Shrinebuilder - Shrinebuilder

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

4...according to our Ant on Thu 26 Nov, 2009.

The prospect of Al Cisneros of Om/ Sleep playing in the same band as Dale Crover from The Melvins almost made soil myself with excitement. Add Scott "Wino" Weinrich from Saint Vitus etc. and Scott Kelly from Neurosis both on guitars and you have Shrinebuilder. A metal supergroup some might say. There are elements of the album that I really dig and make me wanna punch the air but it's a bit of a mixed bag really. There's certainly elements of each players style but it doesn't come across as particularly like any of the players respective bands except one track which is very Om sounding but to be fair Al never really veers far from his thing that often. So this really sounds like a totally new band rather than some novelty collaboration. As you'd expect there are some monster riffs and the pace is suitably slow and heavy as they chug and pound away. There's even a psychedelic element coming through at times and then there's just total meathead metal growling that made me want to wear leather pants the first time I heard it. The promo CD we have is one track short so I'm unsure what we're missing there. This certainly has its moments though. Out on Neurot.

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

It’s not so much a band name as a statement of intent. Not a one-off supergroup, but rather the first chapter in what promises to be an epic narrative. More to the point, though, Shrinebuilder is the meeting of musical monoliths, the Justice League of underground heaviness: Scott ’Wino’ Weinrich of Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan and The Hidden Hand on guitar; Al Cisneros of Om and Sleep on bass; Dale Crover of the Melvins and Altamont on drums; Scott Kelly of Neurosis on guitar. And all four of them on vocals. If we were listing selling points for some faceless record label’s marketing plan, we’d be done right now. With these four living legends in the room, the term "highly anticipated" doesn’t even come close.

Recorded in just three days, a sufficiently superhuman time frame for a group of musicians who often pass for superhuman themselves in certain circles, Shrinebuilder delivers on the tacit promise of a riff-roaring Wino + Neurosis + Om + Melvins power-psych explosion, but it also reveals a sonic sum unanticipated by its attendant parts.

"It’s like a crazy experiment that actually worked" Crover enthuses. "I don’t think we could have asked for something better."

"It’s one of those things that I would have never thought of or dreamed of," Kelly concludes.

"It doesn’t always sound like a collaboration between members of these four bands. There’s something else that happens within that structure. It’s about music as a religion, as a belief system, as a means of communication and in the end I think the music speaks for itself. I’ve already listened to this project more than any other project I’ve ever worked on. I listen to it, and I listen to it loud."

TRACKLISTING: 1.Solar Benediction 2.Pyramid Of The Moon 3.Blind For All To See 4.The Architect 5.Science Of Anger

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!