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Resurrection Of Whiskey Foote

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The Hidden Hand

 
Resurrection Of Whiskey Foote
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Imagine a tattooed Woody Guthrie, guitar plugged in, amps to 111.

  • We Say...

    The Johnny Appleseed of doom metal, Scott “Wino” Weinrich has enjoyed a long and storied career as frontman of the Obsessed, St. Vitus and Spirit Caravan. The music he’s made in recent years with the Hidden Hand is no less challenging. 2007’s Whiskey Foote, the band’s most fully realized record to date, is a semi-concept album that follows the mythical hero of the title through his adventures in post-Revolutionary War America. The music, though still crushingly heavy, incorporates elements of blues, psychedelia and southern rock; Wino’s voice, always a gruffly expressive instrument in its own right, delivers these tall tales with just the right amount of wizened gravity.

  • They Say...

    Following an unusually long, three-year gap since their acclaimed second album, Mother Teacher Destroyer (interrupted only by 2005's Devoid of Color DVD/EP), Maryland's the Hidden Hand delivered yet another thought-provoking, fairly eccentric opus in 2007's curiously named The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote. "Whiskey Foote," as it turns out, is a fictitious character concocted by the group to represent America's early pioneers, about whom each song spins a different yarn, ultimately knitting a semi-intertwined conceptual whole. None of this is very easy to discern, however, since the Hidden Hand's prose (normally focused on political/historical lyrics, as compared to the more ethereal nature of Scott "Wino" Weinrich's previous band, Spirit Caravan), is even more vague and oblique than usual here. But at least the trio doesn't stray too far from the expected, musically speaking, performing a heavy brand of fuzz rock, with sluggish doom tempos oddly dominating three out of the album's first four numbers: "Someday Soon," "Spiritually Bereft," and somnolent opener "Purple Neon Lagoon." Thankfully, the energy level is eventually picked up by mid-paced monoliths such as "Dark Horizons," foreboding standout, "The Lesson," and the crunchy-riffed "Majestic Presence," which eventually descends into lysergic Hendrix-ian shredding. Also, as with previous Hidden Hand albums, bassist Bruce Falkinburg occasionally takes center stage with his own gruff vocals (reminiscent of Savatage's Jon Oliva, strangely enough), yet here he leads three in a row in the title track, the harmonica-enhanced "Lightning Hill," and the ultra-heavy "Broke Dog." And for his part, Wino exhibits his undiminished six-string talents throughout, but saves his flashiest, tastiest psychedelic guitar work for epic closer "Slow Rain," which will hopefully satisfying those who miss his more dominant presence on band projects past. But then, it is this democratic quality that arguably makes the Hidden Hand the most unique band project of Wino's long and respected career -- and The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote well worth investigating, despite its abundant idiosyncrasies.

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