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By: Matt Butler
There’s no denying it: 2015 has been a year subjected to a deluge of down-tuned, fuzz-toned heavy psychedelic bands who make slow, long-haired nods to Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin.
The reason? Who knows. But Cody Johnston, vocalist for Texas’s Sweat Lodge, whose first full-length, Talismana, stands head and shoulders above the hordes with its influences from fellow Lone Star State musicians such as ZZ Top in the fuzzy mix, has a theory. “The web has helped to spread the gospel on a lot of great bands from late 60s, 70s and 80s that were hidden in a small few record collections,” Johnston told Echoes and Dust. “I think in some way that’s helped to influence this new wave. For us it was getting back to our seminal music base and building on it. We were all in bands before but we feel like our influences really met up in Sweat Lodge.”
As well as the internet unearthing forgotten gems from times gone by, the troubled times we live in – mirroring the Cold-War-wracked 60s or the fact that the 70s were dominated by the oil crisis and the ugly end of the Vietnam War – have also led guitar-wielders to turn up their amps. That and the lure of going back to the visceral thrill of a massive riff is too much to resist. “I feel like there was a period in music six or seven years ago where metal and pop music alike were starting to feel synthetic and uninspired,” Johnston said. “More musicians in this last decade have connected to the gravity of their instrumentation and recording. Also it’s a heavy time to be alive and a good time for expression.”
Heavy indeed. And speaking of weighty matters, the band’s name, after a Native American prayer and meditation room, also alludes to the quartet being interested in a few things spiritual.
Until you hear how they came to choose the name, that is. “To us, a Sweat Lodge is like playing a packed house in the summer in Austin with a non-functional air conditioning! Us and a couple of bands practiced in an oven of a garage in the early days. The name kinda came naturally came from that and we really connect with the heritage and sacrament of the Sweat Lodge. I’d love to experience one soon.”
Talismana came with some heavy expectation attached, with influential website Consequence of Sound giving it a “highly anticipated” rating at the beginning of 2015. it was with good reason; Sweat Lodge‘s debut EP contained the ingredients required, if not the experience and production values, for a satisfyingly heavy psychedelic band.
We put to Johnston, was the expectation daunting? And in his opinion, did the album live up to the hype? “There’s a period in the weeks before an album gets released where you feel like you’re kind of standing still so I guess the waiting part was the worst,” he said. “[But] we’re always trying to make this show better than the one before, so we wanted Talismana to be a reflection of us live. In that way were thought it came out great, but were already looking forward to recording some new material in the beginning of 2016.”
There is a do-it-yourself ethos to the band; they planned and booked their own US tour to promote Talismana and although they’d love to do the same for jaunts further afield, they know that plotting a European tour on their own will be more difficult. That said, they are keen to spread the gospel to the rest of the world – promoters, take note: from the sound of the album, the live show would be quite a spectacle.
Johnston points out with a laugh that although the band are “preeetty Texan”, they are not directly influenced by the long and varied list of bands from their state. As for groups they are into, they include other high quality releases from this year (“the new Monolord and FOGG records are great,” says Johnston) and, perhaps surprisingly until you get lost in the melodic swirl of one of their songs like Slow Burn, the lead vocalist says he has also been watching a lot of Harry Nilsson and Everley brothers live footage.
Even given the Everleys and Nilsson – plus ancient funkateers the Gap Band, which have also infiltrated Johnston’s music collection – he says there is little that beats playing big riffs loudly. Or as he puts it: “A Marshall always sounds best dimed-out!”
