Ear Candy: HOWL

Providence, RI isn't exactly a town one would think of as a breeding ground for extreme metal bands, but then along comes a band like Howl and once again, pre-conceived notions must be dismissed.

After seeing a few mentions of the band Howl in friend's Facebook updates and on a Metal blog or two, I decided to check them out. I hopped on Amazon.com and looked up their release. Yes, I went to Amazon instead of Myspace. First, I have a short attention span and Amazon's 30 second snippets of each song suit me well. (And another one of the reasons that Amazon trumps iTunes is because they have a "Preview All" button that allows you to play all the samples right in a row rather than individually click on a song to hear it....but Amazon vs. iTunes is a whole other rant altogether.) Second, I find Myspace's band pages to be relatively cumbersome and too busy. I just want to hear the music and skip the bells and whistles, but then again I'm basically old and cranky, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.

Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand, Howl's self-titled three song EP (Relapse Records) sounded pretty cool from the samples I heard and at a cost of $2.97 it struck me as well worth taking a chance on and purchasing. [The fact that they are signed to Relapse, who tend to have fine A&R taste in extreme metal, was also a strong, if not deciding, factor in my decision making process.] I've basically been addicted since and listen to the EP at least two times a day. If you enjoy the likes of Eyehategod, Mastodon, Bison b.c., Tombs, Rwake, Kylesa, Torche, etc., then this will be right up your alley. It is familiar, yet completely fresh sounding at the same time. If this EP is any indication, then the full length should be one monster of a record and quickly put this band on the extreme metal map.

Hear music on their Myspace (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know).

Pick up a digital copy at Amazon.com

Or

A physical copy through Relapse Records mailorder.