S u p l e c s
at Continental
New York, NY 06.24.00

 

They may not have made Rolling Stone's recent list of current stoner rock kings but these sludge rockers deliver distortion to your eardrums with unrelenting intensity. Straight out tha swamps of N'awlins, Suplecs lay the sonic smack down on your ears like Stone Cold does on the mat. Critics, bands and music fans have been debating the expression "Stoner Rock" -- the term coined to describe a heavy, mind-warping combo of punk, metal and rock -- since bands such as Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Fu Manchu and Sleep tumbled out of their respective vans in a cloud of pot smoke at the end of the last century. The mid-tempo heaviness of this bad-ass, modern crop of stoner rock smacks of '70's forebears Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and many others, and, like most forms of rock music, it¹s tailored for toking. It¹s easy to see why most bands would shun the limiting term, but it frequently fits. Whether you think their rock reeks of resin or not (you know it does), Suplecs embrace the dark side of an intoxicated, meandering state of mind. Oddly enough, I showed up at their recent New York gig, completely sober. When I realized that my lucid state could not offer much more than a contact high, I decided that I should at least head over to the bar. Two drafts of Guinness cleared my mental palette of any distractions outside of my dark environs and fogged me up proper for the impending aural assault. I knew from the first moment, that Suplecs would be much more effective live than on disc. Their recent album, Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend (Man's Ruin) only hints of the power that Durel Yates (guitar, vocals), Danny Nick (bass, vocals) and Andrew Preen (drums, percussion) exercise to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Songs such as "Rampage," "Moped" and"2000 Leagues"can only be properly fleshed out with as much volume and near-loss of control as possible. Baseball caps pulled down, these faceless marauders heaved out their bludgeoning riffs, full on, wasting little time. Picks punished strings while fingers molested guitar necks, plundering vibrations from their instruments. The ferocious Preen, a merciless, multi-limbed monster, attacked his kit with a vengeance. The band's mixed bag of lyrical themes, as yelped and shouted by Yates and Nick, included stalking women and enjoying the privileges of membership in a moped gang. Their appropriately chosen interpretation of the Beatles' ' I Want You (She's so Heavy)' easily found its place in the set by virtue of the song¹s title as well as with its tumbling, cumbersome melody. I wouldn¹t describe Suplecs¹ hard-hitting, churning rhythms as completely original. But this southern power trio shows no clear intentions of exploring new musical terrain when they can easily floor you with their fearsome, dark rhythms and thick, elastic riffs. Bands such as Nebula, Queens of the Stone Age and the others mentioned above are generally hailed as stoner-rock leaders for their musical flights into psychedelic territories, their worship of the arid wastelands, and drugs, among other things. Suplecs would prefer to wade through the swamps, collecting fresh corpses along the way to their next gig. "YES!!" squeals your inner Beavis to the thunder of each banged-out power chord as your fist pumps the air. "THIS ROCKS!!" by Hal Miller

http://www.unpop.com/reviews/live/suplecs.html

SUPLECS

"sad songs...better days" Man's Ruin

Why do some CDs sound better when you're stoned? Or does it make the music sound different somehow? Whatever the answers, that subgenre of music labelled (perhaps unfortunately but certainly not inappropriately) "stoner rock" actually does sound better/different after absorbing several metered dose inhalations of mind altering smoke. Sometimes the effects of both respective forms of pleasure are amplified. The new Suplecs CD, "sad songs...better days", is a good example of this symbiotic relationship between sound and smoke. I looked forward to hearing this CD, and grabbed it from the pile of new releases the day it arrived at my dealer's den of audio iniquity. I still listen to the first Suplecs CD, "Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend", and hoped they had kept the same song structures and riff patterns. My first listen satisfied me that they had kept these features while improving their basic, original sound formula. Some of the rough edges had been smoothed out, and the production sounded a little cleaner (this had me worried at first, since I like a raw, live kind of sound), but the fuzz/buzz guitar sound still hummed, and there was still a muddy delta undercurrent of Crescent City sludge. Sort of like Fu Manchu playing an Eyehategod song. Sonic schwag, as hypnotic and satisfying as deep south homegrown. Turn it up, (the CD and the smoke), and notice how each enhances the other.- Glenn Tillman

review at:

http://www.tangerinemagazine.com/more_reviews.html

Suplecs
 Sad Songs…Better Days
Mans Ruin/Self-Released
It's a shame that right as the Suplecs finished this disc, their label, Man's Ruin, went belly up. So if you can find a copy, do it quickly before it disappears…trust us it's worth the cash.

