Search - Brain Donor :: Drain'd Boner

Ahhh...

Christian Bonner | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States | 12/19/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Rocking, spacey, oozing, thunderous, ominous... kinda like a lost 1971 Krautrock record that actually LIVES UP to the hype that those kind of records usually (most often undeservedly) get... reference points for Drain'd Boner would include early Guru Guru, 1972-ish Hawkwind ("Where Do We Take U" would have been Hawkwind's best song ever, if Hawkwind had done it), maybe even early Black Sabbath... but after one hears Brain Donor, one tends to forget about those other bands... at least I did. My favorite record of 2006, by a considerable margin... who would have thought? Not me, for sure... much as I love Brain Donor's earlier work, this new one here is far and away their best. Kudos for the title too - in questionable taste it may be, but it does describe the effect this record has on one's... uh... you know. If you don't know what I mean, take a listen to this record and you'll understand."

A dark place...

Charlie Quaker | Normal, IL. | 11/12/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Ominous, distorted and eerie, the sound of storm-drenched shores introduces a s--l--o--w thunderous riff of classic Black Sabbath origin, periodically underscored by mumbling, possessed vocals. All of a sudden, I have horns on my head and a sword--no, wait, an electric guitar shaped like a sword--in my hands! This is the land of mutated doom `n' gloom Nordic Pagan rock, and there's no turning back. It's right there on the front sleeve in big letters, "Destroy Religious Fascism". Thus begins the latest chapter & verse in the Bible of Julian Cope, indie rock star & druidic shaman extraordinaire.

For those of you who might not know, Cope has released more than 35 albums since the early 80's, when he was the leader of the highly regarded neo-psychedelic Brit-pop band out of Liverpool, The Teardrop Explodes. Teardrop delivered some gorgeously expansive music (check out either of their first two brilliant albums, "Kilimanjaro" or "Wilder") up until the mid 80's, when Julian discovered his cosmic inner Pantheist and started releasing some occasionally gifted, but always bizarre and unpredictable, solo material. Around 2001, Cope joined with metal guitarist Doggen and drummer Kev Bales (both have played with Spiritualized) to form the in-your-face, avant-prog free-metal of Brain Donor, and I'm pretty sure God (the Christian one) was not pleased.

"Came we in joy when frost was gone,

To force the monk, to rape the nun...

For those that give themselves to urban Christ

Are destined thus to die un-sacrificed...

Unanswered prayers, the agony theirs,

We killed them as their Sky-God snored...

Behead the prophet, no LORD shall live."

Whatever brutal force of darkness sludges through this slime-ridden muck, it tramples any semblance of goodness & beauty, like a herd of crack-crazed baby rhinos who just discovered their food chain future. With their confident little thunder-hooves rumbling like the drummer in Grand Funk Railroad, these dominators of destiny mine the bowels of Hell, ripping every last ounce of flesh from each pain-ridden note. The guitars on "Nagasaki Mushroom" are deliciously malicious. Every tremor vibrates on the edge of explosion, so anguished and over-the-top mean that it turns on itself, becomes a raw pleasure to listen to. Perfidiously pleading waves of feedback wring every ounce of dirty emotion from the strings, reminiscent of the glorious nastiness generated by guitarist Greg Ginn on Black Flag's 1984 "My War" album. "Where Do We Take U?" picks up the pace considerably, crunching hard-edged garage-punk steered by raging hard-rock guitar slams amidst a surprising bit of repetitive melody. "Metsamor" brings the pace way back down, combining bizarre acoustic & electric guitars with strange sound effects in a long jam, eventually building to some stunningly agonized riffs in a somewhat free-form jazz influenced proto-metal a la Sonny Sharrok's distorted genius.

There are moments when Brain Donor sound like a trio of 14-yr-olds on acid, locked in Dad's garage with colossal amps turned to "11". Except Julian Cope's voice here is way too vicious, too viscerally damaged by hallucinogenics; and the instrumentation is just too dirty, in a powerful and addictively satisfying manner. "Drain'd Boner" is neither a triumph nor a failure: It's a (sometimes ridiculously) demanding challenge that generates its own reward in the monolithic intensity of the energy it produces. Best listened to in an altered state or with a seriously twisted sense of humor.

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