If there’s one particular band format where a lot of really interesting and strong work is being done right now, it’s the down-tuned doom’n'drums duo, and that’s where we might choose to file Germany’s Beehoover – although they themselves suggest second album Heavy Zooo should in fact be categorised as “progressive jazz-doom”.
It works for me, I guess – descriptive and flippant at once. Oh, and weird. Beehoover are definitely, defiantly and wilfully weird. Just take a look at the cyber-rabbit on the sleeve art, there. These guys aren’t just acquainted with their unconscious minds; I’m pretty convinced they spend every second weekend there.
When they return, they drag their songs with them, and assemble them into German schizo-doom duo Beehoover bring a uniquely weird and progressive brand of sludge noise on Heavy Zooo’s monolithic edifices of low-slung progressive riffola and inventive drumming. These are then hand carved with the screeds and prophecies unearthed during Beehoover’s inner travels, delivered in the voice of a strangled drill-sergeant in the grips of a serious mushroom overload.
The thing is, it’s not as weird as I’m making it sound, at least not on a first listen. Initially, Beehoover sound like a refugee from Hydrahead’s roster that wound up dazed, confused and naked on a Berlin train platform; a stripped down Teutonic Kyuss at the comedown tail-end of a speed binge; foam-flecked, paranoid and dangerous to know. Heavy Zooo is, at least in part, a post-metal album.
But Beehoover replace the po-faced epic seriousness of post-metal with a heavily-medicated mania all their own, and it’s these crazed undercurrents that make them such a rewarding listen once you’ve grown immune to the chunky guitar. Heavy Zooo is bolstered with this healthy serving of moody surrealism and a barely detectable hint of fun and humour; it’s a fun album to listen to, but I’m willing to bet Beehoover had even more fun making it.
Even so, I’m not sure I’d want to be left alone in a room with them. Heavy Zooo is (I assume) intended to be humerous, but you can’t help but wonder if Beehoover are one of those bands that act as some sort of group therapy or primal venting experience for their members. The self-flagellation of “Pain Power” has a strangely militaristic feel to it, as if you’re being disciplined by the huge bassy riff and precision percussion before being dropped into the false comfort of a spooked-out spacious mid-section punctuated with schizoid yelling; is this the work of a control freak diverting his impulses?
But if you wanted to get a feel for Beehoover in as short a space as possible, the crash-course introduction to the range of sounds and styles on Heavy Zooo would surely begin with the bat-shit crazy kiddies-keyboard-and-distant-shouting-nutter interlude of “Iron Horse” - much like some cut scene from a German re-dub of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil - which then explodes into “Esophagus Overdrive”, a song which somehow manages to include shouty metal verses, a sneakily melodic stoner guitar hook, an amped up chicken-scratch mid-section and a doom-hardcore beatdown in one strangely coherent lump.
Beehoover are treasure masquerading as trash; it sounds like a lumpen blatter of heaviness over depth at first, but there’s a lot more subtlety on Heavy Zooo than even the band themselves give them credit for. Or perhaps they do - as they sing in “Spirit & Crown”:
“bling, bling / my chrome isn’t bright enough to dazzle you / like my greatness does.”
Right; sometimes metal looks better with a bit of tarnish. This is an album for the dumpster-dive connoisseur.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Beehoover, doom, experimental, Heavy Zooo, post-metal, sludge, stoner, weird
