" has a cello and violin and these instruments turn up again in the final track, the title track of the album.

Aside from all that, "Quiet Earth" can lay a city flat. But it's not limited to just dropping oil tankers on the town. There's a fair bit of musical play time and time signature juggling in some tracks, a sludge approach to progressive metal. It doesn't surprise me as the other sludge bands I'm most familiar with are Mastodon and Baroness. If the band had stuck to just hammering down chords and blowing out the vocal chords of impersonators, it would still be pretty cool. But thankfully, there are some small additions like the extra vocals, the cello and violin, and ventures into trickier music to play that make my ears perk up every time after I think the band's approach is to just blast out the chords. On the strength of this album here, I have gone ahead and ordered the next one in their discography.

So, if someone ever asks you if there's an album out their that's similar to "Leviathan", you can recommend "Quiet Earth" by Bison!