Today's introduction almost overwhelmed the review itself, so bear with me ...
Wolfmother's unexpected and quite inexplicable success in the mid '00s caused numerous labels to rush out and sign their own hipster-endorsed hard rock bands -- e.g. The Sword, Witch, Burning Brides, Graveyard, and today's subject Priestess.
Mind you, most of these bands had no idea why Pitchfork Media and other webzines had decided to anoint or reject them for the "hipster metal" or the equally vague "millennial retro rock" tag, but, as usual, there was little they could do about it other shrug and play along.
Hailing from Montreal, Canada, Priestess was formed in 2002 by singer/guitarist Mikey Heppner after the demise of his punk rock band, The Dropouts, and also featured guitarist Dan Watchorn, bassist Mike Dyball, and drummer Vince Nudo.
Their first album, 2005's Hello Master, was initially released through Canadian independent Indica Records before major RCA swooped in and offered a worldwide deal, then reissued the LP with new artwork (reminiscent of Rainbow Rising!) the following June.
Abundant touring opportunities in the U.S. and U.K. followed, and Priestess gained valuable exposure opening for everyone from Mastodon, to Megadeth, to GWAR, to Black Label Society, to Dinosaur Jr., to Nashville Pussy, to Motörhead.
I myself saw the band live at least three times between '05 and '06, in Brooklyn, New York (at CMJ), and Austin (SXSW), playing with Witch, Early Man, and The Hellacopters, and, while they weren't as entertaining as Danko Jones or The Darkness, Priestess usually held their own.
However, aside from placing the song "Lay Down" on the popular Guitar Hero III video game, RCA didn't know what to do with the group, and their second album, Prior to the Fire, would spend the next few years in A&R Purgatory (*) before both sides agreed to part ways.
When it finally arrived, almost four years after the band's debut, Prior to the Fire delivered much the same caliber of modern hard rock and metal as its predecessor with a sound that fell right in between The Sword's intricate riffing and Wolfmother's catchier revival act.
Heppner's gritty higher registers suited infectious standouts like "Lady Killer," "The Firebird," and "Sideways Attack," while his and Watchorn's inventive riff constructions enhanced extended numbers like "The Gem," "It Baffles the Mind," and "We Ride Tonight."
Yes, Priestess totally missed the mark on the acoustic intro to "Communicating Via-Eyes," which sounds like bad Jethro Tull (if you're gonna go there, at least bring a flute, boys!), and Nudo's lead vocal turn on "Lunar" was underwhelming, at best.
But it's still impossible to excuse RCA's unrealistic expectations based on these results and their reasons for signing Priestess in the first place -- and I say this as an RCA employee who would have worked the band in '07 and '08, had they not been dropped.
Alas, like countless bands that faced this sort of corporate impasse, Priestess were never able to recover, and after struggling to complete a third LP, announced an open-ended hiatus in 2012 from which they have yet to (and from which they will probably never) return.
* Meaning that RCA kept pressuring the band to write more songs in search of a "hit" -- like anyone can pick a hit -- until the label/artist relationship was damaged beyond repair.
So there's that behind the scenes video to Suck, a vampire comedy that you should really watch of you're into that stuff and, Queeny just...growls...like two times? When Hugo talks and when he grabs Joey by the throat? I can't recall seeing any vampire do that ever. Hiss yes but growl like a dog? Why does he do that? Is he trying to be intimidating? Like i can't help but grin because it's just so funny to me!
Hey you know something, you fucked me over
And I just got a couple words to say to you, and this is one of them
(Hoo, Hahahaha)
You got the tongue of a snake
You fought your way to my plate
And now you hang with the liars
while I get higher and higher
Been away for a long long time now
Once you're back you will see what I've become
You're public enemy one
And you were nothing but fun
I caught you down on the queen
and you know just what I mean
Been all over the god damn world now
once you're back you will see what I've become
Stabbed in the back of the heart
Oh yeah
You're on your way to the ground...(ect)
Burning Brides - Fall of the Plastic Empire (2002)
After The Bleeders’ As Sweet As Sin, I found another jewel case with a stylised spine. It looked like the band name and album title were written on a sheet of lined paper with a typewriter - kind of a cliche, but I was riding high on As Sweet As Sin and its sick-ass cover art, so I gave it a shot. This album cover was similarly edgy, being a human skull formed out of a bunch of naked women, and I decided to grab it too.
Having not enjoyed As Sweet As Sin, I wasn’t sure what to think of this CD. Maybe it’d be a different flavor of bland, edgy mid-00′s rock/punk/emo. This wasn’t helped by the name of the band - I had misread the band’s name in the store as Burning Bridges, and the name Burning Brides made me think of Black Veil Brides. Which, at least stylistically, isn’t a band i’m all that fond of. Not expecting much, I put the CD into my laptop’s disc drive and queued it up on Winamp.
I can tell you right now that this album is everything I wanted the last album to be. Hard, edgy rock, with some decent guitar work and a singer who wasn’t afraid to strain and scream. Right out of the gate, the band gave me a hint of Alice Cooper - this perception cleared up pretty fast, but it still surprised me how it dived straight into a more hard-rock oriented sound. The lyrics reminded me of a band called Red Vox, which is an online band started by a couple of video game streamers - their music is inspired by bands like the Pixies and other rock bands in the same vein. I’m not well-informed enough to tell you who Burning Brides might have been influenced by, but that’s as good of a comparison as I can provide.
