Brave Words - Neptune With Fire review
Reviews
Swan Fungus - Live review 11/15/08
…[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)]
Chart Attack - Neptune With Fire review
http://chartattack.com/damn/PrintThis.cfm?ID=2008081907
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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
DoneWaiting.com - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.donewaiting.com/2008/10/07/ancestors-neptune-with-fire/#more-5242
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.
Pitchfork - Neptune With Fire review
Ancestors:
Neptune With Fire
[Tee Pee; 2008]
Rating:
First, there’s the straightforward thickness of Kyuss disciples Corrosion of Conformity. The resin-sopped riffs of Pepper Keenan’s oft-overlooked stoner rock troupe seem to offer the blueprint for much of the opening track on Ancestors’ Neptune With Fire. Second, there’s the suffocatingly slow inertia of Sleep. The doom progeny’s stillness informs the rest of this L.A. five-piece’s debut, and Arik Roper, the psych-artist who designed Sleep’s Dopesmoker’s album art, designed the visuals for Neptune. And then, when you get away from the backbone, there’s Pink Floyd and maybe even Hawkwind here as well. But it’s those two immediately perceptible reference points that make for an interesting 1990s-informed take on 70s hard psyche, early doom, and art rock.
The album consists of just two songs– “Orcus’ Avarice” is over 16 minutes, the title track is more than 20– and both serve as launching pads for extended jams. But the soloing is supported by some serious riffs. “Orcus’ Avarice” moves with the urgency of CoC’s “Heaven’s Not Overflowing” and the deliberate pace of the latter’s “Albatross”. It’s the kind of lumbering meganess that easily turns on a dime. So by the time the drums have reeled in, and the guitars ascend into outer-space, it’s hard to recall the tumult that came only moments before. Ancestors, able to do more than whip up a simple fervor, spend a good six minutes inspecting the same guitar scale and a slippery blues bassline that gradually builds to climax, like creatine Pink Floyd.
But the big coup here– the game-changer, really– is the presence of an organ. It noodles underneath the “Orcus” jam politely, offering texture to an otherwise head-first pound, and recasts the second, title track as a carnival-like bruiser. The wobbly notes swing upward and stall on the final intro chord of “Neptune With Fire”, as thunder clouds descend and colossal guitars rush in. The second half of the track, with its reliance on monotone Ozzy burring, loses itself momentarily in the sort of weak revivalism that’s the order of the day. But the ship rights itself over a crushing ritardando. Steel strings lurch to a crawling halt, the organ throbs, and after a lengthy bass workout, a tremolo-picked guitar sounds in the distance, slowly dragging the riffs back into the fray with post-rock’s shit-just-got-real soberness.
Sure, Ancestors’ approach can be slightly formulaic. Groundwork is laid with a teeth-rattling riff, decibels drop for a bass exposition and an interstellar jam sesh, which then builds back out into a grinding roar. But it works well, and makes the scant divergences all the more rewarding. Take for instance, the dusty guitar twang that emerges from the midsection of “Neptune”, where Earth’s brutal blues pacing and a tree nymph female vocalist make for a witchy Morricone ambience. It’s the sort of staggering moment that makes it easy to come for the mammoth riffs, but stay for the stretches when Ancestors take “far out” even further.
Chart Attack - Neptune With Fire review
http://chartattack.com/damn/PrintThis.cfm?ID=2008081907
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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
Hex Ed - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.hexedjournal.com/2008/08/reviewing-heavies.html
Of the hundreds of bands attempting to create heavy, intense, and moody space rock, I would say the percentage that can pull it off is only slightly higher than the number of rabid dogs that make it out of a kill shelter. The Los Angeles quintet Ancestors rise above the numbers and deliver the gargantuan Neptune With Fire.
