Torche is definitely straying a little away from their earlier brand of metal for a more shoegazy stoner metal jam bandy thing. But it works. Everything from the drumming to the distorted vocals works. Who is King Beef? I dunno. What’s the song about? Again, don’t know, don’t care. It owns and got me even more excited about their upcoming full length. Going from a 4 piece to a 3 piece hasn’t hurt their sound in the slightest. And if you have the chance to see them live, do it, they’re fucking loud as Motorhead and will destroy you.

The Boris track was awesome as well. I wasn’t too familiar with the band before hearing Luna. I’d heard of them but not heard them. Ya know? But yeah man, they were on point and very similar in style to bands like Jesu or some such. Proggy, metally, hardcorey, stonery, shoegazy, etc, etc, etc. I really dug their track and will search out more stuff by them next time I’m out record shopping. Also it should be noted that they are from Japan. If you are reading this and are from Japan yourself, The FSS would like you to tell all your friends about our awesome website. We want to be your friends. We want to be big in Japan. I’m serious. This was an actual FSS marketing strategy at one point. A poorly executed strategy (ie we never pursued it), but a strategy nonetheless. So yeah if you’re from Japan and stumbled on this article, hook it up. We’ll even come to you’re country if that works (all expenses paid by you of course).

Hydra Head’s webstore is already sold out but they are urging people to go to their local record shops to find copies. I also urge the same.

Whenever I do something terrible I try to balance it with something awesome. This weekend in the midst of my chaos and a run to Lowe’s Home Improvement Center I joined a local gym. Both of these things are terrible, terrible, heinous acts. So to balance them out and regain my inner chi I stopped by Vintage Vinyl in picturesque Fords NJ before returning home. Now you might be thinking. “T are you fucking loaded??? How is it that you can afford such a lavish lifestyle of buying home improvement accoutrement, gym memberships, and records???” The answer is I fucking can’t. Which brings me to the other part of my story.

I’ve had this fucking bag of DVDs in my closet for months that I’ve been waging an inner battle over whether to sell or not. When we started cleaning house to begin renovating I put the bag in my trunk. Not because I was ready to commit to thinking about planning to sell them but because there wasn’t much space elsewhere. For me audio trumps video most days. I requires less senses to enjoy and I’m a lazy slacker (Need proof? I own the entire Pavement catalog.). So when I made the decision to go record shopping to regain Zen harmony with the universe I also made the decision to sell my sack o’ DVDs to help defray costs. Plus I figure I could use the bag to start going to the gym.

FSSers: Isn’t this a Jesu review?

T: I’m getting there. It’s not the destination it’s the journey.

The kindly record store clerk that had the unfortunate task of figuring out how much money my bag o DVDs was worth told me “it was going to be a while”. First we chatted a bit about Torche. He was wearing a Torche shirt and I love Torche, so it was perfect really. Somehow in between me telling him how sick their live show was record store guy mentioned how Jesu is another one of those bands that people hold in the same high regard. Then he complained that they were in the Heavy Metal section when they’re really more of a “Shoegaze Metal”. This is exactly the type of conversation music nerds have and he made several more convincing arguments as to why they were a good band of which included their relation to Napalm Death. Now I knew I wasn’t going to use my gym membership just yet so for the next hour or so I wandered around the store. I like to start in the middle and work my way out and then by the end I run around from section to section in a figure 8 pattern of sorts trying to remember what I was looking for. Total paid to T for used DVDs: $120.00. Total paid to Vintage Vinyl for new CDs: $121.85. Net Loss: $1.85. Total calories burned running around the store for an hour: 20 approx.

Alright so what have we learned today? T is the fucking Bob Villa of Punk rock. He hates exercise and loves record stores. Oh and Jesu rocks pretty hard. During the second loop of my figure 8 I passed by Metal and grabbed one of their albums. I went with their self titled first album. Generally I like to start with a band’s first album, although I also bought Big Business’s third album that afternoon and I dont own anything by them either so nevermind. Back to Jesu though, at 4:30am Monday morning on my way into work I blasted it in the car. I didn’t have any coffee in my system yet so I needed maximum volume. Shoegaze Metal is actually the perfect description of their sound. They’re something like Mastodon covering My Bloody Valentine. So if you like either band or better yet both you’ll probably dig it too. Now get back to practicing your ninja skills, FSSicon 2010 is still looming on the horizon!

Related Posts: Torche Live at The Highline Ballroom, Torche “Healer/Across The Shields EP”