Nov. 29/ 2009--Review of "Desert Opuses" in Classic Rock Magazine (thanks to Sleazegrinder):
"And now, as they say, for something completely different, courtesy of Sleazegrinder.
There’s something Nero-esque about sleazy rock n’ roll, a stubborn refusal to face facts or reality. If you wear leather pants and/or bandana headbands, then it matters not if Rome is burning to cinders. You will simply order another whiskey and carry on with your petty debaucheries. There’s a certain nobility in that, but today, I must admit, I was in the mood for something deeper, something more reflective of these desperate last days of summer. It’s (very) late August as I write this, and you can see it out on the streets. This is the time when we clutch to last fitful hours of sunlight and warmth like they could somehow save us from the many months of gloom and frost and chill and depression that awaits us. But we can’t. We’re screwed. Which is where today’s slabbage comes in.
High Watt Electrocutions is the project of one Ryan Settee, a thirty-something volume dealer from Canada. Armed with racks of vintage gear and a fierce vision of deep space and all the horrors it contains, Ryan has been developing this sometimes mournful, often bracing sound that incorporates Desert Punk, Stoner Meral, Doom Rock, and Space Scuzz, wrapping it all up in a woozy, fever-dreamy atmosphere, not unlike Spacemen 3, if Spacemen 3 often found themselves trapped in Lovecraftian nightmares.
Settee may or may not create all this madness on his own. Mostly he does, but I figure demons are also involved somehow. High Watt’s debut album, Night Songs, hit the bins in 2007, although the roots of the band stretch all the way back to the mid 1990’s. After making a sizable splash in the stoner rock/doom-drone underground, High Watt Electrocutions is back with another dose of the holy ghost, the mammoth, inky-black, no-hope-in-sight Desert Opuses. Yes, it’s a concept record, and the concept is this: Total F*&king Blowout.
I have two versions of Desert Opuses. One’s a CD, the other a still smoking chunk of heavy gold wax that rumbles menacingly, like an earthquake aftershock, even at sensible volumes. These songs, these lurching, skittering, ocean-wide behemoths-of-heavy, appear to wander in whatever direction pleases them, regardless of Mr. Electrocution’s intent or the comfort of your/my ears. Listen closely, late at night, and you may hear Desert Opuses wheeze and shudder all on it’s own. It will kill your summer dead, and may even cause an early frost.
Or perhaps I’ve just gone crazy. Maybe you’d like to sample these unearthly delights for yourself to see, what it’s all about. Here, courtesy the band, is the eleventeen-minute long instrumental psyche-doom brain-boiler "Headphone Opus".
Just do as it asks, and everything should workout fine.
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