Procession

The U.K. Stoner Rock band Josiah did split up a time ago. Josiah made some awesome albums like Into The Outside and No Time. The album Procession will probably be their final release. Procession contains five unreleased studio tracks and five live songs. The studio tracks sounds great, just what you can expect from Josiah. Enjoy!

Not knowing the circumstances that led British fuzz rockers Josiah to break up, I can only suppose it was a trenchant personal conflict between the three members that caused many studio blowouts, stage walk-offs, canceled personal appearances, etc., that will all be brought to the light of day in a major motion picture documentary this Fall. If that’s not the case, I don’t want to know.

Whatever it was that caused them to call it quits, Josiah have written their epitaph in the form of Procession (Elektrohasch Schallplatten), a 10-track collection half dedicated to yet-unreleased studio material and half to live tracks recorded in Sweden in 2007. Procession is more or less a gimme for fans, but in the case of a band like Josiah, a gimme is most welcome, and if it’s what they’ve got, I’ll take it.

Those who’ve experienced Josiah’s groove-heavy swagger know that it’s the guitar of Mat Bethancourt (now of Cherry Choke and The Kings of Frog Island) in the starring role, but the trio relies almost as much on the backing rhythms of bassist Sie Beasley and drummer Keith Beacom on Procession — perhaps a bit of happenstance making the album a suitable parting word from the band. Blink and you’ll miss the first two tracks, “Procession” and “Broken Doll,” both of which are under two and a half minutes and which bleed into each other, but for the other three cuts of studio material (“Thirteen Scene,” highlight “Dying Day” and the more garage rock “Dead Forever”), it’s just as much Beacom and Beasley’s show as it is Bethancourt’s. All the better for repeat listens, since it only means there’s more to dig into.

“Procession,” “Broken Doll,” “Thirteen Scene” and “Dying Day” were recorded in Wales in 2006. “Dead Forever” came two years later and has an almost entirely different sound. It’s still Josiah, but you can hear the interests of Bethancourt beginning to veer away from fuzz-drenched rock or the latter-day Queens of the Stone Age boogie that “Thirteen Scene” did such a fine job of transposing. “Dead Forever” is darker, with more separation in the instruments and a more malleable tempo where the songs preceding felt locked in as they were when they began. It’s also longer at 5:38 than anything before it, but it ends almost as unceremoniously as the band itself, and in roughly 20 minutes, the allegedly last studio material to be released by Josiah has played itself out.

That would be the end if not for the five live tracks from Josiah’s Swedish run in 2007. Four out of the five — “Looking at the Mountain,” “Time to Kill,” “Silas Brainchild” and closer “I Can’t Seem to Find It” — come from the band’s final recorded full-length, No Time, and only “Malpaso,” reaches back further, having first appeared on the 2001 10” Out of the First Rays. Not that we needed it by this time, but these live versions are basically just further confirmation of what underground rock lost with Josiah. The crash-heavy shuffle blues of “Time to Kill” alone are worth whatever they’re asking for Procession, and I’ll leave it at that.

Fans of Josiah already know and have probably already put in their order for Procession, and though it might not be the best place to start for newcomers — I always recommend beginning with albums rather than compilations — for the already-inducted, this release is a fitting end to a band underrated for the duration of their time together. Nothing’s ever final in rock and roll, but if this really is the last we hear from Josiah, at least they went out on their own terms and never compromised their vision of what stoner rock should be. For that alone, they accomplished more than most.
(From theobelisk.net)

Josiah - Procession (2010)

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Thanks and credits to Lilith!