AM Revelator, AM Revelator
This could be the first-ever usage of the term “Ogden supergroup”: AM Revelator is comprised of ex-members of O-Town favorites AK Charlie, Gundhi and Invisible Rays, and yet doesn’t really sound like any of ’em. Whereas AK Charlie were raucous punk-metal, Gundhi were heavy blues-grunge and Invisible Rays were spacey garage-punk, AM Revelator’s polished, Harley-ready hard rock could just as well come from the Sunset Strip as 25th Street. The five-song EP guns it out of the gate with propulsive tracks “Darkness,” “Ride” and “Smash,” but then gets pretty/ugly with the melodic “No Sun” (“All I wanted was to hurt you”) and slams the door shut with the corrosive “Oculus.” As debuts go, AM Revelator is tough to top. MySpace.com/AMRevelator See AM Revelator live at Brewskis in Ogden, Saturday, Sept. 12.
Old Timer, Lost In the Tracks
Salt Lake City’s Old Timer have all the earmarks of “stoner rock”—long songs, longer guitar solos and vocals filtered through broken glass, Camels and tequila, all tuned down to the string-rattling register of lower congress. So yeah, it’s stoner rock. But singer Maxx bellows like he’s temping for Slayer, and the band behind him weaves complex, shifting structures that go beyond the usual repeat-this-lick-until-doomsday modus operandi of standard desert riffage. Guitarist Matt (no last names here, please) splays blinding fretboard heroics all over Lost In the Tracks’ four cuts, but always locks back into the molten center; closing salvo “Hibernaut” even throws in genuine blues breakdowns before jumping off the Sabbath cliff. MySpace.com/OldTimerTheBand
Subrosa, Swans Trapped In Ice
There’s no happy ending to be found on Subrosa’s latest trilogy of songs about death, sex, death, slavery, death and territorial politics, just a pot of fool’s gold at the end of a black rainbow—woe unto anyone who asks these women to “just cheer up, already.” Still, it’s a beautiful ride to Oblivionville: sludgetastic guitars and subterranean bass offset by ethereal vocal harmonies and entangled violins, making for a contradiction that goes down as gracefully/tragically as a ballet dancer on the tip of the Hindenburg. Sandwiched between “Sexual Collateral” and “Attack on Golden Mountain,” the nearly-10-minute “Dark Country” is the perfect storm of brutality and femininity that should become Subrosa’s trademark, their own “Stairway to Hell.” MySpace.com/SubrosaTheatre
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