Never shall I forget my trip through the pits of the HELLAS MOUNDS. While it was devoid of any important incidents, it filled me with a feeling of overwhelming loss but then again a feeling of hope which I think I must have hinged principally on the antiquity of these long-forgotten corridors. The things which the darkness hid from my objective eye could not have been half so wonderful as the pictures which my imagination wrought as it conjured to life again the ancient peoples of this dying world and set them once more to make their last stand against the swarming hordes deep inside the dead sea bottoms,where they were now intrenched
behind an impenetrable barrier of extinction.
In appearance the locusts were like horses arrayed for battle, on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women's hair, they had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots rushing into battle. Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed.I saw a great white throne and Him Who sat upon it; the earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
That day I saw the dead, the great and the small.
The sea had gave up... and all were judged by what they had done. I saw the new earth for the first time, heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.And through the mountains of dirt, we treaded lightly through the rivers of gods, becuase after knowing the hills of cydonia,we would surely lust after the views of olympus mons. and as my feet drag through piles of mud,we pushed this river with pounds of flesh"
And still....time comes,and passes... the mist,cradled by the warm breeze,
clinging closely to slick knees and disembodied guests all lying down in the green grass and the most wide open fields looking up...
while watching the sky come falling down...on top of us. crushing us, making us bleed to death,
we will ride that ferry home to cydonia until we fall asleep and feel at peace.
UPDATES... (11.20.07)we have booked our last 2 shows of the year.
should be an awsome time, margaret lane will also be preforming her set as well as a special live prefomance with HELLAS MOUNDS, before she heads back home.the SAW HER GHOST RECORDS DISTRO will also be in
attendance.hope to see you all there.
(10.22.07)OUR NEW SONG IS ALMOST DONE, clips will be up soon, we happy to announce
that that our next release will be on SAW HER GHOST RECORDS with our friends EMPIRES.
they are a amazing group of guys if you have some time to go check them out if you haven't already
it is well worth the time.expect the release out early 2008.
HELLAS MOUNDS WILL BE HOPEFULLY DOING SOME ASSORTED TOURING
IN 2008. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT BY SETTING UP A SHOW FOR US,
OR KNOW SOME WHO CAN, PLEASE CONTACT US.booking / touring contact info E-MAIL: [email protected] MERCH... THE LAST FERRY TO CYDONIA SESSIONS E.P. this hellas mounds first demo/e.p.
ALL HANDMADE PACKAGING (limited copies availible.)
$5.00 POSTAGE PAID.CLICK "BUY NOW" BUTTON TO PURCHASE"the last ferry to cydonia demo sessions"can also be purchased at these following record stores:
EASTSIDE RECORDS - (480) 968-2011 - 217 W University Dr. Tempe, AZ
STINKWEEDS RECORDS - (480) 968-9490 - 15 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ
more soon...
YOU CAN ALSO FIND MORE MERCH ON OUR WEBSITE AT
hellasmounds.cjb.net ---- REVIEWS AND OTHER PRESS --- review of "the last ferry to cydonia demo sessions EP." by: ben ramsey of the silent ballet webzine.
The southwestern United States is a forbidding place. Home to some of the hottest, driest land on earth, miles of baked highway ribbon through a vast terratial sea of sand, rock, and death. This landscape is no place for the weak. Hellas Mounds' debut EP fits right in with its native environment. The four track release from these Phoenix, Arizona natives clocks in right around thirty minutes, with the final two pieces, “Stones in my Passway, Hellhounds on my Trail†and “The Last Ferry to Cydonia†coming in at approximately ten minutes apiece. Hellas Mounds takes concepts from across an array of genres – post rock's soft/loud atmospheric tension build, post metal's slaying riffs and driving, deep-end rhythms, stoner metal's arid, desert-washed bleach-boned and just a little bit of doom’s guttural screaming thrown into the back of the mix. It is the vocal aspect that I first noticed when doing some research on the band's website, and it is a remnant of Hellas Mounds' previous incarnation as aggro-spazz punks We Fly Our Kites at Night. Admittedly, I am not one for hardcore screaming because too often it devolves into a mockingly cartoonish presence, and when I first encountered it, I was a bit apprehensive. However, further listening reveals that the band does a fine job of keeping this aspect of their sound teetering on the line between being an upfront presence and being a component to the ambient storm around it.
The sparse opening track, appropriately titled “Introduction,†moves across its five minutes into a lamenting orchestration almost reminiscent of one of the Explosions in the Sky clones covering Australia's Dirty Three. This then bleeds into “Kodiak,†which lumbers and then attacks like its namesake. “Stones in my Passway, Hellhound on my Trail†may seem like an overly-dramatic title at first, but the tense two-minute opening guitar build helps to create a scene that brings to mind the figure of some post-apocalyptic gunslinger-wizard stumbling through the vast desert mountains at dusk. When Marcus Labonte's guttural vocals kick in around four minutes, it's fight time. The band doesn't choose sides here; instead, they create the controlled chaos and violence of the situation through to its bloody end.
