Given a rare chance to switch music on the old iPod, I gave in and reloaded Jex Thoth’s eponymous debut. It’s only a couple weeks ago that I removed it because I hadn’t heard much else for a month or so, and I was afraid I’d wear it out.
My current schedule is really cramped at the moment (6 hrs transportation a day, 4 days a week!) and I suppose I’m not exactly in an extreme metal mood, especially not with the amount of coffee coursing through my body. Ergo, the more spazzed out bands went in favor of Ms Thoth and her henchmen.
When first I heard the album I was a bit wary, but from second sitting onward I was hooked on their special (although not exactly unique) brand of back-to-the-roots downer rock.
My first association was to Black Sabbath, and I could easily imagine Jex Thoth to have come out right on the heels of that particular nexus in modern music. Like Sabbath, their music is heavy and proto-metallic, but definitely more influenced by rock and blues than by the genre that grew into metal.
Apart from the simple yet effectively sluggish riffs that invoke a time less occupied with shredding guitars, it is the unabashed use of Hammond organ that gets me thinking of late sixties (heavy) music. I’ve never been a Doors fan because I’m more than a little annoyed by Morrison’s art posturings, but I do apppreciate the creepier aspects of the organ sound.
Jex Thoth is also mining the back catalog of bands less known to me for inspiration, like Black Widow and Pagan Altar, which I’ve obviously had to investigate, too. There is no bit of plagiarism that I can detect, I hasten to add. But certain moods and general sounds are echoed on Jex Thoth (the album) and for me that spill of primitive doom has hit a dry spot.
I say “primitive”; My Brother The Musician was less kind. He noted that if they were a local upcoming band he would have urged them back to the rehearsal room.
In a sense, I like to think that the band and I share an affinity for looking back at points of divergence in the developments of our chosen media, and use them as inspirations for almost contrafact experimenting, like I try with a couple of the Astoria pieces.
Through all this, I have been sidestepping the big forte of the band’s sound — Jex Thoth the vocalist’s evocative performance. The fact that she has been compared to one Janis Joplin (which is a bit of a stretch) only emphasizes my point of their music being closely tied to 60′s and 70′s movements.
Whether she is a schooled singer or not, her expressive singing conveys a lot of emotion with a minimum of bravado. And although there is a trend for female singers in heavy music these days, I don’t recall hearing one that is so uniquely her own before, without leaning on the mannerisms of male Death Metal vocalists, or Björk, or Broadway musicals (foad, Nightwish!)
At the moment, I’m having trouble finding much enthusiasm for any music, but even so Jex Thoth – the band, the singer, and the album – are one thing that I return to in this torrent of early mornings and changing trains that is my life right now.