Tempel - The Moon Lit Our Path

Imposing yet accessible, the Arizonian instrumental "post-doom" duo serve up an incredibly solid iteration on their brilliant debut album without straying from their particular style

When I first came across the Arizona-based duo Tempel, I remember thinking "This is where the growls start....right......now! hum?!" many times over the course of On the Steps of the Temple, their crushing debut disc -- I couldn't believe that their ridiculously groovy blend of monolithic riffs and acoustic palette-cleansers could exist without some sort of vocals taking advantage of it. After a couple more listens, however, it became clear that Tempel with vocals would just distract from the sheer quality of the writing on display.

Now just a year and a half later we have their sophomore effort: The Moon Lit Our Path. Tempel stick to their guns on this one, delivering a hefty hour-long package, full of dark atmospherics a la Opeth accompanied by their particular mixture of doom-style riffs and death-esque blastbeats. Much like On the Steps of the Temple the songs stretch out into the 10 minute mark -- it's impressively cohesive and it actually feels natural to listen to the whole thing in one go -- despite the lengthy run-times the music scrolls past you almost like a mural or mosaic, chapter by chapter. The instrumentation is spare, with a tasteful bit of keyboard work rounding things off on the excellent closer "Dawn Breaks Over the Ruins". The rest of the album is similarly well-written, especially powerful opener "Carvings in the Door" and the title track.

The Moon Lit Out Path is a strong album, and Tempel have shown that their stellar first attempt wasn't just beginner's luck. With their chops properly demonstrated, I'm looking forward to the next evolution of their sound.

Supershine - Supershine

With riffs as titanic and immovable as any black hole, this one-off album joins the soulful vocals, massive bass tone and psychedelic-tinged power chords of two of hard rock's most legendary outfits for an occasionally repetitive, yet thoroughly enjoyable disc

Besides being one of the more interesting ways a bunch of established musicians can attract attention to a pet project, supergroups can also somehow distill the combined personalities of their members, from the off-beat, funky hard rock of Them Crooked Vultures to the Beatles-tinged progressive fusion of Platypus, all the way off the cliff to the avant-garde craziness that is Fantomas. Frequently these groups create music that harks back to their respective main bands in some way, but rarely does the combination of talents align with such complementary interests to create an album like Supershine.

This (tragically) one-off disc is the result of the efforts of King's X frontman Doug Pinnick and Trouble members Bruce Franklin and Jeff Olson -- basically a who's who of underground rock titans. With King's X guitarist Ty Tabor behind the boards, the album sounds just like the cover -- dark and enveloping, with Pinnick's voice guiding us through it all like glints of light through deep space.

Song-wise, Supershine is a marriage of the power-chord plodding of Trouble with the soul-infused prog-grunge of King's X, although it tends much more towards the Trouble side of the coin with a distinct lack of vocal harmonies and and the knotty compositions Pinnick's group is known for. Instead, we have some of the crunchiest and most satisfyingly bottomed-out riffs and grooves that any of the members have produced in their careers. Honestly, there are better grooves in "Take Me Away", "Going Down", "I Can't Help You", and "Automatic" than in any band not involving Scott Weinrich. For a palette cleanse, you've got polite little numbers like "One Night", "Candy Andy Jane", and an excellent cover in "Shinin' On". Pinnick is in fine form, though even his powerful pipes get drowned in the the throbbing wall of guitar and bass at times, which is just what you'd expect from these resident riff-warriors. Clocking in at just under 50 minutes, the boys keep things at a respectable length and don't overstay their welcome, although the few stinkers that sneak in drag things out a bit, in particular "Love" and the unfortunately anti-climactic closer "Shadows/Light", the latter being the only song here that would probably have worked better as a straight-up Trouble song.

Those looking for a sampler platter of the best bands the music world passed by during the late 80s/90s, look no further -- same goes for anyone looking for a semi-rare artifact of one of hard rock's most enjoyable partnerships or even just a damn good rock album.