In a fashion somewhat akin to San Francisco band Citay, Ancestors dive into the classical stylings of heavy music. Where Citay tone down using the monsters of the past as starting off points to create a more subdued (but still awesome!) sound, Ancestors charge into these two songs, giving nods to Pentagram, Black Sabbath, The Melvins and King Crimson. As the band creates peaks and valleys, you almost find yourself thinking they are re-creating soundtracks to some of Dario Argento’s 1970’s horror masterpieces.
In recognizing these influences, and sculpting them into 2 epic tracks, Ancestors create music that can only really be experienced with the shades drawn, and the headphones on.
Blog San Diego - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.blogsandiego.com/ancestors_neptune_with_fire.html
Ancestors – Neptune with Fire (North Atlantic Sound / TeePee Records) Keith Boyd 7.28.8
Holy kettles of doom! All hail the ascendant heirs to the throne of heaviosity. Ancestors debut album is an on-point, meisterwerk of epic, psychedelic lava. White hot and buzzing riffs burrow into your glandular system and explode. You melt into the tidal push of their attack. Just at the point where you finally become one with the sound, a corner is turned and the whole swirling juggernaut floats into the neutral buoyancy of deep space.
“Neptune with Fire” is the first outing from this LA band and it’s an appropriate title. The heat here emerges from the depths of a great watery unknown. Masterful hands of restraint guide and push these two epics through several cycles of sound. Applying Joseph Campbell’s framework of myth, “Neptune with Fire” tells the tale of a hero going through stages of; war, celebration, remorse and revelation. While this format might give some a Tolkienesque pause, I’d say wait a bit and examine this cycle within the context of your own life. It’s a human story writ large. Like Beowulf and Grendel or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the battle is actually an internal one. It’s the tale about coming of age, facing one’s demons, being shattered by the experience, and then somehow reassembling one’s psyche and moving forward into life. Is this too much to ask from a heavy metal record? I say it isn’t and Ancestors pulls it off with a depth and flourish that transcends their newbie status. The solid playing and excellent production are a testament to the band’s chops and musical knowledge. There are nods on this to everyone from Pentagram to Goblin to Hawkwind. While this history may inform Ancestors approach, this is no retro affair. The tonality and concepts propelling this music make it somehow timeless.
A final word must be said about the visionary cover artist Arik “Moonhawk” Roper. I have been following his work for several years now and it just gets better all the time. He is the standard bearer for such luminaries as Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta while carving out his own style. Along with his mythic characters, what has really been impressive are the layered, dark palette areas of smoky and watery space. This has been evidenced on covers for Howlin Rain to posters for SUNNO))), and on this album the effect is both exciting and complementary. Kudos to North Atlantic Sound / TeePee for putting out this awesome and heavy-hitting package.
Roadburn - Neptune With Fire review
ANCESTORS - “NEPTUNE WITH FIRE”
[CD - TeePee Records]
LA-based quintet Ancestors head off into third-eye territory on their amazing debut for TeePee Records affiliate North Atlantic Sound. The thing I like the most about the Ancestors is their manipulation of the musical vibe — alternating between Sleep’s heavy riffing and lysergic freak-outs. Ancestors take the listener on a trip to a place where space is heavy and sound is all that matters. Factor in some strategic organ textures here and there, and you’ve got an album with more dimensions than you know what to do with, just the way the Ancestors planned it. Blast off!
walter
Foxy Digitalis - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=3471
9 out of 10
Man, what the hell is going on? All the joy I once derived from writing about music has just evaporated. Is it me? The last few months have been pretty rough, but fuck, it’s not like I’m living in a warzone or the middle of a natural disaster. It’s just like there are no words left any more and no ways to string them together to try to explain how I feel about this album, or that one, or the next one; nothing makes much sense and there seems to be very little point trying. Argh. Argh, I tell you.
