Lords

The House That Lords Built (2004)

Jesse Raub

The first thing I thought when I heard this was "Shit, this sounds like label-mates Black Cross." Now that I'm listening to it again, boy how wrong I am. To adequately describe them, I'd say it's more like early metal (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden) mixed with punk and hardcore in the style of "The Shape of Punk to Come." And goddamn does it rock.

In exactly thirty minutes, Lords blaze through ten songs, even though one is only twelve seconds long, and the last track seems to be the entire album played backwards with a few minutes of dead air in front of and behind it. Although it's 19 minutes of unlistenable noise, it's definitely a sweet idea and gives the band more artistic credit in my book.

The longest song on this release is 1 minute, 58 seconds long. It's called Headache Heartattack and is chock full of insane metal riffs, pounding drums, screams that give off an air of classic metal, and overall amazingness.

Another sweet feature of this disc is that the last four songs are titeld "Sermon" "On" "The" "Mount," with "Mount" being the 19 minute reverse fest. I just think that's damn cool.

I can't really say much more about this band. All you need to know is that it's rock to the max. No whiney bullshit to wade through, no slow and soft breakdowns, no out of tune gapped tooth lead singer to maneuver around, no acoustic guitars, no stupid band/album/song titles that attempt to be introspective, but just end up sounding like nonsense. This band is all about the rock music, and that's what they play.

Even though this release is amazing, there is almost no comparison to the band's live show, which is packed so full of energy that no recorded version could do it justice. Still, this is an amazingly produced record, and worth the money.