Sunday, October 2, 2016

Brant Bjork- Tao of the Devil (Napalm Records)

Brant is back with another new record. I loved the last one. Brant described this one as somewhere in between MC5 and Blue Cheer with a  desert twist.  I went ahead and splurged for the deluxe box set. Not sure this was worth it though. I did not realize that the CD had the long cool bonus Evening Jam, which I thought you could only get if you bought the box with the extra 12”.  Oh well.  The record starts off with The Gree Heen, a pretty rough and heavy rocker. Humble Pie is groovier and the band is more jammy for sure on this record. Brant sings in a really different style for the main lyrical parts as well. Stackt slows things down a bit and has some nice harmony guitars at times and a heavy riff. Luvin’ is classic Brant with a bit more classic rock throw in! Biker No. 2 is happy biker R&R tune.  I dig the guitar solos in this one. Seems they trade off a bit. Dave’s War sees Brant nearly screaming out the vocals in this head bopping track and a nice groovy long end section jam (hear it below)… A real highlight of the record and some great bass and drums as well. . Hope they play this one live on the tour and jam it out different each night! Tao of the Devil has a super cool guitar riff that Brant slowly lays the vocals over. Cool way to end the normal album. If you get the CD or deluxe box, then Evening Jam is included and this starts with a funky wah guitar and then the rest of the band kicks in. After a min or so the whole band takes it to another level as the tempo takes off. It slows to a crawl at about 3mins as they pass a joint around the room (I could imagine!) and then some guitar solos and back into a cool groove as the guitar riff becomes more heavy. Great bass playing. The jam sort of dies out at 8mins and then takes off once again and ends at about 14mins.

Lazy/Auto and Freaks are the other two tracks on the extra 12”…  Great stuff…


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