A lot of the songs are very energetic, guitar-driven rock songs. There are some tracks like Glass Slipper that feel like they’d fit on a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtrack, or maybe Crazy Taxi - I say this with the greatest respect. It’s around this track that the band began to hit another switch in my head - I thought they sounded a lot like Arctic Monkeys. I also thought I heard some inklings of Queens of the Stone Age in there, but I’m only familiar with like 5 of their songs so I honestly couldn’t make an informed opinion one way or the other. However, I learned after I listened to this album that Burning Brides actually toured with Queens of the Stone Age, as well as Audioslave, Mastodon and Peaches - all artists I have extremely tenuous grips on, but whose style I think I can recall in the faintest detail. Frankly, I think it makes the band even cooler that they’ve reached some level of recognition with those musicians.
the songs on this album skew between three different styles - the first is more of a heavy style, bordering on metal, where the singer has a shout and the guitars play deep notes hard and loud. The second style is a more chilled out Arctic Monkeys/Red Vox style, with more of an even tone to the notes and the playing, and the vocals are sung at the singer’s regular range. The third is more of a rhythm and blues sort of pace, with more of a bluesy, swinging tempo to the guitars. The latter style has the deep notes of the harder style, with more of the chill, even style’s vocals. One or two songs have these weird, spoken-word verses, which aren’t my cup of tea, but overall I thought that the instrumentation and vocals on each song were really good, and the variation between songs was a nice touch.
There is an aspect of the album that I’m divided on, and that’s the style shifts in most of the songs. A lot of the songs on this album will start one way, then there’ll be a shake-up or style change for the last verse or halfway through the song, taking a heavier or lighter tone than the start of the song. I like when a song shakes it up, and I liked how these songs were doing that - but the thing is, these shake-ups happen way too often on too many songs. I was most entertained when they were surprises, and by the end of the album I was expecting a surprise on every song - effectively killing the enjoyment that I had felt when I wasn’t expecting anything. Even saying that, though, I think I enjoyed every song on the album bar one.
There’s a song called Stabbed In the Back of the Heart, and it made me cringe from the first verse. Maybe it was intentional? I don’t know. All I do know is that the rhyming scheme made my skin crawl, the lyrics themselves followed a very cliche “this shallow girl dumped me and now I’m bitter about her, grr” sort of formula, and the instrumentation was very samey and bland throughout. This was the one filler song on the album, and while I still liked it more than the entirety of the last album I reviewed, it was a bummer to listen through. There’s a cool lick right at the end of the song, though, so I’m happy.
There are two songs I want to talk about in particular, and they are “Elevator” and “Blood on the Highway”. With “Elevator”, I was hoping for something to blow my tits off. I wanted a head-banger, I wanted to hear some fucking metal. Something about the previous song “Rainy Days” just put me in the mood, and when this song started, I felt a rush of excitement. Elevator is the hardest song on the album, and I really like it. It’s this album’s White Limo - not as heavy or effective as the first time I heard White Limo, but still. It’s that one song that catches you when you need to hear something hard and fast, and it does a very good job of it.
Blood on the Highway is different. It takes more of a plodding, low tone to it, with a weird almost dissonant note that soon gives way to a more palatable sort of tune. The tone of the song is very dark and low for three quarters of the song, like an overcast day where the sky is covered in those really thick, grey clouds - and then the customary shake-up in the song’s style has more of an upbeat, even uplifting tone to it. It’s like the clouds have split and let a beam of light shine down off in the distance. The tempo and style of the song remains similar - the clouds haven’t dispersed into a bright, sunny day, there are still grey overcast clouds everywhere. But the brightness from that sun is the first visual cue that has given your eyes any exercise all day, and it’s like your eyeballs are having a stretch. It’s refreshing, and it feels good to listen to - that’s how I would describe the stylistic change in Blood on the Highway.
The last two songs are great in their own right. The tenth and final song on the track listing, Plastic Empire, has a Blur-esque bounce to its beat, though the chorus is just noise - the singer yells a bit, the guitars flatten out, bleh. The song changes, whatever, and it’s a surprisingly soft ballad interlude. I thought the singer sounded a lot like Billie Joe Armstrong here, which is bizarre - I hadn’t been getting that impression for the whole album, but here’s what could be a potential voice double for the singer of Green Day. Then, to my surprise, the song changed back to a bouncy Blur-inspired riff, and that’s how the song ended. It was a good closing track - until the eleventh track, which isn’t on the track listing started to play. Nothing particularly crazy, just a nice, driving beat and some vocals that gave me sort of a Ramones sort of vibe. I dunno. Overall, the album caps off nicely with some good tunes.
I enjoyed Burning Brides’ Fall of the Plastic Empire a great deal. It’s not a band I would listen to with the same fanaticism as Counting Crows or the Mountain Goats, and even though I’m not particularly hot on Foo Fighters’ entire body of work, I wouldn’t call Burning Brides better than them by any means. But by God, this is a good band and this was a good album. I recommend giving this album a try if you’re a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, Queens of the Stone Age or more serious, heavy classic rock (as opposed to a band like Chicago, with more romantic, chill ballads and grooves).
For a taste of the heavier songs, I recommend checking out Elevator or Blood on the Highway. For more Arctic Monkeys/Red Vox-type tracks, I recommend Glass Slipper or Arctic Snow. To check out the more bluesy riffs, listen to If I’m A Man and Rainy Days.
You can buy this album for peanuts online, and it’s also on Apple Music. The entire album has also been uploaded to Youtube.
Hey you know something, you fucked me over
And I just got a couple words to say to you, and this is one of them
(Hoo, Hahahaha)
You got the tongue of a snake
You fought your way to my plate
And now you hang with the liars
while I get higher and higher
Been away for a long long time now
Once you're back you will see what I've become
You're public enemy one
And you were nothing but fun
I caught you down on the queen
and you know just what I mean
Been all over the god damn world now
once you're back you will see what I've become
Stabbed in the back of the heart
Oh yeah
You're on your way to the ground...
