Near Life Experience

Day of Silver Sun (Noiselab)
by Scott Hefflon

Groove metal with a passionate singer (not a screamer, not a growler/barker/shrieker). From New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA, in case you ever wondered what that meant), there’s some lush, warm darkness, a bit of eerieness (not hair-raising like Cradle of Filth, more rolling black ocean, bespeaking delicate lapping waves and huge drag-you-under currents), and bands to namedrop include QOTSA, Soundgarden, Warrior Soul, Alice in Chains, Tool, and The Quill. I throw in the last because most others are archival reference points, not current peers. Grunge metal is a term that could be lobbed at Near Life Experience, but moist desert rock (we’re talking New Orleans, after all, and this isn’t quite swamp boogie), a bit of Floydian trippiness, and a glimmer of “House of the Rising Sun” peek through the dumbed-down metal trudge of typical groove.

Notably, singer Steve Blaze used to belt it out for Lillian Axe, and brother Craig Nunemacher has since left the band to drum for Black Label Society and Crowbar. Add in cosmic poetry similar to The Door-obsessed Kory Clarke (of Warrior Soul, who, great voice or not, got a bum deal as “the culture” favored Kurt Cobain as their spiritual leader) and a few subtle guitar rolls (nothing fancy, we’re talking moody, majestic roll, not Euro-metal spark’n’dazzle), and you have a new band swaggering between stoner rock and groove metal thud, which with monster production, could share stages with Godsmack or Tool and sell lots of tee shirts.
(www.noiselabrecords.com)