Everyones asking what the difference between Eclipsa’s husband and Wrathmeilor is. As in; for what reason was Eclipsa’s husband considered “bad” to marry but Wrathmeior isn’t?
I think that’s the point, there isn’t a reason (Or at least it’s highly inconsistent, conflicting, and hypocritical.)
Who is considered a monster and who isn’t is an arbitrary designation by the people in charge. There’s no overt difference between monster kind and “normal” people, just like how motioning all monsters as wholly “evil” had no rational base to begin with.
And it just so happened Eclipsa’s husband fell into what was considered “Monster”, while Wrathmeilor was safely considered outside of that boundary.
It’s inconsistent, it’s unfair, it’s in-group vs. out-group bullshit. A shitty attitude with no basis in reality that was continuously upheld over generations.
The backstory to Heavy Blanket is unusually entertaining — and possibly not true. The way it goes is that in 1984, about the same time when J. Mascis played drums in Deep Wound, he was also in the marching band. There he hooked up with two other derelicts, the fetchingly named Pete Cougar and Johnny Pancake. After a variety of adventures, the three ended up in a classic, heavy-guitar three-piece named Heavy Banket, but failed to record a note of it for 27 years. Then in 2011, Mascis and Cougar met by accident and reconvened the band, springing Cougar from an Ohio halfway house to make the eponymous first album. A collaboration with Earthless followed in 2014, and then a long silence, until Heavy Blanket re-emerged again this year.
Interested bystanders have noted how improbable the story is—and how like J. Mascis the drums and the bass sound. Besides Mascis, the men in the band photo, for one thing, do not look like they might have gone to high school in the 1980s. In any case, whatever you believe, the main reason you’re likely to be interested is Mascis himself, and he’s definitely here and in fine form, whether his high school buddies exist or not.
Listen to him tipping his habitual trucker’s hat to Radio Birdman in the opening “Danny,” which borrows the riff from “Aloha Steve and Danno” and sets it afire. That ratcheting, upshifting, familiar vamp runs into a cracker wall of exploding drum fills and spins under spiraling, careening wails of fuzz guitar. It sounds unmistakably like Mascis. Then, the homage turns Sabbath-ward in the swaggering “Crushed,” with its “Children of the Grave” staccato riff and rumbling, overdriven roar. “String Along” is the wildest, the wooliest, the longest display of guitar pyrotechnics on the disc, and every second pays the rent. “Eyevoid” against tips again in the direction of British metal, and “Say It to You” coats its primal ache in sludge, exactly like electric Mascis always does.
It's worth mentioning that Moon Is comes on the tail end of the pandemic, a period that evidently drove Mascis bonkers. He was among the first to play a show for people in cars and again the first to play live at an indoor venue (at least in this area), and he’s been churning out guest shots and side projects at an astonishing rate. So it’s not unlikely that Moon Is is just Mascis whiling away his down time, all by himself, on incandescent guitar, rocket-fueled drums and bludgeoning bass. Or it could be that his friends Cougar and Pancake really do live and breathe and play music. If so, good for them. Moon Is brings us some damned good heavy psychedelia, whoever’s playing.
