Internet, overpopulated urban areas, abundance of concert arenas and mass production of fanbases are causing ugly fight between bands for the place in the spotlight. Everyone mixes everything, desperately trying to experiment, which leads to stealing and copying. In that chaos, some brave record label manages to dig out some band that will rise above the mud. All Hail The Yeti was that band back in 2012.
Californian band was definitely not something that changed the world or our music lives. Still, with their combination of stoner metal and progressive metal, and even some Californian metalcore, they succeeded to create an amalgam that gave the genre an extra impulse and change in direction. I wouldn’t write about the album that came out many years ago unless I was confident that it is something you need to hear, guys.
Brutal riffs with interesting atmosphere and very rough, raw hardcore vocal are the fundamental ingredients of this bad. Just take a listen to Deep Creek and When The Sky Falls. What breaks the monotony of the album is a peculiar psychiatric game, such as in The Weak and Wounded. The Art Of Mourning, driven by mouth-harmonica, reminded me of Southern bizarre from the movie Deliverance.
Boys are killing it by finding a super balance between stoner rhythm and hard sludge metal sound (Ruby Ridge and After the Great Fire). The album lasts for almost an hour, mainly because they have prolonged Judas Cradle for 20 minutes.
They may remind you of Down or Crowbar, but Hail the Yeti have expressed their chaos in a different manner, not with the structure of songs but with the sound and the message within. This was a pretty fucking dope debut album. It didn’t change the world, and they didn’t become as famous as they deserved it, but I really hope that they will in the following years.
