Listening Station: High on Fire, Brazilian Girls, Steve Porter, American Head Charge

High on Fire excels at metal--just metal

High on Fire

Blessed Black Wings

For the last 15 years, heavy metal has suffered from the tireless depredations of sweaty kids in suburban garages. Brutal in their quest for novelty, they've taffy-twisted the genre into tortured new forms, keeping the critics hard at work inventing new prefixes and suffixes. They caught the anthem bug and made nu metal. They listened to too much Public Enemy and made rap metal. They got neck tattoos at the mall and made metalcore. They drank too much coffee and made math metal. They learned about irony, put on mullet wigs and made mock metal. Yet through it all, metal--good ol' heavy metal, tough and true--has remained, as firm as Ozzy's pained grimace during a proctology exam.

High on Fire is one keeper of the old-school metal flame, and the band does it without irony, fanfare or self-consciousness. Produced by Steve Albini, its third effort, Blessed Black Wings, is a lavishly scrungy enterprise that does what good heavy metal should: It gives you the terrifying impression that guitars are destroying the earth. Brimstone riffs shearing off hunks of land, chugging lines punching massive holes in the globe, lava-like axe sludge leveling whole mountain ranges. It's a puerile vision, to be sure, but Blessed Black Wings has that effect: It somehow engages that forever-pimply, thrill-hungry juvenile at the core of every reformed stoner.

Which isn't to say the tunes themselves aren't tuneful. In contrast to High on Fire's second album, Surrounded by Thieves, Blessed Black Wings flexes a broader range of musical muscles, but not at the expense of classic headbanging virtues. "Brother in the Wind" is a thorough trawl through a swamp of hesher chords; "Anointing of Seer" hums and thrattles like a boiler about to blow; and the nearly 8-minute "Blessed Black Wings"--after kicking in with some chiming axework as though announcing the arrival of some Egyptian heavy metal dignitary--gears up into a grooving workout that'll have you shouting "Blessed! Black! Wings!" too--even as the planet you call home is annihilated before your very eyes.--Andrew Kiraly

Brazilian Girls

Brazilian Girls

If you haven't already read about Brazilian Girls in some "Who's hot!" or "Artists to watch!" feature in your favorite music mag, you will soon. The multicultural quartet, darlings of New York's East Village, effortlessly attracts the Next Big Thing billing due to its seamlessly smooth incorporation of every kind of music everybody likes to say they listen to: a little trip-hop, a little Latin jazz, some bossa nova, some chilled electronica. It's fun, sexy lounge music. It makes me want to get drunk.

Their self-titled debut full-length includes the slinky title track from last year's Lazy Lover EP, which is warm and soft but not nearly as much fun as the airy dream-pop of "Sirénes de la Féte" or the buoyant, contagious "Corner Store." It's hard to pick a favorite track since so many are built around a viscous groove from bassist Jesse Murphy, accented by Aaron Johnston on drums and Didi Gutman's keyboards and programming.

Sabina Sciubba, a mysterious chanteuse a la Nico (appropriate since, like the Velvet Underground, Brazilian Girls record for the resurrected Verve label), becomes more and more alluring with each new language she sings in. Born in Rome and raised in France and Germany, Sciubba sounds like an intoxicated, horny Suzanne Vega, and she is probably the only woman who can sing a chorus of "Pussy, pussy, pussy, marijuana" and make it sound so sweetly engaging.

There's no understating the genre-jumping abilities of Brazilian Girls, but the band's soulful way of bringing it all together and keeping it light and fun makes this a must-have record. Play it at your next mojito-fueled chill session, and everyone will think you're cool.--Brock Radke

Steve Porter

Homegrown

In the past year or so, producers and DJs have gone to great lengths to make progressive house less chilly and more enlivening, and many of them have succeeded--including Steve Porter. The Amherst, Mass. musician and turntablist has ascended the prog ranks rather quickly--thanks to the help of mentor Chris Fortier and tourmate Sasha, among others--and now some of his best artistic triumphs can be sampled on one disc. His artist album debut, Homegrown, is a temperate, pretension-free delight, the happy medium between progressive's penchant for funky low-end and thick beats, and the melodic, sometimes ambient inclinations of trance music. Porter puts his own mark on this in-between sound, with hints of fancy pianowork in songs like "Rage in the Cage" and harmonized, chiming synth elements on the Middle Eastern-flavored "Lady Elaine." The only knocks against Homegrown are that the tracklisting doesn't feel particularly journey-like, the overall tone almost too consistent. Despite this plateau effect, Porter is a natural when it comes to inviting, cheese-free electronic music.--Mike Prevatt

American Head Charge

The Feeding

While the delayed sophomore album from Minneapolis band American Head Charge initially appears to be a "someone is still playing this?" nu metal rehash, with extended listening the record slowly evolves into a textured and developed intermingling of art metal and angst-ridden grindcore. Gone from Head Charge's excellent 2001 debut The War of Art are three band members and the genius of Rick Rubin, and in their place are new and improved guitarists Bryan Ottoson and Karma Cheema, and engineer-turned-producer Greg Fidelman, who wholly embraces the band's new varied approach.

While the first three tracks sadly sound like Static-X leftovers, "Ridicule" quickly makes things interesting with a haunting intro that rails into cold, chunky riffs. Like "Just So You Know" from War, "Ridicule" is the one track on this disc that shows the band's potential and willingness to experiment, highlighted by Cameron Heacock's soaring chorus: "My past is glowing red and yellow, again/ My fate will show me where to follow."

AHC continues the diversity, cutting violently back and forth from spooky set-up melodies and potent, compressed chaos. The sounds can get a little predictable when Heacock's screams get louder and the band drifts toward the typical, but overall The Feeding is one of the least boring new metal records you'll find on the shelves.--Brock Radke