Album Reviews

Review: Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell – Don’t Hear It… Fear It! (Dude Review)

What’s up dudes? I’m Traci “Stoner” Saunders and I’m new to The Soda Shop. First a little bio on me. I’m a resident stoner. Yeah, no kidding. I’m always always stoned.  Yeah I have a job but it’s cool, they don’t drug test so it’s cool. Kinda shitty but more on that later. I like lots of music. Lots of heavy shit like Metallica and Megadeth thrash from yesteryear (newer shit is shit), doomy shit like the mighty Black Sabbath, the southern shit like Syknyrd and Allman Bros, and then the stoner rock. My first stoner album I bought was Sleep’s Holy Mountain. I’ve seen lots of crazy shit too like Iron Maiden, Nirvana, and Alice in Chains. I seen YOB a few times and my mind was fucking blown. The Melvins too man. Anyways, I’m stoned right now and I could continue but not now. Onto the review.

This band is new. They just brought out a new album on the fucking awesome Rise Above Records. The band is Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell who are named after some dude who’s been rotting for about 200 years. The dude is cool in my book but only because his name spawned this band.

I don’t know if it’s the weed talking but my mind is blown by this album. And I guess paranoia has set in because Don’t Hear It… Fear It! is really got me going. First thing about it that sticks with you, the guitars. Besides being all heavy and shit, they carry a distinct, late 70′s era NWOBHM music. Almost like later Sabbath. The Iomi worshiping is quite evident even through the bluesy sections which remind me a lot of early ZZ Top. The fucking song “iDEATH” has some kick ass fucking solos. The instrumental section, which takes up a good chunk of of the song, is fucking badass. It’s like Iomi, Paige, Townshend, and Clapton had their DNA stolen and fused to form this super guitar slinger.

Drumming. Let me say, I think Neil Pert played on this album. Seriously, I fucking do.

I think the dude singing likes Deep Purple. Rob Halford comes to mind too. It’s weird. I thought Bruce Dickenson for a second but after careful listening, nah. I don’t hear it. Not sure why, maybe it’s the weed talking. What do you think?

I gotta say I love this fucking album like a Dad seeing his baby girl for the first time after birth. Yeah, it fucking rocks. I did manage to listen to a little bit while not stoned and I liked it so yeah, this is up there. My only complaint about the album is the hidden track. Most normal bands just put a song at the end of the last track with a bunch of empty space in between. Not these guys. The hidden track is it’s own track but has like 10 minutes of nothing until it starts. I tell you it really kind blows when listening on shuffle and you can’t get to it to change it or fast forward. The song is cool too. It has a Stooges feel to it during the faster moments. Besides that gripe, this fucker rocks! It’s classic rock, hard rock, stoner rock with bits of pieces of progressive rock, doom metal and lots of proto metal. It’s tough to really classify this as just one. Perhaps heavy metal would be a generic label and probably where it would be filed at a music store that didn’t have a stoner rock section.

I couldn’t find a stream of an album cut so I found a Youtube video of “Devil’s Island.” Go out right now and buy this fucker.

Stay stoned my friends.

Traci “Stoner” Saunders