None of this is Ancestors’ fault, though. In fact, hearing their debut LP “Neptune With Fire” has been one of the highlights of the past little while. Ancestors is a five piece doom metal ensemble hailing from Los Angeles and this is what their press-kit would have you know about them:
Ancestors transmogrifies the epic nature of seventies psychedelic and progressive music into a form that also incorporates vintage, doom and drone metal. “Neptune With Fire” is a conceptual, two track record that tells of a metaphorical character and his cosmic, psychological ordeal through war, celebration, remorse and revelation. Combining the embrace of the grand storytelling featured in conceptual space and psychedelic rock song-writing, the soul of hard rock and vintage metal, and the transmundane ethic of epic, “Neptune With Fire” induces catastrophic experiences in the listener.
A little O.T.T. to be sure, but… I pretty much support everything said there. This sound is STRONG, yo. And one of the important things about Ancestors is that they’re a five-piece; not only does this make for a more full-on, cosmic sound-production in general, but between them two of the members – Chico Foley and J. Christopher Watkins – contribute “textural incarnations, vocals, and organ”. These textural and organ-ic contributions are quite innovative and very, very pleasing to my ears; probably even what sets “Neptune With Fire” apart. Otherwise think ‘classic’, though, cos this album is a stone-cold rock classic. Listening to it I’m constantly reminded of the wonders of early-70s Kraut heavy-psych. I’m thinking Gäa, I’m thinking Brainticket, I’m thinking Wallenstein, Gila, and even Ash Ra Tempel. Not to say that they are some kinda throwback band – there’re elements here of the best in Kyuss-like stoner groove-rock riffage and totally now-sounding psych (Mamatus, Om) as well as some doom-sludge-snarl with GREAT sounding guitars — possibly the crunchiest downtuned chug I can remember for, like, forever. But then the last section busts out the heavy prog psych crescendo moves a la Yes or Pink Floyd at their glorious best and you can’t help but be transported away on the wings of their transcendent noise.
Ever since I first listened to this record I have been frozen in the worst kind of writer’s block. Perhaps this IS Ancestor’s fault. Was that the “catastrophic experience” which was induced in me, and then reinforced as I’ve listened to this album countless times since? If so, then fuck it. In fact, I must offer my thanks to them. “Neptune With Fire” is actually pretty close to being perfect, and rousing myself from my torpor, forcing myself up and at ‘em and back to work to write this while it’s playing loudly in my cans has been a challenging but ultimately very rewarding trip.
Hey also, do look out for the gatefold vinyl with art by Arik Roper (Sleep’s “Dopesmoker” and Earth’s “The Bee Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull”). 9/10 — Stephen Clover (25 June, 2008)
Heavy Metal Time Machine - Neptune With Fire review
http://metalmark.blogspot.com/2008/07/ancestors-neptune-with-fire.html
Heavy Metal Time Machine
So often I hear a few minutes of a disc and sigh as I realize that it’s doing nothing new and even though it may be well played, it’s just hard to get past a lack of originality. Yet sometimes a band can take established influences, tweak them enough and get the arrangement going in such a way that it comes across as feeling surprisingly fresh. Even if the tones are very similar, the way they are presented helps it to take on a life of it’s own. The Ancestors fortunately fall into that second category on “Neptune with fire”. I was somewhat wary when I saw just two tracks listed on this disc because with just two both really have to be good for the album to be good overall. As far as influences they touch upon the bare bone heaviness of Sabbath, the subtlety of Pentagram and the raw primal sludge of Sleep. As if that was not enough they can produce off the cuff jams and still absolutely fit in with whole feel of the song. Both tracks are fairly long, but it’s like the band keeps the ideas coming from all directions. They manage to squeeze so much out of individual notes and manipulate simple parts into feeling like they are doing so much. Their knack for twisting singular sounds into long winding passages is almost unbelievable. The style ties in parts of early metal, solid doom and some stoner elements yet more than anything you just get a sense that they are doing the music that they love. This is an album that manages to be heavy, dark, intriguing and exciting all at once. Seriously no real complaints at all, this is truly an exceptional piece of thickly layered metal that will enthrall your mind and you have hooked after one play.
