Sons of Otis

Templeball (Man’s Ruin)
by Brian Varney

The first sound you hear on this CD is a guy doing his best Dave Wyndorf vocal impersonation over some psychedelic swirling noises, if that tells you anything. Other points of major interest are a cover of “Mississippi Queen” and a song called “Vitus.” If you’re not at least curious by now, I think you may have stumbled onto the wrong review. The back cover of the CD says that this goes well with Electric Wizard, the Obsessed, St. Vitus, Acid King, and the Melvins. Them’s pretty big words in the Varney household, but what I’ve heard so far indicates that the author of these lofty phrases is not out of his mind (or rather, what mind he has left after listening to said bands). The words “dumb” and “slow” (and all applicable synonyms) are large factors in making this album what it is, though I can’t say in which order they fall. There’s lotsa Cro-Magnon lurching happening here and none of it’s pretty, but then “pretty” is not why you listen to something like this, is it? Prolonged exposure is almost guaranteed to slow down your metabolism, and where I come from that’s a pretty shining recommendation.

There isn’t much I can tell you about this album that you don’t know already – all of the favorites (the above bands and their big influences) are abundant in large quantities. There’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but as I heard somebody say recently, “It’s the same old story, but you say cliché and I say classic.” Whether or not this is “original” enough for you, there’s rock to be had here. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?
(610 22nd St. #302 San Francisco, CA 94107)