Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Coupe De Grace


Coupe De Grace is the fourth album from Orange Goblin. This album has compared with the three previous albums some more Rock 'n' Roll attitude. The album starts with the awesome song You're World Will Hate This. John Garcia does participate at the great song Made Of Rats. Getting High On The Bad Times contains some very nice guitar passages and We Bite is a well performed Misfits cover. So I can say Coupe The Grace is an excellent album. Enjoy!

“FFUUUCCKK!” is the first roar you hear on this album and it pretty much defines my opinion about it as well. Hot damn, this is an unapologetically hard-rocking affair. Frill-less, down-to-earth, straightforward and heavy, VERY heavy, with a thick, muddy guitar sound and hoarsely shouted barks that are as refined as G.G. Allin’s notion of stage behaviour. Whereas their third album, The Big Black, witnessed them continuing in the vein of stoner-metal motherfucker Time Travelling Blues, but even more spaced-out, Coup de Grace is a kind of return to the basics. Their lumbering heaviness still ensures them a spot amongst colleague-stoners, but this is much less about spacey-ness, neo-psychedelic grooves and mind-expanding trips. Instead, they shove a bunch of warted, heavy-as-hell riffs and rhythms down your throat that’ll leave you breathless for quite a while. With two guitarists who both intend to take their amps to the limit, a rhythm section with the finesse of a bull with rabies and a vocalist who sounds badder than the meanest street fighter, Orange Goblin sound like a band you don’t wanna mess with on their fourth album. Produced by Scott Reeder (Kyuss, Unida), it’s an album that’s almost as much punk as metal, raw and direct. Just listen to the brief “You World Will Hate This” and its comic book lyrics (“Turning you on to a world of shit, twisted beyond a return, filling your brain with a lot of cocaine, cos’ I got money to burn”) and you’ll realize this is an altogether matter than before. But there’s more where that came from, lots more: single “Monkey Panic” boasts a great, pounding chorus, “Whiskey Leech” turns ‘80’s hard rock inside out and takes a dump on its bloated corpse (well yeah, this album makes you turn to other imagery than usual, bloke), and “Getting High on the Bad Times” is guaranteed to make you dream up imaginary scenarios full of venom, violence and assorted vices. Quite surprisingly – because this is not where you’d expect him – stoner icon John Garcia also adds his two cents during the thrilling “Made of Rats” (the moment when his vocals go together with the acceleration of the bludgeoning main riff is pure gold) and the interestingly titled “Jesus Beater.” Of course it’s all over the top – and the artwork fits the music perfectly -, but those who’ve been familiar with the band of course know that behind the hooligan-attitude and brutal rock, these are plain guys who dig good, old-fashioned fun, soccer games and the gentle art of applying headlocks (as witness on their website, where you can see them at work while nearly suffocating Alice Cooper and other luminaries). Of course, this band is nearly an anachronism (why don’t they use loops and samples?), but I don’t know about you, but once in a while some unpretentious, bad-ass rock ‘n’ roll is just what I need, and when I hear these guys tearing through The Misfits’ “We Bite” and churn out the Southern roadhouse boogie of “Stinkin’ O Gin,” my faith in the future of belchin’, ragin’, kick-in-the-balls rock ‘n’ roll is reinstalled. FFUUUUUUCCCCKKK!
(From Guypetersreviews.com)

Orange Goblin - Coupe De Grace (2002)



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Orange Goblin is always good!

Anders,