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The Sun The Moon The Stars make good, loud metal. Sometimes i need this kind of stuff, just a screaming growling fury of power chords hurtling forward at max speed. And The Sun The Moon The Stars deliver all of that.
They are not the most innovative band in this space; however, they do what they do well. And, good news for you gentle reader, they are giving this EP away on BandCamp. Go to http://blacknumbers.bandcamp.com/album/mind-reader and get your free download.
The EP is 6 tracks in just under 30 minutes. Opener Red Horned Crown reminds me slightly of early Soundgarden. There is a lot of echo on one of the guitars, and a fair bit on the voice, while the other guitar just crunches along. The bassist really shines on Protostar, pounding out a deep riff that drives this song along.
The voice sounds different on Flesh of the Gods, and i am taken back to the days of early Sabbath, as Flesh of the Gods is an angry blues song with growling vocals. Moon Crazy takes us back to the other singer, who screams his way through it. This is the most generically metal song here. On the other hand, Sand and Stone features the drummer going like crazy, while on the bridge the guitars soar a la Slash on early GnR records. Good stuff.
But TSTMTS are at their best when they take the time to stretch out a little bit, like on the 9:32 closer, Firefly, You Shine. This has a truly driving, pounding feeling as the whole band crunches away in a staccato rhythm while the singer screams, the entire thing ebbing and flowing noisily. And then, after about 3 minutes, the speed kicks in and suddenly they are channeling Ride the Lightning better than anything i have heard in years. The song goes on, alternating between breakneck anger and sludginess. Really nice.
Overall, this is good. People who do not enjoy metal, especially contemporary sludgy screaming metal, will not enjoy this. But for what it is, it is pretty worthwhile, and certainly worth a free download.
Now, i have one criticism of the label: the promo MP3s you sent tagged the band name as "Doomgazer". This made it really hard for me to find information about all of these MP3s i had, especially as searching my inbox for "doomgazer" got no hits. I think you meant to put that in the genre category... At any rate, and i cannot stress this enough people: if you are an artist / label / promo company please please please tag your MP3 files correctly. It will prevent a lot of confusion, and really isn't that difficult.
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