Album Review: Earthless, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
Who doesn’t love a parade? Comprised of its massive, 41-minute title-track (split into two parts at 19:04 and 22:09, respectively) and the 20-minute companion-piece “Death to the Red Sun,” the sixth long-player from San Diego heavy psychshredders Earthless is being heralded as a return to form for the trio, and in some ways, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons is that. Their second full-length under the banner of Nuclear Blast, its structure and some of the included material harkens back to the band’s beginnings — according to the narrative (blessings and peace upon it), the first riff the band wrote is somewhere in the hour-plus stretch, which is neat on a trivia level some 20 years beyond their formation — and that’s a decided departure, or at least a re-parture, from 2018’s Black Heaven (review here), which now feels like an aberration as regards its shorter-form songs, inclusion of vocals from guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, and so on. Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, then, would seem to get back to business.
One might be reminded of Sonic Prayer (2005) or some of their no-break, all-in live work — 2008’s Live at Roadburn (discussed here) comes to mind, perpetually, but it’s not the only example — as bassist Mike Eginton (who also did the striking album art), drummer Mario Rubalcaba and Mitchell dig into “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons” itself, but the title-track doesn’t try to be so brazen as to pretend the last 15-plus years of the band’s progression hasn’t happened. Rather, they open with a movement of subdued psychedelic guitar that unfolds across the first six minutes before giving way to more angular lead work and gradually shifting into a jazzier jam with underlying tension in the drums and bass. It’s hypnotic and engrossing, very much Earthless being Earthless, which would seem to be the point. Like a classic power trio put through an interdimensional taffy pull, Mitchell spaces out on guitar over the course of who even knows how much anti-time as Eginton and Rubalcaba provide the underlying movement and foundation of groove on which the material is built.
By the time they’re 12 minutes into “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Part 1),” Rubalcaba is nestled into a drum build and Mitchell follows the surge, rising into a more foreboding section of leads and riffs, Eginton, as ever, the low-end fueling the heft of the entirety on its course. There’s a triumph in space before the shredfest begins at about 14:00, some Slayery thrash sneaks in, a bit of doom, but it’s all on the way to a massive wash of noise that drops suddenly into “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Part 2),” the drums and sparse noise holding to the darker atmosphere of some of the first part’s guitar work, while at the same time answering back the patient, so-long-ago-now gradual manner in which the opening track took off. In fact, “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Part 2)” makes even more use of open space in its unfurling — the tolling bell is a nice touch — with wind sounds sweeping along with the airy guitar, drums and bassline until 11 minutes in, when whatever pedal that is clicks off and Mitchell, Eginton and Rubalcaba begin the next round of wormhole-digging rippery.
Colors flash in your face like a full-spectrum-and-probably-then-some strobe light as the second part of “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons” courses toward its eventual end, hitting those same triumphal notes before thrashing out meaner once more and, sure enough, dizzying itself into a wash and a well earned crash-out ending. If that was the finish of Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, the whole album, I have a hard time imagining Earthless‘ significant fanbase would argue. Few bands have had the same kind of influence they’ve had on the current generation of heavy rock and roll, and with its sudden, mic-drop-but-without-the-mic finish, “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons” is bound to make an impact as well, given both the band’s profile and their willingness to engage moodier ambience despite the shimmering at the outset and the head-spinning washes with which both component parts are resolved.
Which is enough to make one wonder why they’d bother to include “Death to the Red Sun” at all instead of saving it for some future release — until one actually listens to it. At 20:27, it’s about half as long as the preceding two-parter, but with its more immediate start, go-go-go gnarl and grimmer underpinnings, it makes a fitting complement to “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,” with Eginton‘s bassline under Mitchell‘s early solo (four minutes in) giving a highlight bounce that maintains the rhythm that will soon establish itself as the central force of the song. “Death to the Red Sun” — not to be confused either with Kyuss‘ Blues for the Red Sun or Earthless‘ own “Violence of the Red Sea” and “Lost in the Cold Sun” — feels like classic Earthless, tapping into the energy and inimitable chemistry of the trio working together as they build their material outward into an ether-plane of twists and dynamic shove. It is this over-the-top freakoutness on which much of their legend is based, and when “Death to the Red Sun” turns back to that ‘main’ riff via the bass just before it’s 17 minutes deep, and they tell the listener there’s been a plan unfolding all the while, one can only be astounded in a way that feels readily familiar.
They bring “Death to the Red Sun” down more gradually than “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,” marching it slower before the feedback and residual cymbal wash gives a false ending ahead of a final measure of thrash, and are out with a clean-feeling break that feels very much their own even as it has touched on some newer stylistic ground for them. A key to the shift back toward focused-instrumentalism might be Mitchell‘s moving back to San Diego from the Bay Area, but however they got there, Earthless reclaim their dominance of aural space with Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. In anyone else’s hands, you’d call it excess. Unmanageable. Earthless make it sound like a walk in the least-pretentious park you’ve ever seen. Whatever they do next, whether it’s got vocals and choruses or blinding solos or both or neither, they have laid claim to multiple approaches over their time, and Night Parade of One Hundred Demons finds them reveling in the audience’s perception of who they are as a band even as they refine and expand their reach. By and large, they are unfuckwithable.
Earthless, “Death to the Red Sun” teaser
Earthless at Nuclear Blast website
Tags: California, Earthless, Earthless Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Nuclear Blast Records, San Diego