The closing track, “The Last Ferry to Cydonia,†is named for the region of Mars where the famous alien ‘face’ was discovered, and centers around a chiming guitar lead over a surging ocean of buzzing guitar, fuzzed bass, and crashing drums. With bursts into desolate hostility about halfway through, the song is not as powerful as “Kodiak,†nor as cinematic as “Stones….†The piece does show a greater range dynamically than these previous two though, by using the start/stop technique for tension and ultimately ending up in a darker place than anything else on the release. Where “Kodiak’s†attacker is a majestic power-animal and “Passway’s…†hellhounds are supernatural mutants, “Cydonia’s…†threat is an otherworldly demon that leaves the listener relishing just having had their face chewed off.
For an initial offering, Hellas Mounds does bring the thunder. There's enough depth here to appeal to devotees of the heavier end of the post-genres (-rock, -metal), and enough of an edge to attract followers of more mainstream heaviness as well – I could easily see this appealing to Deftones fans, not to mention those looking for something a little more out of hardcore than blitzkrieg riffing. Recently signed to Saw Her Ghosts Records (home to Lorelei and Across Tundras, among others), the band is in a position to capitalize on their potential. With continued emphasis on tension and building dynamic within the sturm und drang, the band could soon find itself among the up-and-coming crop of power-shredders like National Sunday Law or Throw Stephanie in the Incinerator.
excepts from interview/review with the phoenix new times by: brendan joel kelley.
As a music critic, it's a given that I see a shitload of local bands. I also see a lot of bad local bands, or at least ones that could really use some adjustments. Even talented acts around town bore the hell out of me if I see them a few times and their music hasn't evolved. The sort of bands that I like the best and am most impressed by are bands like the Mars Volta, the Good Life, and Bright Eyes, whose album content progresses and develops into something new with each release. I don't see that a lot in the local scene. I see bands trying to perfect one certain thing and not really reaching any further than that. That's not a horrible thing — Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers have built a huge audience by doing their one thing — but it's pretty boring to me. But one band that has impressed me recently with its development is the group formerly known as We Fly Our Kites at Night, which is now called Hellas Mounds (the only lineup change being a different bass player). I dug the Kites a lot — they played punk rock spazzcore that the kids could dance to. Vocalist Marcus LaBonte would flail around shirtless through the audience, sometimes not even bothering with the microphone as he screamed. But Hellas Mounds is an entirely different entity. "We're not punk rock," Marcus tells me as he, guitarists Greg Colson and Justin Michael, and I sit around hungover on Easter morning discussing the transition. The new incarnation is still high volume, but it's slowed down, drawn out, serious stoner rock that draws comparisons to bands as diverse as Slint, Isis, Mogwai, and Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Hellas Mounds is the most exciting shit I've seen recently (the band's played a mere two shows), because it's the culmination of a group of youngsters growing up musically, and watching the development is half of the enjoyment for me. The band has always been experimental. They'd begun to explore the slower-but-still-loud direction as early as last summer. Around that time, though, they lost a close friend who was supposed to tour with them, and their artistic focus became more somber. After the tour, the Kites' bassist left the band to concentrate on school, and it was time for a change. "When he left, amongst all the things happening, and another close friend dying, our hearts have been wanting to play more serious music," Greg says. "Not necessarily sadder, but we're not feeling like jumping all over the place [and] screaming, acting crazy. It's more organic now. It's more our feelings."
In Hellas Mounds, Marcus' vocals are relegated to the background. When the band plays, he sits on a barstool in front of the stage, facing the band, hunched over a microphone. The vocals are sparse — at one point during the band's first show, at the Stray Cat in Tempe, Marcus went outside to smoke a cigarette while the band continued playing. The music is loud as fuck, but it's not fast. "We literally are going to have to start passing out earplugs every time we play," Greg says. It's not much of an exaggeration, as the sound guy at the Stray Cat can attest to. "We set up, we started, and [the sound guy] waved to us when he kind of knew the songs were ending, because we kind of just bridge everything together and go into something else," Justin says. "He comes up to me after the show, and said, 'Man, you guys shred, but I had no control — no control at all.' " "We played four songs without a pause between and he was waving to me to turn down, but we just kept going," Greg says with a laugh.
If more bands around town would experiment, grow, and switch up their ambitions, it would make my job a lot more interesting. Especially for young musicians, it's important to remember that the journey's more important than the destination. As Greg tells me, "We're the same people, but what we're feeling and what we're wanting to put out there is different."
review of "the last ferry to cydonia"(song) by: jordan volz of the silent ballet webzine
"The Last Ferry to Cydonia" is a metallic behemoth of a track.Essentially, this is a post-metal track hidden within the innocent facade of a post-rock track, but don't let that trick you, there's nothing innocent about this Arizona sextet. Hellas Mounds begins with the slow murmuring of the guitars, with the expected, slow rising we all have come to know and love. Two minutes in the climax hits and the noisy guitars take the lead. This repeats for another two and a half minutes before the band unleashes the real climax (see, I told you they were tricky). Hellish vocals and metallic riffing blindsides the listener with a Rosetta-esque loftiness, but the pummeling is as swift and damaging as ISIS could ever conjure. The descent from this zenith is particularly dangerous, and the last two minutes address exactly that,
recalling common post-rock techniques en route. Things are beginning to boil over in Arizona,
where we're quickly beginning to hear the sounds of the arid deserts.
www.thesilentballet.com
NEXT RELEASE ON SAW HER GHOST RECORDS. DUE OUT EARLY 2008www.sawherghost.com
