In The Sixties People Would Have Called This Groovy

Cherry Coke is a trio formed by Mat Bethancourt (Josiah, Kings Of Frog Island, The Beginning). This band plays some great 60's inspired Psychedelic Garage. I did post two singles of Cherry Choke some earlier here. This is the full-length debut album. It contains ten great songs. It reminds me a bit of the bands Cream and Blue Cheer. I think you can call it "groovy"! Enjoy!

Guitarist/vocalist Mat Bethancourt, also of Josiah and The Kings of Frog Island, now joins bassist/backing vocalist Gregg Hunt and drummer Dan Lockton in Cherry Choke, a garage rocking power trio whose self-titled debut album revels in its simplicity and rootsy flavor.

Split even on CD into sides one and two, Cherry Choke offers ten straightforward tracks wherein the fuzzy tone that’s come to be expected from Bethancourt in Josiah and The Kings of Frog Island mostly takes a back seat to a cleaner type of distortion akin to the ’70s-inspired indie that’s dominated the party rock ideal for the better part of this decade. If I said Cherry Choke takes inspiration from Hendrix, The Stooges, MC5 and T-Rex, it would be the same as saying “they play garage rock,” but there it is.

There are some hits and some misses throughout the album, but the memorable “Ride My Black Balloon,” at track three, is the first real showing of Cherry Choke at their best. Somewhat less frantic than “She Turns Me On” and “The Lie,” which come right before it, the repetition of the title line drills it into your head so that you start repeating it, mantra-like, without even realizing. Though “Reflections in Black” is both more distorted and more aggressive, “Ride My Black Balloon” still remains the strongest number on the side one. The short psychedelic instrumental “Jezebel” helps to divide Cherry Choke and set the tone for the album’s broader-reaching second half.

Side two begins with “Cheetah,” which fits well alongside side one’s more forthright cuts, but it’s with “I Can See the Girls Grow,” with a further back vocal from Bethancourt and a deeper guitar sound — one that still bounces along at a fairly good clip — that Cherry Choke commences its expansion. The last three tracks, beginning with the most Hendrixian “The Need,” are unmistakably the highlights of the record. “The Need” balances the fuzz with the swagger and is the first real instance since “Ride My Black Balloon” in which Cherry Choke’s songwriting seems to be in focus. While other tracks have a frivolous, spontaneous, jammed-out appeal, there’s no denying the solo in “The Need” is well constructed and immaculately executed. Leading into the faster “In My Mind” and instrumental closer “Fridays in June,” the album’s close presents its brightest moments.

Cherry Choke has enough of Bethancourt’s style and sound to please fans of his previous work, but pushes in a direction altogether different. Nonetheless, they are an organic-sounding trio with Hunt and Lockton offering much in the way of striking classic rock rhythms and a couple genuinely remarkable tracks on their debut, well suited to whatever outdoor chicanery you might be getting up to this summer.
(By JJ Koczan at StonerRock.com)

Cherry Choke - Cherry Choke (2009)

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This Is The Beginning

Mat Bethancourt is a man who got famous with the bands Josiah and The Kings Of Frog Island. He also played with the bands Cherry Choke and The Beginning.
The Beginning was a five piece band from the U.K. This band is more focused on the 60's and 70's Psychedelic music. The album This Is The Beginning contains seven outstanding songs. Great songs are The Ju Ju Man and the 13 minute Baby's Takin Me For A Ride (I would almost swear that Keith Richards played here). This Is The Beginning is an album with great grooves and it shows again the midas touch of Mat Bethancourt. Too bad it stayed with one album. Enjoy!

The Beginning were born of a heavy consumption of psychedelics and late sixties/early seventies drug rock culture from both sides of the pond. Blending the west coast acid jams of The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service with the hard rock of Led Zeppelin and Man, The Beginning boast members of both UK fuzz rockers Josiah, The Kings Of Frog Island and UK power pop trio Bronco Bullfrog. This Is..... takes you on a trip of highs and higher highs and drops you off somewhere near the twelfth of never. Unashamedly retro, This Is.... blows straight through your fucking mind.
(From MySpace)

The Beginning - This Is The Beginning (2004)

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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!

The Kings Of Frog Island

The Kings Of Frog Island is the second project of Mat Bethancourt, famous from the band Josiah, The Beginnig and Cherry Choke. The Kings Of Frog Island displays great Stoner Rock with Psychedelic Garage elements. This is the second album and it shows more progression comparing with the first album. Great songs are: Hallucination, Welcome To The Void and Witching Hour. This is another fine album of Elektrohash Records. Enjoy!

"II, the accurately titled second album, is purported to be part of a trilogy. It's also a step up from The Kings of Frog Island, the band's debut. Considering how good that album was, that's no small feat. The show begins with a shaggy-haired, psychedelic garage rocker. The next track is reminiscent of Josiah, singer/guitarist Mat Bethancourt's other, soon-to-be-defunct group. It's lock-step groove, thick distortion, and frantic, emotional soloing make it another highlight in an album full of them. That's the best part about II - you can pick any track at random and dig right in. You're guaranteed to a healthy dose of classic, no bullshit rock n roll. The final chapter to the Kings of Frog Island saga can't come soon enough."
(By Arzgarth at StonerRock.com)

The Kings Of Frog Island - II (2008)

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Another Band Of Mat Bethancourt: CHERRY CHOKE

After Josiah, The Beginning and Kings Of Frog Island, Mat Bethancourt is back with Cherry Choke. With this band returns Mat back to the sixties.
Cherry Choke released recently their debute album. These are two 7" singles from 2008.  (Released 99 copies each) 

CHERRY CHOKE Rumored to be named after a victorian prostitute with a very unique talent Cherry Choke play hard rockin’, ultra heavy, Blue Cheer/Hendrix inspired, psychedelic rock. Their signature sound of molten guitars hyped up on cheap and noisy effect pedals, heavy Gibson bass and sonic drum attack offers an acidic orgy for the mind and body... add a singer who rasps with a garage band's untutored authority and you have got yourself one hell of a group... Cherry Choke
March 2009 saw the release of their debut album via Elektrohasch Records with two limited edition 7” singles (only 99 copies of each) on Blackhand Records already released back in 2008. A mid atlantic blend of bubble-gum garage punk and mystical psychedelic acid rock n soul abandon this power trio are armed with a white hot live set and razor sharp tracks. Cherry Choke will blow your dirty little minds...
(From MySpace)

Cheetah 7" Single (2008)

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Evil Deceiver 7" Single (2008)

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