There's a good reason we selected the Suplecs Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend as one of our "Ten Albums That Didn't Suck In 2000" - super heavy, super groovy, super-laid back, and it even had a goddamn sense of humor. Sad Songs… carries the sound even further. One listen to "White Devil" and you'll be hooked because of that slow Nawlans southern groove to it, thick Kyuss/Sabbath guitar tones, infectious riffs and vocals. The boys seem a bit more serious on this one compared to songs like "Dope-Fu" and "Moped" off the first disc. Hell they sound downright ornery on "Unexpected Trauma" and "Out of Town."

What makes this disc so different is the boys jam it out a bit more. They crafted songs with a lot more changes, showing off their songwriting skills a bit better and once again stayed away from the Sabbath-riff-chorus-Sabbath-riff chorus trap too many of their contemporaries fall into. Amazingly, Sad Songs… is much thicker and better produced than Wrestlin…, courtesy of former Ugly Kid Joe guitarist Dave Fortman. He has his own studio in California and as it turns out, gets a killer sound (we now forgive him for unleashing "Everything About You" on the world). Fortman has also done work with other New Orleans natives like Eyehategod and the Mystick Krewe of Clearlight, both Jimmy Bower projects.

Some of the standouts include: "Rock Bottom" which alternates between heavy and mellow, using nice contrasts where the heavy parts just drive; "Control" and "Lightning Lady" with their balls out, hi-tempo, hi-energy; and "Blue Runner" which has a real nice atmosphere to it, taking it's time to get started with a real mellow opening before kicking into a balls-out heavy around the halfway mark. Also very worthy is "Out of Town" which starts off with this really discordant guitar part, before breaking down and reemerging as a mixture of disparate parts neatly welded together so at times you hear Texas power blues or straight-on metal, all with the band's super groovy riffs.

Overall, much more polished and much feistier. Goddamn, who woulda thunk it.

- Ken Wohlrob

review at:

http://www.bullymag.com/8.15.01/music-081501.asp


Blackwater Southern

Suplecs

BY CHRIS SMITH


Suplecs hails from New Orleans and is unmistakably blackwater Southern. The three-piece is touring on the back of its Wrestlin' with My Lady Friend debut on Man's Ruin Records. Combining raw, heavy yet bluesy riffs with downright catchy dual vocals, the band creates a dark sonic stew of black-cat bone and juju powder that could best be described as Southern doom.

Songs like "Moped" hit all the right stoner-rock buttons, while "155" is simply classic hard rock. The live show incorporates both styles and boasts equal measures of high volume, humor, energy and improvisation. Just imagine what songs like "Dope Fu" and "Fish on a Highway" sound like live when you're already halfway kicked in the ass.

Durel Yates (guitar, vocals) and Danny Nick (bass, vocals) have been playing together for ten years; four years ago they formed Suplecs with drummer Andrew Preen. To give some indication of the different pulls at work, Nick does double duty as a member of grind kings Eyehategod (with whom Suplecs performs on this tour), while Preen has a standing gig in the jazz ensemble the Crescent City Big Band.

Still relatively unknown compared to kindred souls such as Alabama Thunder Pussy, Suplecs brings more than enough goods to the table to satisfy any self-respecting heavy rock fan.


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Body-Slammed

Man's Ruin makes Suplecs sing Sad Songs

BY CHRIS SMITH


There was once a time when long hair, a scruffy demeanor and bong hits at noon were as much a part of being in a band as amps cranked to 11 and rockin' paeans to the glories of chicks, booze and kicking ass. Then came the '80s, and everybody -- even those who would be miscreants -- got perms and slapped on mascara; then the '90s with its fashionable disaffectedness; and now the '00s, when looking either cuter or scarier than the next band is king.

This continual cycle of processing, marketing and commodifying rock has made what was once the mainstream now the underground. Just try to think of the last fuzzed-out blooze band that got anywhere near the top of the heap. In fact, heavy rock is beyond underground, in a sort of point-of-no-return Hades.

