OKLAHOMA CITY – Now that it’s firmly October, it’s finally time to get in the spooky spirit with all things dark and dangerous.
Fortunately for fans of the heavier side of life, the fall is blowing in a front full of crushing riffs, cranked distortion, and defiantly heavy, heady metal from across Oklahoma.
Our state has been a surprising breeding ground for metal acts for years, and even some of our biggest latter day musical exports have from come from the blisteringly loud end of the spectrum.
But recently we’ve seen a small slew of Okie rockers turning out some unique, left-field metal releases that run the gamut from driving grunge to sludgy doom and even to full-bore, hypnotic psych-metal.
Money – ‘Stovepipe’
The band with the world’s worst SEO is back with an electrifying twenty-minute, seven-track set that straddles the line between album and EP just as surely as it straddles the line between grunge and doom.
But who cares what category it falls into when the songs are this good?
Armed with a seemingly ceaseless arsenal of riffs and some seriously beefy production, the Money guys have crafted a rapid-fire collection of full-force rockers that pull as much from the best, high-volume grunge of the 90s as from the underground stoner and doom offerings of today.
Each track is built on the kind of downtuned chord riffing that you’d expect from any of the more seething and intense Seattle acts, but with more than a few shades of Deftones-ian nu-metal for good measure. And with singer Tanner Watkins’ voice often floating through under washes of reverb, the “gazey” tags fly freely.
But “Stovepipe” is far from just another modern nu-gaze also-ran. There’s more drive, more full-fisted weight and heft to the drumming, and more barely contained aggression and chaos, both in the riffing and in the compellingly cryptic lyrics of stubborn defiance and white knuckled resistance.
Shoegaze fans will find something intriguingly heavy, modern metal fans will find a whole new level of atmosphere and vibe, and early Cloakroom fans will find everything they could ever want.
(Bonus points awarded for including a clip of the legend Kurt Vonnegut to kick off closer “Billy Pilgrim.”)
“Stovepipe” by Money is available on streaming services now from Sunday Drive Records.
Bugnog – ‘American Dreamed EP’
Casting out anything cryptic, vague, or vibey, doom crushers Bugnog are back again to take a heavy metal sledgehammer to your comfort and contentment with American life.
Arguably not since GWAR has a band so effortlessly and listenably paired such memorable and even grooving dark riffage with such abject nihilism and irreverent chaos.
Exhibit A: opening track “100% BEEF,” which is about – you guessed it – beef.
Is it a metaphor for the steady diet of manufactured conflict and animosity that’s force-fed daily to all Americans? That’s tough to say. It could just as easily be about actual, all-American cow meat and it would still absolutely crush with its assaulting deep-tuned riffs and bulldozing drum fills that leave you lost as to how only two people could make such a marvelous metal racket.
From there, the scathing societal indictments of “American Dreamed” become a bit more clear, or at least a lot more overt, with the title track crashing in after a jangly acoustic intro to confront the inescapable complicity that comes with simply living in the beast’s belly.
By the time you reach penultimate standout “World Bore III,” all that sneering, winking irreverence has fallen away, leaving only a genuinely mournful and palpably furious death metal examination of war and its human toll, one that openly belies even the cheekiness of the song’s own title.
If the daily news has you seeking something pitch-black and despondent, but still bursting with destructive hammer-on doom riffs and tempo trickery, then this is the metal release you need.
“American Dreamed EP” by Bugnog is available on streaming services now.
Liberal Media – ‘Existence Proof’
Tulsa-based producer, engineer, songwriter, and metal maestro Pete Hess (of The Danner Party, Rattlesnake Diner, Dope Patrol, and more) is back again with what may be his most creatively strange and unique hard rock foray yet as Liberal Media.
The three-track (but still sprawling) “Existence Proof” sees Hess joining forces with guitarist Charlie Williams and drummer Chase Calen to create something psych-heavy and decidedly desert-scorched, not unlike the recently featured Earthless.
Tossing out all conventional thinking about the structure, tonality, and even length of a rock song, the tracks here seek to form their own stomping, creeping sonic environment, cranking up and stretching out ominously over nine minutes.
But rather than fill time with needlessly complexity and prog-rock playfulness, these mammoth tracks commit to their rhythms and riffs to create something barreling and hypnotic, developing their own relentless momentum as a foundation for speak-singing dissertations on the nature of time and violence punctuated by explosive moments of freak-out guitar.
The two monolithic stoner-metal monsters here are only broken up by the brief, fleeting “Big Ride,” an oddball bit of folk song strangeness that comes across immediately as a somehow even more weird Sparklehorse (and believe me, that’s a high compliment.)
If you think the world of modern hard-rock and metal has hit a creative wall or has become averse to taking chances and embracing weirdness, just give Liberal Media a listen and prepare to be wrong.
“Existence Proof” by Liberal Media is available on streaming services now.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
