Rock Music News: The Wake (2024)

Take eight on Ripple Music’s Turned To Stone split series is The Wake, featuring a side each of music from High Desert Queen and Blue Heron. The Turned To Stone split series started in 2020. It is a great idea: issue a record with music from a different band on each side. That first one, […]

Take eight on Ripple Music’s Turned To Stone split series is The Wake, featuring a side each of music from High Desert Queen and Blue Heron. The Turned To Stone split series started in 2020. It is a great idea: issue a record with music from a different band on each side. That first one, […]

Musician Musician
Jun 15, 2023 - 22:07
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The Wake

Take eight on Ripple Music’s Turned To Stone split series is The Wake, featuring a side each of music from High Desert Queen and Blue Heron.

The Turned To Stone split series started in 2020. It is a great idea: issue a record with music from a different band on each side. That first one, titled Enter Galactic Wasteland, had music from Mr Bison and Spacetrucker. I listened to it because I had heard about Mr Bison and I wanted to hear more. I got three great tracks from them plus three more from Spacetrucker, all of them fantastic. At the time I wondered how long the series would run. It seems to be steaming ahead and I hope it never stops. Bands featured so far include those two in the first one, then Masamune, Muramasa, Wizzerd, Merlin, Saturna, Electric Monolith, Planet of the 8s, Duneeater, Captain Caravan, Kaiser, Gypsy Chief Goliath, and End Of Age.

First up on the new split is High Desert Queen, from Texas. “Black Moon” is heavy in the riff and fuzz. The song lays on the doom side of stoner music, and no mistake. The tempo up-shift at the halfway mark elevates the discourse and then returns it to earth. “Drift Into the Sun” is a shorter piece, and it has a quieter cook. Somber, you might say. The final song is a rambler, “Roll the Dice.” Love that riff and the urging vocals. Excellent.

New Mexico’s Blue Heron follows with three of their own. “Able Baker” greets the waking world with a circumspect treatment and a mystical entanglement. The gruff moments in the song breathe fire over the steady, heating embers, building toward an explosive event. “Day of the Comet” has a doomier vibe and, appropriately, spacier content. It is trippy and probing. “Superposition” is a rocker with a dark side and a cataclysmic conclusion. The Wake is another great split from Ripple Music. Recommended.

Turned To Stone 8: The Wake is out now through Ripple Music. You can get it at the label’s website, or at Bandcamp. If you are interested in the digital, the way to go is to subscribe to Ripple Music at Bandcamp because then you get everything they release automatically. It is the best deal in heavy music. Links below.

Links.

Bandcamp Blue Heron, https://blueheronabq.bandcamp.com/album/turned-to-stone-chapter-8-the-wake

Bandcamp High Desert Queen, https://highdesertqueen.bandcamp.com/album/turned-to-stone-chapter-8-the-wake

Ripple Music, https://www.ripple-music.com/

© Wayne Edwards

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