Black Tusk

PILLARS OF ASH

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★★★½ Heavy metal has been around so long that it is decidedly getting rusty. Black Sabbath, who released their first album 46 years ago, recently toured Australia to say goodbye before they presumably move into retirement villages. In the years since Black Sabbath, most of the good ways to make metal have well and truly been beaten into the ground. These days, a lot of it feels like the usual suspects duly retreading former glories, or increasingly esoteric attempts to find the purest iteration of death metal. Still, the unusual success of Disturbed's terrible recent metal-style cover of The Sounds Of Silence – a genuine hit single – does indicate lots of people still want metal's adrenaline rush. Hybrids of metal with other genres, from hardcore punk to psychedelia to J-pop, are increasingly popular. So 2016 is the perfect time for Babymetal, a Japanese group that combines J-pop-style Japanese girl group vocals with a metal backing band, in a style dubbed kawaii metal or "cute metal". This unusual blend reaches beyond the cult fandom of metal or J-pop: Babymetal have joined Disturbed in the top 10 of the Australian album charts. The sheer effrontery of the combination comes across as the group sticking up several immaculately manicured middle fingers at metal orthodoxy. After all, metal dudes are fond of approvingly describing music as "brutal", and J-pop is one of the least brutal genres in existence. To Western ears, J-pop trades in sweetness, youth, exaggerated femininity and naggingly insistent pop melodies. Babymetal do not skimp on the J-pop – there are catchy melodies here, sweetly sung in Japanese by cute teenagers. It is everything that the stereotypical metalhead is programmed to detest.

But Babymetal do not skimp on the metal. The Kami Band who backs them provide enough furious riffage to trigger panic attacks for concerned parents. The only song on Metal Resistance that sounds more like pop than metal is No Rain, No Rainbow, Babymetal's version of an 1980s glam metal power ballad. Elsewhere, the band does not hold back, with notably furious drumming and liberal use of distortion pedals on atonal guitar riffs. The result is exceedingly effective. Some argue good art is all about light and shade. If this is true, Babymetal sound like a pitched battle between a supernova of J-pop sweetness and a black hole of metal brutality. Whether it is the candy crush of Babymetal's vocals or the testosterone high of the metal backing, it is all adrenaline rush. Karate, for example, sounds like Babymetal informing Taylor Swift and her Bad Blood #girlsquad that Babymetal would beat them to a pulp. GJ!, in comparison, sounds oddly like a group of slightly demonic Japanese girls playing skipping rope games over your grave in the middle of a pitched war during the apocalypse. There is definitely something creepier about slightly demonic Japanese girls than yet another long-haired guy trying to sound like the Cookie Monster. After Rob Zombie posted a photo of himself with Babymetal on Facebook, he told off a tiresome metal guy complaining about Babymetal's music in the comments: "they roll harder than you". Indeed, of all the metal guys who look like refugees from schlocky horror films, Zombie is the one who looks like he's having the most fun. This comes out in the hokeyness of the music: the faux-hillbilly melody and rhythms of lead single Well, Everybody's F---in' in a UFO sounds more like Cotton Eye Joe by 1990s novelty band Rednex than Reign in Blood by Slayer. There are doses of psychedelia and kitschy Americana in Zombie's industrial metal, and a fixation on rock 'n' roll in the lyrics. He gives the impression he would love to collaborate with ZZ Top.

The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, from its title down, is an album clearly meant as party music for metalheads. Each track has a groove to it, from the glam stomp of Get Your Boots On! That's The End Of Rock 'n' Roll to the garage rock beat of The Hideous Exhibitions of a Dedicated Gore Whore. Apart from album closer Wurdalak, few songs get much past the three-minute mark. There is nothing revolutionary here: this is just a solid version of the schtick Zombie has been plumbing since the 1990s. Black Tusk come from the same thriving Savannah, Georgia metal scene as prominent sludge metal bands Baroness and Kylesa. Sadly, the release of Pillars Of Ash is something of a tribute to Black Tusk bass player and vocalist Jonathan Athon, who died as a result of a motorcycle accident during the recording of the album. Black Tusk's style is a hybrid of sludgy metal and hardcore punk, with its shouty, throat-shredding vocals and thrashing speed. Some of the riffs might be straight out of Black Sabbath if they were played slower. The end result sounds like the harsher side of early 1990s grunge bands like Mudhoney or the Melvins.

Black Tusk's sound feels like the epitome of loud, angry, testosterone-y guitar music: there is little fat on their musical bones, just a throaty roar. However, while an individual song or two in Black Tusk's style feels refreshing – the single God's On Vacation has a kick to it – their approach tires over the course of an album. A bit more light to contrast with their clear mastery of shade would work wonders. TIM'S PLAYLIST Prince, Parade; Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff.