U.S. Christmas
coast into their fifth album, 2010's
Run Thick in the Night
, like the long black hearse leading a funeral procession -- possibly their own, given the drowsy, 13-minute "nothing" embodied by the opening cut,
"In the Night,"
which barely raises a pulse despite the occasional post-metal reverberations that shake it to its core. Get used to it. For this is neither a blunder nor slight of hand, but precisely the vague, structure-averse sound that
have called their own for nigh on ten years, as corroborated by the numerous similar examples that follow, including
"Deep Green"
(think
Dead Meadow
on downers) and
"Ephraim in the Stars,"
which nurses
Link Wray
's
"Rumble"
riff sequence to its failing, dying breath. Along the way,
also commandeer
Hawkwind
's starship cruiser for the all-out space rock of
"Wolf on Anareta,"
feign a mush-mouthed
Sons of Otis
on
"Maran,"
and deliver a drunken
16 Horsepower
with the bowed violins and theremin guiding sonically spare material like
"Fire Is Sleeping"
and
"Devil's Flower in Mother Winter."
But unless one succumbs wholeheartedly to
USX
's slurry herbal concoction and overlooks the frequently echoing, toneless vocals haunting all the proceedings (a doomed spirit cursed to wander the Earth somewhere between
Lemmy Kilmister
Monster Magnet
Dave Wyndorf
, while packing neither one's iconic power),
feels like a bad acid trip that never ends -- certainly not by Christmas, and probably not on U.S. soil. But then, some folks are perfectly happy to float in hyperspace forever, and for that activity this is an ideal soundtrack. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia