The Great Sabatini - Napoleon Sodomite 7" (Sludge Hummer)

I grew up “in the bush” as we say up north.. deep in the Laurentian mountains. Life was a pretty harsh and violent affair as a Quebecois hillbilly in the early and mid 80s. I’ll spare the details but a precarious teenage-hood was saved when I discovered metal. Particularly, the original big thrash metal bands like Megadeth and Slayer were a lifeline, a commiseration, an overwhelming huge noise that made a kid feel bigger than the confines of class and geography. That’s the root of my opinion as to why people love metal, moreover why disadvantaged people everywhere respond to it. Metal not as genre but as a force… a power. It’s cathartic scream and chug has been diluted now like punk music by compartmentalization, marketing convention, all that boring shit that heavy nihilistic music was intended to antidote.
What The Great Sabatini are doing is creating a wormhole back to that feeling of hugeness, the feral power of a beast threatened and charging out of it’s cave, the true spirit of metal. The baritone guitar riffs and raw screamed vocals though technical and spot on don’t overdo it, leaving out wanky cliches and getting down to the essence of why the Sabbath genome persists. Napoleon Sodomite is a slab of truly heavy, immediately gratifying, un-fuckwithable riffs that taps the dark roots of unpretentious ‘banger ear-candy.
The second little gem on the 7”, “Helter Skeletor” is a reverie. A short graveyard march with creepy drones over shambolic percussion while banjo (!) and guitar counterpoint darkly. This sets up the B side perfectly. A Tilt-a-whirl opening salvo of the instrumental “Trap Sequence” just builds and builds, riffs interleaving in complexity, every peak segueing into the next. It’s a restlessly Wagnerian masterpiece that collapses finally into a coda of banjo (!) jive again.
For a 7”, Sodomite represents a tightness of ability and vision in The Great Sabatini, a fierce band live and recorded that will draw you in and win your heart while reminding the jaded of why they love the sound of heavy in the first place.
The Great Sabatini are currently on a tour of the US and Canada, catch em live if you can!
http://www.myspace.com/thegreatsabatini