CROMULENCE ENGAGE: PRIZEHOG AHOY.

Like Harteis' noble wade into the complexity of emotion that accompanies a The Funeral And the Twilight listen, Prizehog have got just a couple too many dimensions happening to be dismissively pegged as "heavy," "loud," "sludge" or "weird." Prizehog are from Portland by way of San Francisco and also Santa Rosa, I think. They used to practice in some kind of ex-military bunker. Their full-length Re-unvent the Whool is chock-a-block with Simpsons references, beautiful synth, heftily bashed drums and riff after glorious riff. It takes a couple of listens to start to get what it's all about, it's got that kind of density of purpose. I think of the Residents as much as I think about the Melvins, and actually the pace is typically even a bit more Harvey Milk than even Melvins.

I think this quote from Aquarius Records is pretty dead-on:
"It's hard to know what else to say, other than repeat what we've always said, Prizehog should be adored, they should be worshipped the way Harvey Milk and Boris and the Melvins are, cuz maybe at one point, Prizehog were simply kids aping their heroes, aspiring to the sludge-y genius and twisted outsider metal of those other groups, but as hard as it may be for some folks to believe, Prizehog, might have outheavied, and outweirded, and outgeniused those masters, and become masters themselves, masters of fucking alien prog-doom, long haired, psych sludge, dirge-drone, damaged art pop. Fuck yeah."

Harvey Milk: Loud Band For the Ages
From the Where Has This Music Been All My Life file, comes Harvey Milk. They're an Athens, Georgia-based group who've been largely ignored since they began, back in the 1990's. Sort of the perfect antithesis to the crushing metal that takes itself too seriously, theirs are essentially love songs, Leonard Cohen covers, and other, less-than-manly fare played with more ooomph than handfuls of black-clad, neck-tattooed, and corpse painted heshers trying desperately to be heavy.

There's poetry in this stuff too, and from a guy with a general disdain for most poetic things, I've come to appreciate it, especially when set to music that's got the bombast, restraint and tonal excellence that this stuff does. Where heavy music can generally go one of two ways, total stoner riff repetition, without much to set one song apart from another, or dull dronery ala Sunn, Harvey Milk just play slow, tight, sad/triumphant shit, and it's pretty excellent.

Chunklet recently re-released their My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be on beautiful double LP. More to come in the re-issue dept. from them, sounds like. Hydrahead's responsible for their newest piece of work, entitled Life... The Best Game In Town, which is thoroughly a winner, on par with their best work.

Oregonian and Total Fest alumnus Joe Preston, whose Thrones is one of the best "bands" to ever rock, is currently the bassist for this outfit.

Not sure what the connection their gay California politician namesake is. NPR's doing a special on him soon.