Tommy And The Commies/Midnight Gallows
Tommy And The Commies
Hurtin' For Certain // Slovenly Recordings
Gusto, Zip, Attitude,,,
Sudbury's Tommy And The Commies are back with a short but tasty ripper EP. Following up 2018's brilliant Here Come... is no easy task. They manage to put forth four tracks that almost capture their energetic and enjoyable live sets. I caught them last summer, and they were ridiculously tight. They call themselves lone purveyors of modern 'Hooligan Pop'.
"Hurtin' For Certain" cascading riffs to home. Call and response ahhs from the rest of the band. "Impulse Action" has the most punk feel of the EP. "One Arch Town" has a great chorus and drum fills. "Power On Standby" decent bridge and almost a guitar solo!?!
Much has been written about the sound. They oft are compared to The Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Undertones etc. I would have loved if the bass was a bit more up in the mix. However, that can be solved on the listener's end.
Hurtin' For Certain rips along at breakneck speed with an enjoyable precision. These are tunes for driving fast and tapping the steering wheel. I'd like to point out that these are well written pop songs executed perfectly. You don't have to evolve musically past 1977 to knock out a great EP. Hooligans.
- Drew Cox
Midnight Gallows
Attack Warning Red // Wasted Wax Records
On Attack Warning Red, prairie duo Midnight Gallows manage to find a rare sweet spot. Their recipe for success, lifted from their bandcamp page, calls for a cup of doom and two tablespoons of stoner rock to be mixed with riffage before adding HEAVY and baking for eternity at 666 degrees fahrenheit. However, even if some of these ingredients are off-putting for your personal tastes, you may still dig this dish. Someone who doesn’t typically like the vocalists in stoner bands might enjoy the Decepticon screams of singer Jason Thiry, and someone who gets a little restless during extended doom moments will have their attention earned as the band switches up the pace and mood of the songs. Midnight Gallows change things up frequently on Attack Burning Red, but rather than sounding like a band that is searching for their identity, they establish themselves as a formidable force with an impressive arsenal of styles.
Like most doom bands, Midnight Gallows aren’t afraid to pledge allegiance to Black Sabbath every now and then, but in terms of vocals, Thiry opts for a more aggressive scream style on most of the songs. At his most fierce, the vocals sound like the distressed war cry of Terrorsaur from the mid-90s CGI cartoon Beast Wars (that’s a deep cut, but google “Terrorsaur Terrorize” and you’ll see what I mean). Near the end of the album, Thiry proves that he can wax Ozzyesque when the music demands it, but it’s the guttural scream that is the signature sound of Midnight Gallows here. Unlike melodic hardcore bands of the mid-aughts, Midnight Gallows don’t require a screamer and a singer. Thiry can do both, and the most fascinating part is that Thiry’s screams fit perfectly over any tempo. Over heavy riffs, the screams make the songs haunting, and over the uptempo sprints, the screams add to the intensity. Thiry’s delivery combined with Chris Dimas’ mixing ensures the vocals are terrifying, and never silly.
The album begins with a bit of noise before the drums establish a midtempo groove. Then, a gut-wrenching scream and the riff equivalent of a star destroyer nuke any chance of this album lacking in heaviness. On Dopesmoker, Sleep’s stoner/doom metal opus, it takes almost three minutes for the drums to join the wandering guitar, and the vocals wait in the wings until the eight and a half minute mark. Here, the vocals come in with a cannonball off the highboard thirty seconds in. The first track, “Burn in the Sun” is one of the heaviest on the album, and it’s followed by one of the fastest tracks, “Raise the Alarm.” The latter hits the ground running, and it’s clear that these stoner rockers aren’t slowed down by any stoner vices. Mitch Rogers and Jason Thiry are dangerous partners in crime on this new album and they complement each other perfectly. They’re like arcade duo Lucky and Wild as Rogers steers and Thiry obliterates baddies from the passenger seat. The riffs imbue the drum grooves with a necessary darkness, and the drums lead the charge for the faster parts. The guitar runs mixed with the mood of the verses in “Into the Breach” are reminiscent of some of King Gizzard’s uptempo moments on Infest the Rats’ Nest, but the following track, “The Leviathan,” takes things in a completely different direction: A sparse acoustic guitar waltzes with a tender guitar line as a hexing spoken word bit mumbles beneath the music. It’s here that Midnight Gallows start to show their range. Floaty guitar lines are layered on top of the mantra-like groove, and everything slowly builds to an epic crescendo. This crescendo exists as the album’s unexpected climax, the last two songs forming its denouement. Directly following the aforementioned climax, “The Witch of the Waste” takes a breather before becoming beastly halfway through, and on the final track, the band returns to Planet Riff to share what they’ve learned on this epic journey.
Midnight Gallows have managed to channel the best parts of all their favourite genres on Attack Warning Red and they do it with authority. They’ve created an album that is heavy as hell, but never exhausting. At times the music is rich and floaty and at times it’s brutal in the best way. It never lets the listener get bored, and the deep cuts are just as juicy as the opening barn-burners. So go on, embrace your doom.
- Devon Dozlaw
