Maximum Rock’n’Roller Flipside
Such Hawks Such Hounds – Scenes From The American Hard Rock Underground (2008)
Documentary
The Internet made things easier as well as more complicated. You can find documentaries like Reality 86’d, The Obsessed ’94 and newly The Rainbow. The music business is affected as well. This topic and more “Such Hawks Such Hounds” looks at.
Right in the beginning two essential scenes are shown: Jack Endino who tells that heavy music doesn’t necessarily has to be loud, and Wino playing two notes on a guitar and looking like a happy little child. The movie then is structured in various chapters, a timeline and band introductions including live recordings and text elements.
As the bands including Sleep, High On Fire, Fatso Jetson, Nebula, Mudhoney, Earth, Acid King and SunnO))) come from different cities, it gives kind of an overview on a map like “Sonic Highways”. For example at San Francisco it was all about the Melvins and Neurosis. But the first was Bobby Liebling with Pentagram.
Earthless then tell about the pleasure “to ride a note for five minutes.” Around 1984, 1985 the line between Metal and Punk blurred it is said and posters of D.R.I. and CoC can be seen. The first hybrid of these genres was Motörhead. The protagonists tell about the SST acts like Black Flag and Soundgarden and think about the description of the genres.
Wino tells Doom is “a real visceral emotional pure something that will make you cry.” Stoner they think is fuzzed out guitars, huge riffs, partly melodic in a Rock’n’Roll way and kind of jammy and organic. Or as Mario Lalli puts it: “Speakers are melting in front of you.”
For the Hard Rock scene it is characteristic too, that they are not looking for hits, in case of Kyuss even rejecting them. But there’s a lot of dedication like in the artworks, which Arik Roper, Seldon Hunt, Stacie Willoughby and pupils of the Malleus Rock Art Lab talk about and screen-printing is shown.
One more aspect are the outside jobs as Lori S. e.g. works in postproduction of film, Wino is a stay at home dad and Earthless have Thirsty Moon Records. The movie gives a great overview of influential acts you might not even be able to catch in the first place. It displays various opinions and is full of fascinating statements and stories.