…[T]here was an amazing line-up scheduled to perform Saturday night in Chinatown at Mountain Bar. Ancestors, Conifer, Lightning Swords of Death and Earthless. For the first time perhaps since the Bottling Smoke Festival, there were four bands on the same bill in Los Angeles that I actually wanted to see. Ancestors deafened me once before at The Smell, but on that night I was more excited to see Suishou No Fune, so I wanted to see them again and give the music a chance to capture me. I’ve been listening to Conifer since their self-titled album appeared on an Aquarius Records mailing list, and was overjoyed to see them performing in LA for the first time (at least, the first time I’m aware of). Lightning Swords Of Death opened for Wolves In The Throne Room last year and impressed me with their epic black metal tunes and their penchant for choking everyone in the room with a fog machine on full blast for the duration of their set. Earthless, of course, gets much respect on this site for their amazing psychedelic, kraut-y, monstrous space-rock jams.

The upstairs room at Mountain Bar has no ventilation, just a series of fans blowing in various directions. All the lights, save for one measly bulb off-center on the left-hand side of the room, were turned off for the entire evening. This made photography difficult, but definitely aided the mood. The setting was perfect for a series of low-end heavy, grim and grungy, ultra-psychedelic rock bands (and one black metal band).

Ancestors took the stage fifteen minutes before ten o’clock, and played for thirty or forty minutes. I think they were the loudest band of the evening, but somebody else who stayed for all four acts might beg to differ. They employed two keyboardists, which I don’t remember at all from last time I saw them. Their monumentally heavy jams fall somewhere between psychedelic heavy metal and space rock on the music-journalist-genre-o-meter. The first tune they played was slow and featured sporadic shouted vocals. The only other tune that I remember was the latter portion of “Orcus’ Avarice” from their recent Neptune With Fire LP, which sounds like a stoner rock rendition of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor dirge. It was lumbering and repetitive and triumphant. I yearned for the grand riff to reach a stunning crescendo, and I was not let down. Out of the four acts on this night, Ancestors played the best set. Everything was perfect. The pant-leg-shaking volume, the long, drawn out jams, and the beautiful arc of “Orcus’ Avarice” completely changed my opinion of the band, and overshadowed the other three bands’ performances. Do yourself a favor and get your hands on Neptune With Fire. [Listen to “Orcus’ Avarice” (edited)]

ANCESTORS Neptune With Fire (Tee Pee) Sludge is pretty easy to come by, but it’s always best served with plodding drums, impossibly dissonant guitars and a doom-laden disposition. Ancestors posses all three things and Neptune With Fire is a heavy bevy of sooty hate. The band take cues from the grimy guys in the Melvins and Sleep, and tune down, way down, to create music with an incredibly dense bottom end. It’s heavy as hell and also gives props to bands like Slint for their use of shifting dynamics and precision playing. Unsurprisingly, every song is incredibly drawn out, so just getting through a single track is a bit of a chore. Luckily, anybody delving into Ancestors would likely be predisposed to this sort of music, so the band should find a receptive audience if they play their cards right. Cameron Gordon

October 2008

Released in August, Neptune With Fire is the debut release for both the Ancestors, a Los Angeles-based metal quintet of varying description, as well as for North Atlantic Sound, a new imprint on Tee Pee Records. The near future of the label (as well as that of the band) will be interesting to follow, as this epic release paints North Atlantic as a label with clear artistic and conceptual standards and, therefore, upcoming releases already have a strong benchmark set for them.

What makes Neptune With Fire different from any other album that I’ve heard in 2008 is that the album’s ample 38:26 running time is composed of only two songs: the 17-minute “Orcus’ Avarice” and the nearly 22-minute title track (a seven-minute snippet of this track is posted below to give you a taste). Therefore, though there are attributes of many metal subgenres on display here (psychedelic, doom, sludge, etc.), the most obvious characteristic of this album is the band’s desire to jam. Both tracks feature lengthy sections with moments of distortion and noise used as transitions.  Neptune With Fire is presented as a concept album, as a metaphorical character experiences a transforming journey.  Unfortunately, the lack of and oft-unintelligible nature of lyrics on the songs (which are apparently sung by committee) hinders my understanding of the quest at hand.  This is not a major detriment, however, because the moods of the different sections of each song and the transitions between these sections shed some light into the pain and glory expressed therein.

The band handles their various styles ably, as the album’s opening psychedelic passage jams pretty hard, and the almost medieval air of a large portion of the title track lends an air of weighty fantasy.  Though J. Christopher Watkin’s organ stands out on the title track, the individual instruments usually blend into a cohesive unit as the band focuses on creating airtight sonic portraits.  Many of the songs’ sections lumber repetitively as momentum is built very slowly and the groove forms and transforms naturally.  The abundance of these transformations of varying speed keep these long tracks fresh and allow the band plenty of time to construct the appropriate moods and tie up loose ends when necessary.

Neptune With Fire is a strong debut for the Ancestors and is highly recommended to those who have the patience for metal epics.  The album’s artwork was designed by Arik Roper (who has done the same for many of the Ancestors’ psychedelic metal compatriots) and is currently available on both vinyl and CD at the Tee Pee shop.