Summer Series Part 5: Ganon - As Above, So Below
So it's been about two weeks since I've had a stable internet connection anywhere between traveling and people whose internet I leech off of moving so I haven't been very connected to the interweb as of late. I'm at a coffee shop right now, however, like a real tried-and-true blogger, enjoying a muffin, and rocking out to Ganon's "As Above, So Below.
First off, COOL band name.
I'm going to take a brief detour here to explain how dorky I was as a kid.
When I beat the first Zelda game the princess at the end of the game says something about how no one had ever defeated Ganon before.
Now being the young, naive thing I was, I thought that this meant that I was the first person ever to win The Legend of Zelda.
For real.
I won the game real early in the morning (like, 7:30, or something) and then my grandma got up and we went out to breakfast. I proceeded to tell the waitress that I was the first person EVER to win The Legend of Zelda as she served us our pancakes.
For real.
Then my friend had to explain to me that there's no way my copy of Zelda could know whether or not I was the first one to win the game. This is before the internet, mind you, so he was right.
I felt pretty fucking stupid. I must have told everyone I knew that I was the first person ever to win that game. You have to give me a break, however. It was the first game I'd ever won besides Kung Fu and Super Mario Bros. and those games were both easy as sin.
I mean, in Kung Fu, all you had to do was walk and kick. That was it. That was the game. Any game where enemies attack you by hugging you isn't something you should be too cocky about winning, right?
Where was I? Oh yeah. Ganon.
Ganon (the band, not the villain) are a Michigan metal militia who are pretty adept at piling heavy, yet melodic riffs upon each other. I think they would best be compared, perhaps, to bands like Amenra and Mouth of the Architect who bring a healthy dose of hardcore influence to their over-the-top sludge riffing. Ganon straddles the line between being the kind of band that gets called "post-hardcore" and the kind of band that gets called "post-metal" (whatever the fuck those terms mean) pretty nicely.
They're at their best when they're just pushing straight ahead with catchy, crushing riffage. The first song, for example, Descend From the Wind, comes out swinging with throat shredding vocals and pounding drums complimenting the first two kick-ass riffs on the record. The second riff, actually, is so catchy I find myself humming it pretty much all the time as I walk around. It's the kind of riff you can't get out of your head.
This gives way to a kind of billowing, melodic, build-down with one of the guitars being used almost like a keyboard to provide some kind of nice texture to the song. This just last a few minutes but it's enough to kind of recharge the song before they eventually build back into stomping your ass like you're Link and they're, well, Ganon.
Ganon are at their worst, however, when they try to go for more lighter, moody, atmospheric stuff. In track four, The Night Draws Near, both their best and worst are on display. The song begins with some sweet, fist pumping, anthemic riffing, but eventually gives way to LOOOOONG passages of more ambient type stuff, which loses my interest.
The very first review I did for this site was a review of the most recent Tephra record where I said that the nice thing about Tephra was that they seemed to understand that they're just not that good at the bullshit, so they tended to just hit you with heavy part after heavy part. Some bands are real good at the bullshit, some aren't. For example, I find the bands Russian Circles, Manatees, and The Pax Cecilia to all be really good at lighter parts, thusly NOT making me feel, when they take those kinds of detours, that they should just get back to commencing with the rock.
Ganon's light parts, once again, aren't bad, but they could never stand on their own, outside the context of the crushing parts, and I often found myself wanting them to get back to the rock. If you listen to The Night Draws Near, I think you'll see what I mean. At around 4:45 when the distortion kicks back in after a long section of clean channel stuff I think the song picks back up. The song REALLY hits it's stride around the 7:45 minute mark, when they cut loose with a nice section of heavier atmosphere, which they do quite well. The lighter parts to me just don't have enough going on to sustain them, especially when I know that the next heavy part will probably be awesome, given that most of the heavy parts on this record are awesome.
That's a pretty minor complaint, however, given that the whole of the album is pretty crushing. Like I said, I get the best riffs from this album stuck in my head fairly frequently. If you're into straight ahead kind of heavy riffing type stuff like some of the bands listed above you should probably go ahead and check out this record, or their last record, which is equally as good. I should also point out that they're doing a short tour coming up, so if they're hitting your town I would suggest heading out to the show. I imagine they put on a good live set.
