Posted on: Rapid Transit Radio
By: Justin
“What justice does time do to heavy music without at some point busting it apart down to the ugly, important pieces? A riff is a riff is a riff unless you have some filthy ideal of power mixed with grace, of exploration without regard for “the scene.” That has always produced some of the best in devastating music: those epic metal albums of your gas-huffing youth produced by toiling heshers; the isolated and misunderstood backgrounds manifested by relentless modern ragers.
After months of labor pains, softball injuries, returns to the mixing board, and Czech mailing errors, Sonorous Gale has put out a difficult ray of dark hope that will, thank Satan, never be a DJ favorite.
“Two’s A Crowd” — eight tracks self-released on nice white vinyl – never tries for the fun-now sound and, instead, freely roams between the concrete-weight whims of its two creators, bassist/vocalist Aaron Weese and drummer Stephen Kerfien. Any flashpoints of referential bands are surprisingly layered (for a duo) within a contradictory drum beat or melody, clearly the result of hours of practice room dissection and fucking jamming.
There is an element of the sausage factory at work here; you never directly hear the practical elements and necessary obstacles that stood in the way of its completion. They scraped mixes, poured over bass harmonies and smashed their tiny piggy bank to keep it all going somewhere in the last year-and-a-half. Despite this, their effort was not along the lines of a redemptive made-for-TV tale full of break-ups or sharing revenge-oral sex with each other’s loved-ones that gives some bands more notoriety than their songs. Propped up by a monstrous and diverse final recorded product — bass reverb? and how huge is that drum set? — “Two’s A Crowd,” is more real than the sounds of any band mired in high school dramas, as it uses daily punishment and joy as the collage of expression, for better and for worse.
Side A works well as an introduction for the Buffalo band. Starting with “To Completion,” you hear a willingness to hammer down on sludge parts, but with bass and vocal melodies and flashy cymbals that keep the song from getting lost in the muck. Minutes later, “Maytham Manor” brings the thunder and tricky verse points that set the band apart from the kitsch of many other two-man bands. The song is probably the best representation of their live show, the craftsmanship in combining doom, majestic lyrics and lock-step tightness.
Never leaving too many bread crumbs with their tracks, the third song is an instrumental, a curiously placed touch on the best 70s prog parts and, well, punk. The first side closes with more slight of hand, the downer “Cake In The Wings.” Guest vocalist Spoke gives her first complimentary accompaniment here — Weese obviously has a vision for the voice of the song, and he’s willing to share the soapbox to see it through.
As the first side gives multiple strong hints at where Sonorous Gale can take songs, side B skips the innuendo without missing the magic. There is something very fragile in the latter four songs of this record, maybe just because it’s so rare to hear a heavy band unafraid to come off as human yet unwilling to sound like babies.
“Shattered Fingers,” again featuring Spoke, is a true basement show rocker, wrapped up in lyrics that are vague but sung with appropriate desperation and a bass line recalling Cliff Burton at his un-wanky best. Kerfien, never missing chances for jazzy flares, ratchets up the snare and hi-hat surprises minus any showy defaults.
“Dogmatic Equations,” the band’s early “single,” shimmers bright on the big vinyl, its plodding drum rolls carrying through every headnodding stop. Both men stretch far for “Glimpse,” the most emotive track on the record. Black Sabbath separated the stoner-soft from the punishing on “Master of Reality”; here, Kerfien and Weese meld those elements for the album’s best song, as striking as it is personal. A lesson in restraint, it feels like the hard pulses of the choruses are earned by the players and ultimately the listeners.
Barely outdone is the damned clever closer, “Clandestiny.” As with “Maytham Manor,” there is a smoothly stuttering verse hook followed by drums that dominate like some kind of rhythmic Harley. The song is a perfect end piece for this complicated-but-rewarding album.
In a society where, increasingly, now is already yesterday, it’s refreshing to hear something not instantly dismissed nor masturbated over. (The unique cover art adds another question mark to the package with a combination of natural imagery and techno-phobe design squiggles)
The time spent being their own band and, often because of that, bashing their heads against the practice room walls has led to this lasting sound. At its multiple great moments, “Two’s A Crowd” is the refusal of ease or technical bludgeoning, recalling a day when complex efforts were not a lost art.
(Note: I am friends with both of the people in this band. That means I could tell them if this record sucked. Or if it sounded like this. Thankfully, I don’t have to do either of those things.)”
http://rapidtransitradio.com/2009/04/17/as-nasty-as-they-wanna-be-sonorous-gales-twos-a-crowd-lp/
Post On: The Dirt Nap Blog
By: Ryan
“Sonorous Gale much like the city they come from is fucking dirty, cold, loud and a damn good time. If I had to sum up Buffalo and it's sounds and atmosphere by using a band it would be these guys.
The songs are well arranged and gritty yet have a underlying beauty to them. Using only bass and drums with vocals they create a wall of sound done very simply. I couldn't really compare them to anything but I may just be out of touch or whatnot.
This LP shows a huge progression of the bands writing. The demo they released was fucking great as was the split with Crappy Dracula but this seems like a very mature offering. There are 8 tracks in all on this. I love the bass sound on this and the drumming is fucking incredible. The one thing I like most about them is the vocals. They follow along with the music super good and fit the style so good. I'm probably way fucking off but there is a sense of sadness in the way they are delivered. At times the remind me of later Planes Mistaken for Star vocals.
