‘Vantage’ recently received a rather glowing review on Hellridemusic. Many thanks to Jay for the review.
Analysis of Bison Kills – Vantage (Sound Devastation Records)
By Jay Snyder
October 21, 2008
There’s a storied history behind this mysterious UK four piece. They began under the handle of Tear Gas and Plate Glass. Back then they were just a two piece with brothers Matthew and Nathan Dick in charge of composing and performing all the music. Their first offering; a three song demo combined the bluesy, doom boogie of Eyehategod and meshed it with a more hopeless motif in the vein of Burning Witch. I enjoyed their music so much that I interviewed them way back when for the now defunct Daredevil Magazine.
Following the release of this demo the band recruited a live drummer (all drums were programmed on the first recording) Andrew Boom for their second scorcher The Sea Stranded Whipjack. Here is where their progressive tendencies became more pronounced which saw the band incorporating far more than doom into their lethal audio H-bomb.
Silence ensued after, …Whipjack and I thought the band had all but disappeared until I was doing a little music searching on the internet a little while back. As it turns out, TGAPG had to change their name because another outfit was operating under the same moniker. So, doing only what a band of their nature sees fit to do…they changed their name to something even stranger. I can’t even begin to tell you what in the world a name like Analysis of Bison Kills represents. I’m not sure even where to begin with a mouthful such as that, but I digress!
AOBK sees the outfit morphing into a red-blooded four piece that fucks around with established formulas, mutates them and imprints their own powerful take on a well worn blueprint. The addition of bass player Scott Tyrell fully fleshes out this monstrosity into a fire-breathing organic beast filled with all sorts of unique sounds. Shades of post-doom are hugely present along with subtle flourishes of the band’s sludge days but AOBK are forging something savagely different.
There’s a hell of a lot more math metal going on this stuff than your average post-borers; making for caustically twisting song structures that cover a huge plot of land. Deep bass groove provides an ever ebbing foundation that gives the listener the feeling of being trapped in a sunken ship on the ocean floor while the manic drumming batters and breaks the hull, driving you into an otherworldly state of deep sea dementia. Riffs are always changing and never gravitating in the same space long enough for the listener to lose attention. Matthew Dick is full of creativity and his guitar wraps comforting melody around your soul only to shatter it to pieces with bulldozing, sludge-y riffs that never shy away from vicious volumes. His blood brother Nathan still commands the microphone with a nasty, Burning Witch flavored scream that still sounds like he’s chewing on a meal of nails and broken glass. Sickening to say the least and the effect is very interesting in the way that his harshness oftentimes juxtaposes the beauty of the music in a skewered, frightening manner. Hell, everything about this band is much more on edge and schizophrenic than anything that the post-doom genre has been up to lately.
The early frequencies present in introductory number, “Honest Broker” reeks of fetid, churning stop/start metal that calls to mind the heavy hitters on both Hydrahead and Escape Artist. Riffs have that angular, jagged tendency that everything from Knut to Playing Enemy has made a living off of for years but with less of an attack element and more introspection. Allowing the heaviness to fade away and open textures to float to the surface; the bass builds a gigantic presence that gives the whole song a submerging, aquatic feel with melodic lead guitar lines that bear an off-kilter resemblance to Katatonia’s special brand of gloom n’ doom. Eventually skull-tearing groove riffs clear the way for double-kicking, psychosis induced drumming and the song finds its way to a monumental finale; landing smack-dab into the midst of melodic, shimmering waters one last time.
Rhythmic masterpiece, “When Small Men do Great Things” continues to create a sinking feeling in the listener’s skull. Almost built on the same foundation that Isis used for their watery Oceanic masterpiece but with a jazzy, busy flow that takes a long time to move away from its initial arrangement. Leisurely the band allows the harmonic waves to buoyantly carry the groove for nearly 2 ½ minutes before they allow a wall of distortion to pierce the tranquility. Slipping back into the opening ebb n’ flow it is only a matter of time before the distortion explodes back into focus with Nathan’s vicious screams acting as the Hammer of God, casting judgment down on your soul. Beauty and agony haven’t sounded this good together in the post-doom genre in quite sometime; in my opinion AOBK are crafting something with special touch that separates them from all the copycats out there.
Weight and agility mark “For whom it Serves” as another landmark piece for the band. Isis solving equations is the general effect. Again the mood has that “break of the wave” feel hanging on every riff but the lumbering, hooky rhythms are interspersed with the feral bite of slowly explosive, grinding freak-outs. Intronaut’s bipolar moods on The Challenger come to mind but with a forceful, deliberate delivery that in my opinion ousts the later material by the aforementioned band. The bass continues to lead the charge here as it swirls in a tempest of moody ambience that backs the wall of crushing percussion, mind-altering guitar churns and ravenous vocals in a very unexpected and welcome way.
Finally, “Depth is earned” closes out the disc with an entrancing, clean intro that will surprisingly show the face of the band’s straight-up doom days later on. I’m talking time-reversed, Black Sabbath crunch of the highest order that is sure to please anyone; whether or not they were expecting AOBK to venture back to their TGAPG past in the first place. They surely couldn’t have picked a better note to close the disc on as it represents the power riffing of the band’s early material combined with their continuous strive for experimentalism, all in one devastating blast of sound.
Fans of post-doom; your ship has come in. Frankly, this is some of the most powerful material I’ve heard in this style in quite sometime because it thinks outside the box, bringing in a host of other varying genres. You get a generous helping of angular mathematical fury, a pinch of sludge in addition to all of the shimmering post-doom nutrition that one could ever ask for. You also get an extra side of depression dipping sauce in the form of truly monumental heaviness and scathing vocal rants. Anyone who followed these guys up to this point truly needs to pick up this disc in order to see the band come full-circle. Those who are unfamiliar and looking to try out a little something left of center; AOBK will more than fulfill your needs. Heavy, experimental, uplifting and vicious, Vantage is the new face of post-doom (or whatever the hell you want to call it) and well worth a listen for anyone even remotely into this kind of stuff. Highly recommended.
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