BEAST IN THE FIELD (Help us book our tour)

Beast In The Field appears courtesy of a dark corner in a malignant solar system, slowly bleeding black into earth's skies.It does not produce riffs. It orchestrates lurching stacks of glaciers and rocketing walls of canyons- disintegrating every molecule of mass and throttling the hell out of, and back into, infinite black space.It knows nothing of guitar and drums. It smokes forests of redwood into instant dust with the roar of tectonic plates colliding into a spontaneous pact of continental suicide.You gaze all around in suspended shock at your world, ripping apart at the mountains and streams. yet you know it doesn't come within years of the silence in your head and the sinking in your chest.Beast In The Field is not a band. It is a man-made natural disaster.
REVIEW FROM TEETH OF THE DIVINE
www.teethofthedivine.com/site/reviews/beast-in-the-field-goa t-isle-seance/
BEAST IN THE FIELD
Goat Isle Séance
(Saw Her Ghost Records)
What is the Beast in the Field? Is it a cow? A ravenous wolf, drawing the torches and pitchforks of an angry mob? Or is it the field itself - a craggy, lumbering juggernaut formed from the earth and rock, wrenching itself up from its slumber to rumble across the countryside? That’s the image that this 6-track EP of sludgy, instrumental stoner-doom evoked - not bad, considering that I am dead sober as I write this.
Hailing from Michigan, Beast in the Field consists of just one guitarist (Jordan Pries) and one drummer (Jamie Jahr), and these two are able to make quite a lot of noise between them. Goat Isle Séance, their debut release, features massive, feedback-drenched riffs and rhythms, delivered in two styles: full-on gallop, and slow, doomy crawl. The recording sounds appropriately ragged and bludgeoning, done old-skool analog in the studio (making best use of the vintage Sunn, Orange and Sound City amps and classic Ludwig drum kit, for those of you keeping score).
Okay, so that pretty much describes a lot of stoner doom, and yes, there’s a lot of Sleep to Beast’s sound. So what’s new? For one thing, most of the songs, while long and epic, move briskly and frequently switch up tempos. Opener “Deep in the Caves” starts slow and bluesy, then abruptly roars with a fuzzy furnace blast as the titular Beast emerges from its long hibernation. When it reaches daylight, it goes barreling out into the open, creating a monstrous groove that turns trees into tinder and livestock into meatpuddles.
“Discovered: Large Iron Core” is another aptly titled burner - as heavy and powerful as a meteorite slamming into a peaceful green meadow, rolling and crushing everything in its path before coming to a stop. Eventually the Large Iron Core gets quiet, going lower and lower in a stoner-doom version of “Twist and Shout,” then explodes again with full force. Pretty rockin’ stuff.
That variance between heaving groove and smoky simmer makes for an entertaining listen that rarely slips into doomy shoegazing, so that it’s just as fit for a drive down the freeway as it is a night getting high(way). Only two tracks purposely slow it down - the pretty, classical-guitar-and-piano duet “Moth Amigo,” and “Breath of the…,” which is largely ambient and laborious to boot. I wasn’t a fan of the latter, seeing as it was the second track and really dragged things to a halt after the rollicking good times of “Caves,” but a quick finger on the skip button will fix all that if you get bored.
Overall, Goat Isle Séance is a solid listen, and given the massive wall-of-sound production and rumbling, ball-shattering riffs, a bit of contradiction. Simply put, music this heavy shouldn’t create a lulling effect, but that’s the power of a good smoky groove. Roar.
Written by Gabaghoul August 6th, 2008
REVIEW FROM STONERROCK.COM 2008
Beast in the Field – Goat Isle Seance
Reviewed by Thunder Horse (StonerRock.com) SEPT 30 2008
Saw Her Ghost Records
Release date: 2007
Beast in the Field is a two piece hailing from Michigan. While the lineup consists of simply a guitar and drums, they’d like you to think that it’s more than that. They refer to themselves as “a man-made natural disaster.” I can’t argue with that description, so I’ll expound a bit to that effect.
The first track (“Deep in the Caves”) starts off innocently enough, with a clean modular intro. Once the smoke signal is visible on the horizon, the stoic behemoth rolls the stone wheel aside, allowing lethal gases to escape from within the chamber. These gases give way to a meaty death dirge which sets the tone for the rest of the album. This is a raw thunderous sound - the guitar is so loud it almost seems as if there is a bassist.
The second track is not so much a song, but more of a primeval deconstruction of magnetized pickups interacting with flailing, severely detuned strings. It is not an inspection or exploration of how these elements work or why they exist. Let it be known that the axe wielder is experienced with the forces at play here. At 4:40 or so, tribal drum beats permeate the mix and the chaotic infrastructure quickly swells and dies out.
“Discovered: Large Iron Core” is pure doom - it sounds like an Electric Wizard song without any vocals. The riffs are circular in application, pattern, and motion. The final cadence of the song crumbles apart like a moist space cake.
I’m not sure where they intended to be at this point of the album... I’m seeing Galactus scraping bits of the earth’s crust away from his brow (just having eaten the large iron core, of course). “Upon the Herd” is a fitting title for what sounds like a frantic fracas between hunters and prey. Near the end I envision the hunters methodically severing tendons from joints, finishing off the carcass and devouring the cartilage, entrails, and huge chunks of skeleton.
This entire album was cut live, so it will be interesting to hear what this band sounds like with the full studio treatment. The good news is that they have a new release on the way, tentatively titled Lechuguilla.
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