Oxbow

2007 release ** Cardboard sleeve. Oxbow have been a metal band, one steadily moving into more credibly frightening territory. At this point, one can scarcely identify them with traditional metal's canned, often hokey menace, as The Narcotic Story fully embraces a sort of slow-burning, infernal blues. It's a malign transmission, sparser than Oxbow's more metallic styles, and, paradoxically, much heavier. After establishing its extreme poles with a brief intro of piercing ambient tones and heavy-bowelled bleats, The Narcotic Story sustains a deft balance between creeping dirges and panicky rock for its duration. Its evocative disorder is remindful of U.S. Maple, and Robinson's blood-curdling polecat yowl recalls David Yow and the Frogs in equal measure. "Geometry of Business" is a raw-boned, blowsy blues with fuzz bass bombs and creeping pianos-- the lyrics, as elsewhere on the album, are mostly, mercifully, unintelligible. Through repeated false starts, the noodly quiet of "Time Gentlemen Time" arduously erupts into a sturdy rock slog, shrill tones rising up from the wrecked chords and howled imprecations. By the time the crusty blues-metal swagger of "Down a Stair Backward" bleeds into the orchestral butt-jazz of "She's a Find", it's clear that Oxbow's usual laddering plod is doubled in effect by the more elegant, tension-building passages that they've stitched, Frankenstein's-monster-style, into it. Every piano-laced tea break is cut short by a sulfurous blare, and then it's back onto our heads, back into Robinson's world of shit.