If you've never heard this band before I strongly suggest you check them out. If they ever come to your town you would be doing youself a major disservice by missing them. They bring not only amazing music but they bring that grit and amazement that only Buffalo can deliver.
If you are a fan of real music made by real dudes with heart and a ton to offer then this is a band well worth checking out.
This was tough for me to review as Sonorous Gale has been one of my favorite bands out of Buffalo since I first heard the demo a few years back. I really found no flaws in it. Maybe the only flaw is that I wish they would just sit in a studio and record new material 24 hours a day to keep new goodness coming.
What this LP did for me was took them from being probably my favorite Buffalo band to being one of my favorite bands period. This is right up there on the playlist with so many mainstays in my CD player and when it goes from Eyehategod to this the transition for me is effortless. It somehow seems to work.
Keep up the good work guys and of course the best of luck to you on everything down the road.
This is their myspace page. I suggest you check them out right away. Again, me being so picky about bands it is a rarity that a band like this comes along that I wish everyone in the world could somehow hear and appreciate as much as I do”
http://thedirtnapdoom.blogspot.com/2009/02/sonorous-gale-twos-crowd-lp-review.html
Posted on: Stonerrock.com
By: Andy "Dinger" Beresky
I love it when I get actual LPs to review. There's something magical about slipping a nice slab of colored wax out of its sleeve and popping it onto the old turntable. So needless to say, I was pretty stoked when I opened up a package and found myself looking at Sonorous Gale's debut album. I had seen this Buffalo, NY two-piece perform live, and they brought the noise. The funny things was, they told the crowd to buy their merch so they could bail their guitar player out of jail, and quite a few people believed them.
The album itself, well it also brings the noise. It's a fairly live sounding recording, with a lot of character, which the vinyl treatment of course only enhances. A lot of times when bands are searing hot live, they simply try to capture that live sound and energy in the studio, which is rarely a full success, but I like it when such bands branch out a bit more and actually USE the studio, which these two gents certainly do on Two's a Crowd. The album opens up with the bombastic distorted bass melodies and chords accompanied by hard hitting drums and aggressive vocal stylings, as we've come to expect with two pieces, but after two catchy tunes with solid hooks, they switch things up and bring us the mathy instrumental, "Let Your Darkness Shine." It's still not much of a divergence from the sound they delivered in force when I caught them live.
From there though, they bring in a female guest vocals, and things start to get really interesting, for better or for worse. I've got to admit that the closer for side one, "Cake In the Wings" wasn't my favorite track; it's a bit too loose for my liking, but once they bring the tempo back up to speed and start hitting my eardrums with the hooks again, the alternating male/female vocals really start to connect. It's hard to ignore the passion of a song like "Shattered Fingers," and I'll mention right now that I'm glad they included the lyrics in this nicely packaged little LP - they're some of the more intelligent ones I've come across lately. It's not your typical beer and bongs themes you see all too often around these parts, but more akin to what Quicksand and Fugazi were ranting about in the early '90's.
The band shifts gears yet again into somewhat more indie territories for a couple of songs, but I'm fine with that, as it reminds me of Sebadoh, and other bands I heard every night growing up in Western Mass. Most importantly, they finish up strong with the track "Clandestiny," which seems to bring together all of the elements this band is capable of.
All in all, a promising debut from a band with a lot to offer, and it's good to see a bass and drum duo carving their own path rather than just trying to ape Big Business or OM.”
http://www.stonerrock.com/forums2/allposts.asp?Forum=ap809241559&ID=45385&StartAt=0
Posted on: Hanging like a Hex Blog
By: Ryan Hex
“When I think of Buffalo hardcore I tend to think of meat and potatoes ham fisted tough guy music. Maybe that’s because when I was younger and lived there for a spell that was pretty prevalent around there. Little did I know is that the town had a thriving basement punk scene, which I guess has grown even more prominent since I left. Some of the bands that emerged out of that eventually split up and went on to make further mutations out of that sound. Sonorous Gale is one such band that has moved out of their exclusively punk roots and gone for something equally as raging, but in a different sort of way. This band is a two piece drum and bass group that is essentially echoing what fellow thunder rockers Big Business are doing. It’s a little less involved insofar as song structure, and the vocals are more of a scathing scream than a mighty bellow, but the general concept remains the same. Distort the shit out of that bass and utilize it for both rhythm and leads, and then drop A-bombs of rocking heaviness and there you have the basics for Sonorous Gale. Ta- da!”
http://hanginghex.blogspot.com/
Printed in: Maximum Rock N’ Roll June 2009 issue
By: VX
"Two's a Crowd" LP All right, this is pretty darn good. The debut LP from Buffalo, NY's SONOROUS GALE is emotional, technical hardcore in the '90s vein, with some post-rock influences to boot. One of the two dudes in the band was formerly in ROBOT HAS WEREWOLF HAND, which might help point you in the right direction. TORCHE meets MAJORITY RULE would be the cheapest, easiest way to describe it, but I'm having a hard time coming up with better descriptions. What I'm saying, once again, is this is pretty darn good, so you might want to check it out. Oh, they have guest vocals by the singer of totally amazing Canucks BALLAST, for those that care about such things. And for the record nerds, the first press of 500 are all on white vinyl. (VX) (Wrong Foot)"