Album Review: Lovelessness by Bison B.C.

Bison B.C.'s third album for Metal Blade is a roiling mass of sludgy heaviness, slow-churning atonal riffs and scraped-throated vocals sung from the pit of despair. Apparently, since the release of 2010's Dark Ages, vocalist/guitarist James Farwell lost a number of friends, saw his dog succumb to cancer and broke up with his girlfriend. He also turned the dreaded 40.

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Let's get this out of the way: Lovelessness is in no way a tribute to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. In some ways the cover art of the Vancouver metal group Bison B.C.'s fourth album does bring to mind the deep coloring and dreamy haziness of Loveless, but even that's a stretch: Unlike MBV's hazy pinks, these raw, bloody reds signal an obvious metal direction. Instead, Lovelessness is a muscular and expansive piece of stoner metal that seeks to challenge the laid-back, sluggish nature of the term.

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Like Mastodon, Bison B.C. are named for a large woolly beast and excel at combining doom, sludge, hardcore, and prog influences into intriguing musical shapes. So sue them! Really, every last band working in metal sounds, in one way or another, like Black Sabbath, and you don't see Sharon Osbourne bringing a class-action suit against them all...yet.

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With third record Lovelessness, Vancouver, BC's Bison B.C. have released their most punk influenced and devastatingly emotional album to date. Vocalist James Farwell's already twisted and battle-scarred vocals have taken on the extra weight of genuine, whiskey-soaked anguish. The riffs are thick, coated with snot and grime, as though the strings themselves had wept very messily so often they've accumulated a thick, crusty film of unhappiness.

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