Abort Magazine - Neptune With Fire review
CD Review - Ancestors
Neptune With Fire
North Atlantic Sound
Slaves to the riff take heed, the debut album from L.A.’s Ancestors entitled Neptune With Fire is here and it wants your soul. Of course you’ll gladly give it over when you hear this riff laden psychedelic opus and its multi-layered, thick, progressive doom, culled straight from the seventies and blasted through every essence of your being.
Conceptual in its construction, this immersive aural experience consists of two tracks (clocking in at 16:41 and 21:39 respectively) which meander from one riff to the next with fluid grace and effortless timing. Opening track “Orcus’ Avarice” has an initial jam feel to it, but plays out like a road “trip” through your subconscious, while title track “Neptune With Fire” takes the listener on the cosmic journey of a mythical character and the trials and tribulations inherent in that journey. Each of these tracks plays out like multiple songs meshed together with instrumental interludes, reminiscent of stoner doom bands like Sleep, Green Milk From the Planet Orange and Sons of Otis.
Although elements of doom metal are present in Neptune With Fire, this album is not predominantly “doom” in nature. By fusing styles and genres, Ancestors owe more “props” to Pink Floyd than Black Sabbath, with their organ and vocal work giving this album a modern classic feel. Add to that some of the most intricate and sweeping guitar and bass work, “textural incarnations” and drumming second to none and this one album holds more power and grace than most artists scrape together in a whole career.
With sludge factors set on high, Neptune With Fire takes the pure enjoyment of riff soaked nods to the past and breaths new life into a genre set adrift by speed and repetition.
PunkNews.org - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.punknews.org/review/7235
Like most modern doom/stoner/drone metal bands, Ancestors take high cues from Sleep. Their debut release for North Atlantic Sound, the new imprint by the founder of Tee Pee Records and the bassist from Witch, is comprised of only two tracks. It does, however, run about 40 minutes long. Be prepared to strap on your headphones — this could get to be a long and groovacious journey. It might also help if your hobby lends you the same title as Sleep’s “lost album.”
The self-titled track starts with some crusty heavy metal grooves, bringing back the early `70s and gelling with the current revival of heavy metal the way it was meant to be played: loud, heavy and full of head-nodding riffs. Given that the song is almost 17 minutes long, gratuitous guitar solos are indeed present. Around six minutes into the song, things fade out into some psychedelic atmospheric noises and the slow burn settles in. I hope you like more guitar solos and gradual build with tempo and dynamics. The song ends with some huge and grandiose guitars, lots of noise, pounding rhythms and some shouting over distorted bass.
As a basic structure, the song is well-written. The theme is established immediately with the heavy riffs, deconstructs to some noisey ambient solos with a steady psychedelic bass groove, and then implements a return to form.
“Orcus’ Avarice” starts out with a much less generic, semi-melodic super heavy guitar riff over slow drums and shouting. The tempo picks up into a late `60s psychedelic rock tune, taking just as much from bands like the Yardbirds and Cream as it does from Sabbath. Matching cues from the previous track, the middle span contains more ambient work with the instruments and soloing, building on melodic bass chords and tribal sounding tom rhythms. The song also explores more empty ambient noise and single guitar riffs played quietly before the return to the loud and heavy.
I have to look at this release like I look at most instrumental music. There’s only so much I can take. No matter how much I want to love a piece of classical music, I get bored easily. But an impressive debut this is, and a fantastic orchestration deserves credit when credit is due. I just might not be listening to the album from start to finish that often.
