As nasty as they wanna be: Sonorous Gale’s “Two’s A Crowd” LP

Sonorous Gale “Two’s A Crowd” (Wrongfoot Records) 

What justice does time do to heavy music without at some point busting it apart down to the ugly, important pieces? A riff is a riff is a riff unless you have some filthy ideal of power mixed with grace, of exploration without regard for “the scene.” That has always produced some of the best in devastating music: those epic metal albums of your gas-huffing youth produced by toiling heshers; the isolated and misunderstood backgrounds manifested by relentless modern ragers. 
After months of labor pains, softball injuries, returns to the mixing board, and Czech mailing errors, Sonorous Gale has put out a difficult ray of dark hope that will, thank Satan, never be a DJ favorite. 
“Two’s A Crowd” — eight tracks self-released on nice white vinyl – never tries for the fun-now sound and, instead, freely roams between the concrete-weight whims of its two creators, bassist/vocalist Aaron Weese and drummer Stephen Kerfien. Any flashpoints of referential bands are surprisingly layered (for a duo) within a contradictory drum beat or melody, clearly the result of hours of practice room dissection and fucking jamming. 
There is an element of the sausage factory at work here; you never directly hear the practical elements and necessary obstacles that stood in the way of its completion. They scraped mixes, poured over bass harmonies and smashed their tiny piggy bank to keep it all going somewhere in the last year-and-a-half. Despite this, their effort was not along the lines of a redemptive made-for-TV tale full of break-ups or sharing revenge-oral sex with each other’s loved-ones that gives some bands more notoriety than their songs. Propped up by a monstrous and diverse final recorded product — bass reverb? and how huge is that drum set? — “Two’s A Crowd,” is more real than the sounds of any band mired in high school dramas, as it uses daily punishment and joy as the collage of expression, for better and for worse. 
Side A works well as an introduction for the Buffalo band. Starting with “To Completion,” you hear a willingness to hammer down on sludge parts, but with bass and vocal melodies and flashy cymbals that keep the song from getting lost in the muck. Minutes later, “Maytham Manor” brings the thunder and tricky verse points that set the band apart from the kitsch of many other two-man bands. The song is probably the best representation of their live show, the craftsmanship in combining doom, majestic lyrics and lock-step tightness. 
Never leaving too many bread crumbs with their tracks, the third song is an instrumental, a curiously placed touch on the best 70s prog parts and, well, punk. The first side closes with more slight of hand, the downer “Cake In The Wings.” Guest vocalist Spoke gives her first complimentary accompaniment here — Weese obviously has a vision for the voice of the song, and he’s willing to share the soapbox to see it through. 
As the first side gives multiple strong hints at where Sonorous Gale can take songs, side B skips the innuendo without missing the magic. There is something very fragile in the latter four songs of this record, maybe just because it’s so rare to hear a heavy band unafraid to come off as human yet unwilling to sound like babies. 
“Shattered Fingers,” again featuring Spoke, is a true basement show rocker, wrapped up in lyrics that are vague but sung with appropriate desperation and a bass line recalling Cliff Burton at his un-wanky best. Kerfien, never missing chances for jazzy flares, ratchets up the snare and hi-hat surprises minus any showy defaults. 
“Dogmatic Equations,” the band’s early “single,” shimmers bright on the big vinyl, its plodding drum rolls carrying through every headnodding stop. Both men stretch far for “Glimpse,” the most emotive track on the record. Black Sabbath separated the stoner-soft from the punishing on “Master of Reality”; here, Kerfien and Weese meld those elements for the album’s best song, as striking as it is personal. A lesson in restraint, it feels like the hard pulses of the choruses are earned by the players and ultimately the listeners. 
Barely outdone is the damned clever closer, “Clandestiny.” As with “Maytham Manor,” there is a smoothly stuttering verse hook followed by drums that dominate like some kind of rhythmic Harley. The song is a perfect end piece for this complicated-but-rewarding album. 
In a society where, increasingly, now is already yesterday, it’s refreshing to hear something not instantly dismissed nor masturbated over. (The unique cover art adds another question mark to the package with a combination of natural imagery and techno-phobe design squiggles) 
The time spent being their own band and, often because of that, bashing their heads against the practice room walls has led to this lasting sound. At its multiple great moments, “Two’s A Crowd” is the refusal of ease or technical bludgeoning, recalling a day when complex efforts were not a lost art. 

(Note: I am friends with both of the people in this band. That means I could tell them if this record sucked. Or if it sounded like this. Thankfully, I don’t have to do either of those things.)

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