Nonetheless, there are still numerous practitioners out there, criss- crossing the country in small RVs, vans, moving trucks, converted airport shuttles -- anything with sufficient space and a solid drive train. In this regard they subsist very much like the DIY punks who once overthrew "dinosaur rock."

With its primal '70s vibe and long, deep grooves, New Orleans's Suplecs is one such band for whom the cycle of rock has been cruel.

"It's not an easy time, man…We're tired of eating shit on the road," says guitarist-vocalist Durel Yates. "But fortunately we've got hard-core fans pretty much everywhere. We just try to keep touring and breaking out of New Orleans. We don't have any rap or samples or whatever. Hopefully the tastes will turn eventually. In the meantime, though, we've got a great underground thing going on. We were actually supposed to be going over to Europe in October for the first time before everything happened with Man's Ruin."

Man's Ruin was the label founded by noted San Francisco pop artist Frank Kozik for the express purpose of giving the garage, gutter, stoner, punk and space rock bands a platform from which to wave their stained flags. Kozik himself did much of the artwork for the bands he signed, and he insisted that they record at a prolific-for-these-days pace of one album per year. And at some point or another many of the scene's top dogs -- Fu Manchu, Melvins, Queens of the Stone Age, Hellacopters -- all passed through for at least a split single or an EP.

The label's showcases at South by Southwest became the stuff of legend, each lineup bigger, more chaotic and just downright more debauched than the year before. Suplecs was on one of these wild bills earlier this year.

"Everything was going great," reflects Yates. "We got more money to make the new record [Sad Songs. Better Days] and [were] promised more money to promote it. Then one day we got a call from one of the guys at the label who was like, 'Are you sitting down?' and went on to tell us that it looked like Man's Ruin was going to go under."

Yates doesn't know all the details, but it's clear that bad decisions were made, bad advice was taken, and disaster ensued. "But I've got to give [Kozik] credit," Yates allows. "He was the only one that gave us a chance, let us have an opportunity to get out of New Orleans. And that took a while. We've been doing this since 1996, and the whole time he was the only one that heard it and gave it a chance."

Suplecs got back up off the mat in late November when it signed a deal with Dark Reign/Devil Doll records. The label hopes to rerelease Sad Songs sometime in early 2002. "It's just a bigger, better-sounding version of the same band," describes Yates. "We got Dave Fortnam [ex-Ugly Kid Joe] to produce it. And he was awesome -- just got everything sounding very big and full. And he really concentrated on the vocals, and they're both better and completely different."

As is the bill that Suplecs will be on at the Engine Room. These Gulf Coast natives make it through Houston a good half-dozen times a year, and Rudyard's is one of their more recent haunts. "Scott [Walcott] over there has always been really cool to us," says Yates. Cool enough that this time around he let the band off the hook for its scheduled Saturday-night show at Rudz so that it could take a bigger slot the following night, playing with Clutch, Biohazard and Candiria.

Sure, it's a baby step on the long journey to the top of the Billboard charts, a major-label deal and a luxurious tour bus. But should the band scramble back to the top of the pile, Suplecs would exemplify for the thousandth time the circle of rock. What was once hip becomes commodified and then passé. The genre goes dormant for a few years, only to reconstitute itself as a stylized "cool" form again. Punk had its Ramones and its Sex Pistols and eventually its Green Day. Rockabilly had its Eddie Cochran and then its Stray Cats. Ska had the Skatellites and then its Specials and then its Voodoo Glow Skulls. Stoner rock had its Zeppelin and Sabbath, and now, Yates hopes, its Suplecs.

 

review at:

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SUPLECS:

Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend

Suplecs guitar work creates more gobs of sludge than a thousand rat-infested urban sewers. Hell, Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend sounds like it crawled right out of some scuzzy MYC manhole. The band features former members of Eyehategod, a band that's synonymous with bottom-feeding, molten scum metal. But Suplecs ooze with its fuzzy tones and epic blues-infused jams, which recall those of Fu Manchu. The boys in Suplecs also use a variety of effects on their voices, so if you aren't completely disoriented by the spacey riffs, Wrestlin' With My Lady Friend's vocals may be trippy enough to trigger a raging case of paranoia. Here's to altered states of consciousness. - Amy Sciarretto: CMJ New Music Report Issue: 661 - Apr 10, 2000