3 ½ stars
Road Recs - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.roadrecs.com/stock/shopping.php3?start=1&action=4&artist=ANCESTORS
Los Angeles based psychedelic stoner rock outfit dish up a truly awesome two track concept album sounding like the meeting of Earthless and Sleep’s truly amazing dopesmoker album. In fact the artwork is provided by Arik Roper who also did the original art for sleeps legendary album. This album is slighly more leaning towards the psychedelic stoner rock side of things though with two very lengthy tracks packed to exploding with guitar heavy riff action and fuzzed up solos. The album is released on Tee Pee Records offshoot label North Atlantic Sound. Its a wonderfully hypnotic collection of sounds deeply rooted in the classic early sounds of stoner rock and really calls to mind some of the earlier sounds of the legendary Desert Sessions on the Mans Ruin label. A must have for fans of the likes of Kyuss and the above mentioned Sleep album Dopesmoker. limited edition vinyl pressing in a gatefold sleeve.
April 2008
LA Record - Neptune With Fire review
http://larecord.com/revs/2008/04/24/album-review-ancestors/#more-1469
I first listened to this record just before six in the morning while driving through the foggy Sepulveda pass and the setting couldn’t have been more apt. Neptune is moody and dark, and over the course of two lengthy tracks I was treated to a soundtrack worthy of an early morning trek across Southern California’s freeways. Ancestors cover a lot of ground, from heavy down-tuned riffing to doom-style drone dirges, soothing post rock and loud psychedelic freak-outs. With some bands, this would lead to a disjointed listening experience, but Ancestors avoid that trap, even when referencing the clean guitar lines of the more recent releases by Earth or the organ and distortion driven psych-attack of the bands in the Acid Mothers Temple universe. (In fact, if they ever collaborate, “Ancestor Mothers Temple” sound like a pretty great side project title.) I think this album will appeal to fans of any of the above mentioned genres and artists, but also to those who don’t have the patience to sit through a 70-minute drone album, especially if they’d prefer to hear something more along the lines of a well-paced epic soundtrack.
— Adam Fisher
LA Times - SXSW Show review
SXSW TeePee Showcase – 3/12/08
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/soundboard/2008/03/sxsw-12-bands-1.html
…Even though it was 1 a.m., the good vibes from those last three shows kept me going. I wanted to see one more band, but I didn’t know where to go. On one side of the street, the kids were lined up to check out The Black Keys; on the other, people were lined up for someone else, but through the fog, I heard a dirty, scary, evil sound coming out of Bourbon Rocks.
Turned out it was Ancestors ending the night of the Tee Pee Records showcase. Tee Pee is the home of the J Mascis side project Witch (in which the greatest guitarist alive plays drums).
Witch looks like two nephews of ZZ Top (very short blond hair, creepy long beards and poker faces) on guitar and bass, two dudes with their backs to the crowd on keyboards (one plays organ, the other does special effects and noise) and a drummer in the middle of it all keeping it raw.
When I arrived, the gritty, demonic rhythms had seduced a local music fan, who continually threw up the devil horns and danced drunkenly to the mostly instrumental hard rock laced with soot, brimstone and church organ. It was awesome. Truly the reason to stay out late at SXSW.
And that was just Day 1.
– Photos and post by Tony Pierce
Boom Kat - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=91475
LA doom metal quintet Ancestors are a lot more prog than most of the sludge vendors who populate the genre. For a start this album is divided into two long pieces, each around the twenty minute mark, with its own discreet sub-sections (movements, if you will), at least one of which involves some operatic female vocals. That sounds like prog to me, anyway. The heaviness quotient remains high though, with plenty of low-end grit on ‘Neptune With Fire’ and a more vintage, blues rock influenced sound on ‘Orcus Avarice’, which based on my understanding of the title is about a greedy whale. There’s probably a quarter hour’s worth of guitar soloing on this track, which might be a bit too traditionalist in tone for some of you connoisseurs of outlandish fuzz experiments, but the bottom-heavy riffing makes up for whatever biting edge the protracted lead parts occasionally lack.
