Review: Various Artists ‘Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy!!’
Now, here is an interesting compilation. In the spirit of Riding Easy Records fabled Brown Acid series, Rise Above Records have just dropped Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy!! which is a collection of long-lost, long-forgotten proto-metal, garage fuzz, psychedelic weirdness and hard rock from rock and roll’s twilight zone era of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Most of the bands unearthed on this release are like it’s spiritual cousin in America, the aforementioned Brown Acid, feature obscure bands that didn’t get anywhere near ‘making it big’, with a lot of times, the only document of their existence being perhaps a self-financed single, or live, in-studio track to send to radio stations and record labels, in hopes of procuring a deal.
Curated by Rise Above Records head honcho and former Cathedral frontman, the inimitable Lee Dorian himself, and collector friend Austin Mathews, the pair scoured the UK in search of bands. They even went as far as digging through old show flyers and back pages of British ‘70s music weeklies, looking for a band name to track down that sent them down their proto-metal rabbit hole. In many cases, the duo sourced tracks from one-off acetate discs and demos, certainly not an easy task by any measure.
There are a ton of lo-fi crackly riffage to be found all over Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy!! as a lot of the bands featured were active alongside the UK heavy rock and proto-metal giants of the time like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.
We get started with Birmingham’s Heavy Boots Who Knows, Who Cares, from 1969, which begins life, appropriately, as a doomy, Sabbath-esque affair, so lo-fi it sounds like it was recorded a hundred years ago in a cave, before unfolding into a bouncy, blues-rock track featuring plenty of vintage guitar shred. Next up and straight out of Nottingham we have the lurching riffs and manic vocals from B.O.M.B (Band Of Mental Breakdown) and The Stooges-esque grime of 1971’s Won’t You Take Me.
Hearing these unearthed tracks from this period in the UK underground was not only a fun listen but also a cool aural comparison to the American bands featured in the Brown Acid series…
This is followed by two bands from Scotland. First up is the amazingly named Macbeth Periscope (if that’s not a late ‘60s/early ‘70s band name, I don’t know what is) and their wild, rolling, prog-ish 1971 number Witchcraft, wherein their vocalist sounds eerily like a young, crazed Neil Fallon (Clutch). Agatha’s Moment shows up with Bad Trip, which plays out like its title, beginning with some weird, mildly aggressive, downstroke guitar action and delirious vocals before erupting into a deluge of fuzzier-than-shit, unhinged, seventies guitar shred.
Hailing from Coventry, Jessica’s Theme gives us weird, rollicking, garage rock of Witchcraft, which is followed by one of the coolest tracks on the comp with Greenfly’s (great name!) Satan’s Daughter. Another band hailing from Scotland, with another track exhumed from the great year of 1971, Greenfly could’ve easily been an influence and forefather to legendary UK doom bands like Electric Wizard and Cathedral themselves, as the track is a manic, occult-drenched riff-rocker with a walloping low-end bass, plenty of menacing seventies shred, and a totally gonzo freak out on the organ.
Clemen Pull drop Kamikaze, a thudding and careening, fuzzed-up, manic track that boasts a wild mid-section that’s anchored by one of the nastier bass tones I’ve heard in a long time and some dive-bombing guitar histrionics before Crimson Earth burst out with the galloping, charging, prog-ish Heathen Woman.
Stoke-On-Trent’s grimy riff wielders Living Dead proffer some really nasty riffage with the appropriately named Chasing Shadows. This is as pure as old school garage doom gets. It’s totally grimy, heavy and lo-fi, with the track taken from a 7” acetate that was originally laid down, again, in 1971. Closer Destroyer Of Life from Zachariah is a balls-out, wild and weird fuzz-fest lifted from a live cassette recording from 1976.
I enjoyed the shit out of Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy!! Hearing these unearthed tracks from this period in the UK underground was not only a fun listen but also a cool aural comparison to the American bands featured in the Brown Acid series. The sonic similarities and parallels are definitely there, bands from both sides of the pond were drawing from the same inspirational and creative well. Alright then, we’ll be patiently waiting and excited for what the Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy!! series has to offer moving forward. Recommended.
Label: Rise Above Records