 

review at:

http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=27678

The Show

Suplecs

By Christy Goldfinch

There's room in this great big world for all genres of music, even stoner rock. The credit goes to punk: Whereas late "70s followers of the Sex Pistols, Clash, et al, could turn to early electronica like Kraftwerk for repetitive beats and simple messages, late-'80s punks had to go straight from hardcore to grunge. Combine this mess with acid rock, throw in some psychedelic metal -- voila, stoner rock. It had to happen. Suplecs takes this "90s phenomenon a step further. The New Orleans band has studied well at the feet of their obvious heroes, Black Sabbath. They've got the howling vocals (even in their cover of the Beatles' "She's So Heavy"), the extended guitar solos, the power drumming, the anguished lyrics. But Suplecs adds humor, Southern-rock grooves, and startlingly excellent musicianship -- particularly that of bassist Danny Nik -- to the mix. Even straights will find something to like in this band.
 

http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2001-08-30/theshow.html


SUPLECS
wrestlin' with my lady friend
Man's Ruin
Answering no one's call in particular, The Suplecs wrote the record Fu Manchu always meant to but were afraid to produce.Sure , it's southern fried madness that should be derided for it's compleate lack of originality, substance or irony, but what the fuck... this is rock'n roll , not rocket science.And to that end , kiddies,The Suplecs succeed , even if Fu Manchu end up suing them for plagiarism.
-Kaos
viceland.com


SUPLECS

wrestlin' with my lady friend

Man's Ruin

If Lynyrd Skynyard kept doing tons of drugs, this is what the result might be. Raw southern fried rock n' roll. Favorites include " Dope Fu " the name alone gets the Concussion stoner seal of approval. These guys roll through 11 songs like a twelve pack on a warm summer night.Some songs had me thinking this was the new Fu Manchu but once again I'm not dealing with a full deck. This album was produced in New Orleans so it's laced with black magic. Check it out....jerkface

 

- LC

www.conncussion.org

"..... Supagroup may be all abut the girls, but we're all about the riffs," Danny Nick from Suplecs asserts, and he may be right. There are certainly more girls at a Supagroup show than a Suplecs show, and there's also a lot more dancing, but then again nobody danced to Black Sabbath either. at a recent show at Checkpoint Charlie's Suplecs stacked up the Marshals and grounds out heavy sheets of he-man sound playing songs from their new album "Wrestling with My Lady Friend". The night's neat oddity -and every night should have at least one-was Suplecs finding all the poundage implied in The Bealtes "I Want You (She's So Heavy), Like Supagroup , Suplecs is clearly aware of its rock n roll past but it's hardly a retro act. Suplecs in its current incarnation-bass/singer Danny Nick, guitarist /singer Durel Yates, drummer Andy Preen-has been together since 1994. "Dure and I had a few other bands before that but every time we changed the drummer we changed the name," said NIcks. Preen, whose background is also in in jazz, practiced with Suplecs once before the band debut at Benny's but Checkpoint Charlies' has been Suplecs' home. "It's like our own scene," Nicks explains, "and playing there helped with our sound a lot." The band went on hiatus when Yates moved to Kansas, but after a reunion gig at Checkpoint Charlie's in MArch 1999, "I called my wife and said I'm not coming back home". After that recording demos and sending them out , setting in motion the wheels that would get them where they ae. In New Orleans, of course, that means Checkpoint Charlie's instead of larger venues. " this city is known for blues jazz and funk, especially funk," Nicks explains, "while the underground scene has always been struggling". In fact, New Orleans is known for roots music that when they were in New York recently people said. " we didn't know rock bands came from New Orleans." Still, while on tour of the Northeast, "We rode into some towns and had our picture in the paper, " Yates marveled.... The new album should help raise the band's profile. "While I was touring Europe this Spring with Eyehategod, " Nicks explains, " I found reviews of Suplecs in German magazines. Our first printed review and I couldn't read them." They are also due to spend parts of the rest of the year traveling around America, including showcase nights in San Francisco and New York organized by their label, the currently cool Man's Ruin Records. .............. Fortunatly rock n roll as practiced by Supagroup and Suplecs, can still short-circuit the best thought -out aesthetics, .....

interview by Alex Rawls Offbeat

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