Art Rocker - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.artrocker.com/node/1188
Rory Carroll investigates a conceptual heavy rock album about ‘cosmic war’. But wait! keep reading! Because instead of being a three hour double vinyl about vikings and goblins, it’s apparently quite a lean and catchy LP. Curious? Find out more here…
LA five-piece Ancestors may have pitched their tent in the ‘doom-metal’ camp, but you’d do well to re-evaluate any pre-existing notions of exactly what this stands for. Those expecting gruff, shouted vocals and rampant, chugging guitars are in for a pleasant surprise.
Whilst these elements are present, they have been melded with the psychedelic and progressive music of the 1970s to produce a concept album which, if you believe the press release, is a two-track odyssey chronicling a metaphorical character’s ‘cosmic, psychological ordeal through war, celebration, remorse and revelation.’
None of this is immediately evident from the first two songs, but then that’s the wonder of poetic licence… and copious amounts of drugs. This album would undoubtedly benefit from some kind of story synopsis in the sleeve notes, but the application of this rough framework does add a new depth to the songs and successfully clarifies the emotions emphasised by the ever changing wall of guitars.
Ancestors’ other great success – and this is something Thurston Moore would do well to remember – is that despite the epic nature of the tracks, you are never painfully aware of how long you’ve spent listening to them. There’s a subtle ebb and flow to the songs, with each movement serving a purpose and furthering the story.
As with all ‘concept’ albums, the true meaning behind the music will only be fully understood by the people who created it. However, if you can see through the mildly tedious ‘story behind the story’ you’ll quickly realise that this is anything but art for art’s sake; it’s actually theatre set to music.
++ Rory Carroll ++
Artrocker rating: 3
Musique Machine - Neptune With Fire review
http://www.musiquemachine.com/reviews/reviews_template.php?id=1645
Ancestors - Neptune With Fire [North Atlantic Sound - 2008]
Ancestors are a five piece band from Los Angeles who play a memorable and epic, mid-pace to up-beat mix of 70’s soaked doom, jammed-out rock grooves & psychedelics, with touches of more modern doom and metal here and there. Neptune With Fire is their debut album and the first release on new label North Atlantic sound.
Running just shy of forty minute mark in all, but with just two huge doom grooved-out, psychedelic soaked, rocking and hypnotic tracks on offer. The title track opens up proceedings with a nice up-beat rocking doom riff and fairly standard throaty rock vocals, sounding a bit like an clear American version of Electric Wizards more up paced moments. Then it drops into a rather nice racing down the track guitar soloing groove, before dropping into a bassy and spacey groove break down before slowly winding it’s self up to more soloing before the vocals come in one last time as the track nears it’s end at the 17 minute mark.
Lastly we have Orcus’ Avarice which is the lengthier of the two tracks at just over 20 minutes & having more variation in sound than the first track too. Starting out with a great memorable church organ opening before kick in with a slower doom-rock groove weaved with halloween organ tones. As the track progresses it goes through all manner of twist and turns down into clear vocal bassy rock passages, rocking freak outs & stripped down moments. All finishing off with a superb and soaring mix of female choir like voices, organ and emotional touched & cinematic doomy rock vibe- pretty amazing stuff really.
An highly enjoyable and replayable debut album- that shows great future hope for both Ancestors and north Atlantic sound label.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Advance Copy - Neptune With Fire review
http://advancecopy.blogspot.com/2008/03/ancestors-neptune-with-fire-north.html
Ancestors: Neptune With Fire
(North Atlantic Sound)
release: February 19, 2008
style: psychedelic sludge hard rock
similar: Danava, The Gersch, Graveyard
[rating: ?????] One of the best names ever for a band of this nature, Ancestors’ two quests here are a journey into a mystical place and time. Neptune is actually a conceptual outing for this L.A. band, about somebody going through a “psychological ordeal of war, celebration, remorse and reveleation”. The first track is mainly a jam session of spooky guitar voodoo and some lyrics about the earth and soul or something. Following pipe organ on the second track (21 minutes!) is ultra sludge guitar riffs processed through the atmosphere of another planet. This does go on for a while and becomes repetitive, though of course at the same time tripped out. –Kenyon
