Howling Giant – Black Hole Space Wizard Part 1 (2016)
For fans of Elder, Red Fang, Melvins, Baroness, Rush
Contacts: PR Rep – Jon Asher – ashermedia[@]gmail.com
Release Date: August 12, 2016
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“Blowing out your speakers and filling your head with more fuzz than you can handle is Howling Giant and their new EP titled Black Hole Space Wizard Part 1. With a name such as Howling Giant and with a name such as the one that they gave to their EP you can expect big things, and Howling Giant delivers. Black Hole Space Wizard Part 1 is only four songs long and twenty-one total minutes but within those minutes you get a menagerie of sounds that come together to create mystical soundscapes and a wondrous story.” – Cadaver Garden
“Sonically, Howling Giant seem to be the missing link between Monster Truck and Mastodon, and they top it off with whacked-out, sci-fi lyrics about outer space.” – Hellbound
“Howling Giant come across as a confident band that are bursting at the seams with invigorating hooks that sound as familiar as they are new. They have the discipline to take their time fleshing out riffs without losing sight of the song, their energy and passion is felt throughout, which is the glue that holds this EP together.” – The Sludgelord
“Rocketing across the interstellar airways on a stellar path of massive grooves, ones fueled by the thrust of the ever-powerful riff and its incendiary combustion, Howling Giant make themselves heard throughout the cosmos on these four out-of-this-world tracks.” – Metal Nexus
“If modern day Mastodon got together with Crobot, added some Monster Truck style Hammond Organ and Elder’s gift for writing something fuzzy and glorious, then to be honest, it’d probably sound a little like this.” – Maximum Volume Music
“Running at just over 21 minutes & combing the ethereal grunge vocal ofSoundgarden, the doom of early Mastodon & the conceptual imagery of Arjen Lucassan. Howling Giant have produced an E.P that is as fucked up as this three-way sounds. Tim Polzine (guitar & vocals), Roger Warks (bass & vocals) & Zach Wheeler (drums & vocals) are great musicians, with an understanding of being as tight as a submarines doors as well as giving each other enough room to breath.” – All About The Rock
“The band sounds like a mad creature wailing away….perfect!…This is one of those albums that you need to put on, open the windows, and blow your neighbors away with the massive sounds on display. Grab a copy of this album now…..what are you waiting for?” – Altered Frequencies
“If you want to have an ear wedding you mix the sounds of old and new to make something fresh. Nashville’s own Howling Giant have skipped the wedding and went straight to the honeymoon with sounds as old as OG Sabbath to Baroness, Red Fang with a little Pelican and CKY mixed in. Totally familiar, yet totally fresh.” – Zombie Tap Dance
“Fuzz yeah, this is the shit. Well, it is if you’re into bands like Mastodon, Baroness and Red Fang. Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, USA, Howling Giant comes up with some infectious stoner rock, nudging towards psychedelic rock and doom. The trio seemingly consists of nerds who combine their love for comics, space travel and downtuned, fuzzed-out guitars.” – Merchants of Air
“Howling Giant are very capable of writing catchy compositions that are interesting on an artistic level while also playing perfectly to an audience.” – Metal Trenches
“Fuzz rock with the kinetics of a bikini-babe monster flick and the high drama of a mid-70’s Marvel comic book.” – Lucas Klaukien, You May Be Dead and Dreaming
“Slightly reverberated and charismatic vocals set to an astonishing stoned out groove. Take a look to what the others had to say. It’s stirring up some dust in the stoner scene and makes for some high expectations of what more is to come.” – Bucky Brown, Ripple Music
“The way they incorporate inspirations with great musical and songwriting talents and a huge sense of “I don’t give a fuck what you think”- attitude, gives me such satisfaction.” – Hakan Nyman, The Ripple Effect
“You guys sound like an evil Bachman-Turner Overdrive.” – Dave Cloud
“Who could not like a band that “plays self-indulgent, drop-tuned, fuzzed out riffs that could curdle milk?” Check out the epic “Whale Lord” to hear what they’re talking about. -Terra James-Jura – The Deli Magazine (Nashville)
Photo Credit: Kim Auch
HOWLING GIANT! The very name summons up mental images of a huge mutated orc-warrior astride an even more gigantic mastodon, ready to bring death, doom, damnation and destruction (and many other things beginning with “d”) down upon its enemies.
Names matter, and something magical happened when three nerds obsessed with all that is fuzzed-out, riffed-out, and heavy came together to compose cosmic odes to space travel, doomed sea-farers, and even an android on a camel-killing crusade (what harm did the poor camel ever do to him?), under the name Howling Giant.
Drummer Zach Wheeler says the name is no accident and reflects the band’s music. “Howling Giant sounds a lot like a loud beast, which is what we strive to do musically. We aim to create a full sound that people might normally expect from a five-piece rather than a power-trio.” Indeed, by employing the three-piece format, Howling Giant is following in the footsteps of legends like Motorhead, MC5, Cream, and Corrosion of Conformity; good company to be in! As the band’s philosophy would have it wisely: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Hailing from Nashville, Howling Giant obviously had some special metal immunity to all the country and western music in the air. The boys started jamming at school in Boston with an aim to move away from overtly serious music and have fun, describing their music accurately as “loud, energetic, heavy, melodic, and cosmic.”
Overall, Howling Giant’s music forms part of a fascinating Black Hole Space Wizard concept EP series. As guitarist Tom Polzine explains, “Musically we aim to write songs that are melodic, catchy, and head bang-able. As a concept series, we strive to conjure up space-themed imagery of heroes and villains at war, introducing the story and setting the scene of things to come within the Black Hole Space Wizard Universe. We’re not trying to spell out the entire story so much as we are creating scenes to provoke your imagination.”
Writing is very much a collaborative effort. “We usually come up with a general theme, then we write riffs and musical passages to support said theme. After that, we work on overall arrangements to create a nice flow and build within the song. Lyrics and vocal melodies come last as an icing on a very meaty cake. We find the flow of an album is just as important as the flow of an individual song and we strive to make each song unique. We wanted to include a combination of heavy, spacey, doom, and thrash, all wrapped up in a crunchy garage-sounding blanket. Fans can expect two more EPs within the Black Hole Space Wizard Universe. And with an overflowing riff bank, who knows how long we’ll go.”
Such far-out music deserves far-out lyrics, and Howling Giant is prepared to go to extreme lengths to get them. As bassist Roger Marks reveals, “We have a strict regimen of smashing our heads into walls daily until lyrics finally come to us.” As for inspiration, “We are inspired by science fiction and occult rituals, as well as books, movies, and other music.”
As part of an overall concept, the EP paints four distinct scenes.
- The pinnacle of mankind.
- An exodus from Earth.
- The Black Hole Space Wizard destroying everything.
- A lone survivor trapped on a ravaged Mother Earth.
In Roger’s own words, “The first track is a little more progressive, packed with riffs both dark and triumphant. The second track is all about build and groove. The third track is thrash, metal, and destructive. The final track is spacey with doom elements.”
Overall, it you are one of the many that wishes Mastodon had continued in the cosmic, crushing progressive manner of Crack The Skye and Blood Mountain, Howling Giant is your dream band!
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