I caught these guys purely by chance a couple of years ago, when they played at Bristol's crustiest pub The Junction in support of Mea Culpa. They were pretty good as I recall, which makes it all the more inexplicable that I am only just now giving them a proper listen.
They're probably best described as post metal, which draws inevitable comparisons to Isis. But since Isis are one of the best bands to have smashed eardrums in the last 15 years, that can hardly be seen as a bad thing. And whilst the comparisons are justified to a certain extent, TDOHM are no mere copyists, taking the post metal template and throwing in elements of sludge and shoegaze.
Which I guess makes post-sludgegaze? Fuck, that sounds rubbish.
The Death Of Her Money play heavy music. They like big riffs, lots of distortion and a bit of shouting. They are very, very good and you need them in your life.
The first time was when they were supporting Biohazard, back in 2000. A spot of rain and a stiff breeze had crippled all transport networks in the south of the UK, so they took to the stage late and announced themselves as "you should all know who we are by now." They then spent the next half hour aurally beating everyone into submission. We actually had no idea who they were, but sussed it out by carefully examining the merch table. I bought a T-shirt that bore the band logo on the front and the slogan "SNIFF GLUE WORSHIP SATAN" on the back.*
The second time was a year or so later, when they co-headlined the Astoria 2 with Clutch. Earlier that day, as a special birthday treat, my friend Tim (who used to make a living selling gay porn to paratroopers) had taken me to the biggest charity shop in North Camp. We each bought a suit for £10, which we wore to the gig that night. Mine was dark green, 2-3 sizes too big, and worn with a bright yellow shirt. Tim's was a shade of metallic plum, as I recall. We threw some powerful funk moves that night. Every so often someone would tell us that we looked awesome; and we would look at their greying Slayer T-shirt and dirty jeans and tell them that they looked a shambles.
The third and final time was in 2008, on what turned out to be Raging Speedhorn's farewell tour. They finished as they started, playing grotty toilet circuit venues where you can get close enough to the band that they can hit you in the head with a guitar. They were awesome. For this final tour, their record label SPV had decided to wring as much money out of the band as they could and were charging the band in inordinate sum of money for copies of their record to sell at the merch stand. Raging Speedhorn were faced with the choice of either absorbing the cost themselves and therefore making no/negative money, or passing the cost onto the fans and therefore making no/negative money and pissing everyone off too. Raging Speedhorn chose a third way; they sold bootlegs of their own record for a fiver.
*The third best T-shirt slogan of all time. Second best is Charger's "VOLUME OVER TALENT"; top prize goes to defunct Scottish hardcore types Co-Exist, who instead of T-shirts sold white wife-beater vests bearing the slogan "KILL EVERY CUNT."
Still on kind of a doom trip at the mo; to be honest, still mostly listening to a lot of Electric Wizard.
And why not.
But in the search for further turgid heaviosity I also dug out these guys again. Still doom, as I say; but they trade in the 'Wizards Hammer horror black magic rituals for gigantic space-faring bulldozers. Like if Devastator was made entirely out of Bonecrusher, the bulldozer constructicon; and then he combined with a load of other Devastators made out of bulldozers to make one giant Devastator, that then transformed into a bulldozer driven by a Devastator made out of bulldozers.
Where to start? Electric Wizard's self-titled debut surfaced in 1995. It was pretty much a by-the-numbers stoner rock record, seemingly influenced in equal parts by the first four Black Sabbath records, witchcraft and the occult, and a lot of weed. It's not a bad record, especially the last half which gets a bit more spaced out and psychedelic; but on the whole, I'd say it's fairly unremarkable.
But on second record Come My Fanatics, things changed. Specifically, they got thicker, heavier and slower; more doom. Like, way more doom. Take the doomiest thing you can think of, drown it in the centre of a planet made of tar, and then hurl that planet into the centre of the sun. In slow motion. Hooked up to Orange amplifiers.
Very little has changed since then. This is a good thing.
I caught these guys purely by chance a couple of years ago, when they played at Bristol's crustiest pub The Junction in support of Mea Culpa. They were pretty good as I recall, which makes it all the more inexplicable that I am only just now giving them a proper listen.
