SUPLECS

6.24.00
Continental
New York, NY

They may not have made Rolling Stone's recent list of current stoner rock kings but these sludge rockers deliver distortion to your eardrums with unrelenting intensity. Straight out tha swamps of N'awlins, Suplecs lay the sonic smack down on your ears like Stone Cold does on the mat.

Critics, bands and music fans have been debating the expression "Stoner Rock" - the term coined to describe a heavy, mind-warping combo of punk, metal and rock - since bands such as Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Fu Manchu and Sleep tumbled out of their respective vans in a cloud of pot smoke at the end of the last century. The mid-tempo heaviness of this bad-ass, modern crop of stoner rock smacks of '70s forebears Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and many others, and, like most forms of rock music, it's tailored for toking. It's easy to see why most bands would shun the limiting term, but it frequently fits.

Whether you think their rock reeks of resin or not (you know it does), Suplecs embrace the dark side of an intoxicated, meandering state of mind. Oddly enough, I showed up at their recent New York gig, completely sober. When I realized that my lucid state could not offer much more than a contact high, I decided that I should at least head over to the bar. Two drafts of Guinness cleared my mental palette of any distractions outside of my dark environs and fogged me up proper for the impending aural assault.

I knew from the first moment, that Suplecs would be much more effective live than on disc. Their recent album, Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend (Man's Ruin) only hints of the power that Durel Yates (guitar, vocals), Danny Nick (bass, vocals) and Andrew Preen (drums, percussion) exercise to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Songs such as "Rampage," "Moped" and "2000 Leagues" can only be properly fleshed out with as much volume and near-loss of control as possible.

Baseball caps pulled down, these faceless marauders heaved out their bludgeoning riffs, full on, wasting little time. Picks punished strings while fingers molested guitar necks, plundering vibrations from their instruments. The ferocious Preen, a merciless, multi-limbed monster, attacked his kit with a vengeance. The band's mixed bag of lyrical themes, as yelped and shouted by Yates and Nick, included stalking women and enjoying the privileges of membership in a moped gang. Their appropriately chosen interpretation of the Beatles' "I Want You (She's so Heavy)" easily found its place in the set by virtue of the song's title as well as with its tumbling, cumbersome melody.

I wouldn't describe Suplecs' hard-hitting, churning rhythms as completely original. But this southern power trio shows no clear intentions of exploring new musical terrain when they can easily floor you with their fearsome, dark rhythms and thick, elastic riffs. Bands such as Nebula, Queens of the Stone Age and the others mentioned above are generally hailed as stoner-rock leaders for their musical flights into psychedelic territories, their worship of the arid wastelands, and drugs, among other things. Suplecs would prefer to wade through the swamps, collecting fresh corpses along the way to their next gig.

"YES!!" squeals your inner Beavis to the thunder of each banged-out power chord as your fist pumps the air. "THIS ROCKS!!"

- Hal Miller

This review was originally featured on Gigmania.com.