Himalayan
Band of Skulls have taken some heat for sounding too derivative of other artists, but if you’re going to be derivative, at least be derivative of a broad list of influences – and Band of Skulls certainly do that. You could pick out Black Sabbath (“Asleep at the Wheel”), Led Zeppelin (“Heaven’s Key”), and White Stripes (“I Guess I Know You Fairly Well”), but there’s also Marilyn Manson (“Hoochie Coochie”), Arcade Fire (“Nightmares”), and even a little Bowie (“I Feel Like Ten Men, Nine Dead and One Dying”).
The twin strengths of Band of Skulls are the huge guitar riffs by Russell Marsden and the shared vocals between Marsden and bassist Emma Richardson, with the two aspects helping balance each other – the riffs border on New Wave of British Heavy Metal territory, but the harmonies and female vocals provide the contrast to keep them off Ozzy’s Boneyard. The album starts with the lead single, “Asleep at the Wheel,” built around a riff to make Tony Iommi or Brian Tatler proud, but the lead-in is, appropriately, a driving minor-chord pattern from ’70s AOR, leading into the title track’s Zeppelin-esque rhythm guitars, a track that makes great use of the two vocalists in its chorus.
That takes us to the most interesting song on the album, “Hoochie Coochie,” which sounds for all the world like a reconstructed take on Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” right down to the high/low vocal pattern, but with a guitar part more in line with vintage Iron Maiden for its faster tempo. Himalayan‘s shortest track, clocking in at a brisk 2:40 and never letting up on the groove that drives the verses, the song probably has as little to say lyrically as any other on the album, but the main guitar riff gives such a strong impression of wheels turning at high speed that the song compels further listens – and the Bonhamesque percussion, present on several tracks here, helps add to the sense of urgency.
Band of Skulls deviates once more from their basic blues-rock formula with “Toreador,” which is the first hard-rock paso doble song I can remember hearing, with the guitar and drum playing a synchronized two-step rhythm behind the vocals (sung by Richardson), referring to the bullfight as “just a cloak-and-dagger score.” Rapid tempo shifts evoke the changing directions of the toreo, leading into a machine-gun riff that once again calls Adrian Smith’s early work to mind, until the uncertain conclusion after one more iteration of the chorus. It’s a clever transposition of two styles that wouldn’t seem to have any natural connection, and probably has more airplay potential than anything else on the album.
Himalayan can drag when Band of Skulls decides to slow things down, exposing both the weak nature of some of their lyrics and the lack of texture inherent in a trio when you have to turn off the heavy distortion of the lead guitar; for example, “I Feel Like Ten Men, Nine Dead and One Dying” starts off like a Doves B-side, leaving the listener waiting for the Big Crunch to arrive (which it does, in the chorus). “Nightmares” is the album’s strongest mid-tempo song, with the ethereal production of pre-Reflektor Arcade Fire, but again the weak lyrics become more noticeable when the guitars are toned down. There are more than enough high-energy tracks and passages on Himalayan to make up for some soft spots, and I particularly enjoyed its updating of classic sounds from the late-70s/early-80s period of British hard rock and metal that was prevalent even when I was in high school a few years after that. When Band of Skulls decide they want to rock, they rock. They just need to do more of that.