New Keepers of the Water Towers - Chronicles (2009)

New Keepers of the Water Towers is a sonic Swedish collision between the heaviest of metal and the firmest of rock. Wrapped up with the lyrical themes of dwelling beasts and filthy creatures, the sound can only be described as massive.



***This section is taken from a interview with Rasmus Booberg***



Back in the summer of 2007, me and Tor [Sjödén], the drummer, were talking a lot about metal and rock music and we had been jamming a couple of times but nothing serious. After being introduced to the Swedish rock band Spiritual Beggars one drunken weekend, we both got inspired to play something heavy ass shit. A couple of days later, at our lunch break, we borrowed a recording studio at our school, and in about 30 minutes we wrote and recorded the song “The Three Headed Cow” (then called “I Feel it Coming”). The following months we recorded more and more songs in that same way, writing them and recording them in one afternoon. So in that way we couldn’t really control how it would sound, we just let it happen and hoped for the best.



That winter we decided to try and play some songs live, but we needed a band to do so. We talked to a guy named Edward Hansson who seemed to be the bass player we wanted at the time. We performed one horrible gig after returning to the studio sessions.



Anyway, some months after that we got a gig opening for a band called Mozkovitch, and we felt we needed another guitar player to play the songs the way they are intended. Victor [Berg] and I had been playing together in a thrash-metal band called Vexation where I played the drums and Vic played bass. But I knew he was an awesome guitarist and after showing him the songs and so on he was the new guitarist!



Current line-up

Rasmus Booberg - Vocals, Guitar (Vexation (Swe))

Tor Sjödén - Drums, Vocals

Victor Berg - Guitar, Vocals (Divider, Vexation (Swe))

Edvard Hansson - Bass



Review:

Once every few years I have to stop and evaluate the state of rock music: who it’s trying to appeal to, where it’s going as far as breaking new ground, and what bands have the most potential to grab a wider audience. A large number of those bands that have caught my ear have come from Sweden, maybe one or two from Norway, and a fair handful from here in the USA. The Swedish bands, however, just seem to do it differently enough that I don’t get burnt-out so quickly on them, and Chronicles from the three-piece known as New Keepers Of The Water Towers is a whopping hour of hybrid rock that pretty much gives you everything you’d want out of the genre, and maybe a little more.



The essentials are here of course, so nothing is too far of a stretch into any major extreme. The guitars have that classic, elastic but rich tone reminiscent of just about any respectable stoner rock act you can think of, the drumming isn’t overdone and has a live feel to it, and the bass really fills out the bottom end in such a way the makes those low tones a fair focal point as the album rolls along. I wouldn’t call this stoner rock on the hippy side at all, obviously these riffs and beats aren’t designed to sweeten your mellow, because even when subdued moments found on “New Sleepers” slip on by, it’s not necessarily soothing. And then we get “Enter The Great Forest”, a jarring, noisy doom interlude that sounds rather angry in comparison to the catchier grooves that were delivered up until that point, so there are a few curves along the way that make you keep your eyes and ears open.



It’s a bit of Clutch, shaken up with more recent (like, Crack The Skye recent) Mastodon, and directed by a few pages out of Corrosion Of Conformity’s less commercialized playbook. There is also a bit of nasty crunch towards the tail end of “Giant Subway Beast” that is just too cool to be denied, which is where NKOTWT show their sludgy metal side. It’s a really well-rounded band, from the virtually foolproof songwriting, to the delivery of the goods, with one exception. Once in a while on tracks such as “Awrecktion”, and “The Strafing Lobster”, the clean vocals really fall out of tune and never really regain any strength, bordering on unpleasant to sit through, and when followed closely by a near-death metal roar, it’s a treading into bad territory from a pure execution standpoint.



Scraping a track or two off this album also wouldn’t have been too heinous of a crime, considering there are a few moments that sound a little too much alike as the disc progresses. New Keepers…has taken a well worn sound and kept it pretty fresh and heavy, yet I’d like to hear something either more to-the-point, or more epic the next time around (since this is more of an early collection of their work, rather than anything carefully plotted). I’m digging this a lot more than that last Sahg album, so I’ve got no problem telling you to go ahead and check these guys out, if for nothing else than the killer two-part closer “Fall Of The Massive Boar.” If you like it rough, but not obnoxious, Chronicles hits the spot.



Review by Jim Brandon



Genre = Stoner / Doom Metal

Format = Mp3

Bit Rate = 320 kbps



Track Listing

1. Awrecktion

2. Mastercklaw

3. Pursuit of Yeti

4. Scientists and the Man of Ice

5. Rise of the Lizard King

6. Flight of the Reptilians

7. New Sleepers

8. Enter the Great Forest

9. Giant Subway Beast

10. The Strafing Lobster

11. The Three Headed Cow

12. The Knowledgeable Kangaroo

13. The Monument

14. Fall of the Massive Boar Pt. 1

15. Fall of the Massive Boar Pt. 2