High Noon Kahuna-This Place Is Haunted; Crucial Blast Records, 2024

Usually when Disaster Amnesiac thinks about Crucial Blast Records, blackened and surreal Avant Garde Metal comes to mind: your Lycanthropic Warhead or your Robe or you Gnaw Their Tongues. The stranger side of that Metal spectrum. Suffice it to say that it was oddly intriguing to read about the venerable label's latest release, This Place Is Haunted from Hagerstown MD-based High Noon Kahuna. Nary a blast or a burst or drum machine beat to found here. Only solid and effectively simple heavy Rock beats from drummer Brian Goad, and they are meticulously well placed and moving! Goad's drumming deserves close attention paid, and rewards that. Brian kicks the guitar and bass VI tones from Tim Otis and Paul Coogle respectively into lively and very physically present spaces throughout each of the album's twelve tracks. The string players conjure up many whirling, psychedelic tones from what sounds like a fair amount of pedal enhancements. Not a bad thing at all here! The group sounds as if they're pulling from multiple strands of the Rock band spectrum, now going on seventy years old, and they do so with astute focus on using these strands as ingredients for blends which really move the perceptions and the body. One will rock out to Mojave Desert generator tones or D.C. demonstrative tones or Emeryville warehouse angst tones, or Santa Clarita carving tones, the Shoegaze that Deafheaven made acceptable for Metal players, all of them sublimated within High Noon Kahuna's ample instrumental and song writing skills. Disaster Amnesiac would note that all of these influences are essentially blended into what is a unique sound with This Place, and it's a place that Rock fans will want to visit pretty often. The back cover states "Farewell" at one point, and it's hoped that High Noon Kahuna have not signed off on their band with this one. If they haven't it's also hoped that they hit the road and include Tucson within that journey. Disaster Amnesiac would definitely love to experience this group within a live presentation setting. Maryland continues to cough up great heavy music by the bongload, with High Noon Kahuna being a particularly potent strain of such. Great, unexpected moves from Crucial Blast!