Not the Politician

Our next band gets their name from a famous politician. Harvey Milk the politician was the first openly gay city supervisor, serving the city of San Francisco for 11 months until he was murdered by a former employee of the city (most unfortunately).  Harvey Milk the band has been performing since the early 1990s.  Their career has been segmented; they first started performing in Atlanta in 1992, disbanded in 1998, then reformed in 2006.  The reasons for their disbandment are unknown to me (I guess a little research is in order), but they came back with a roar with their album Life…the Best Game in Town.

Prior to Life (the topic of this entry), the band had released four other full-length albums, three pre-split and one other post-reformation.  Their style is similar to that of the Melvins, i.e. sludge metal.  However, the band has been known to perform songs from artists such as R.E.M. and ZZ Top, which can be quite different in sound to the Melvins.

# 155 – Harvey Milk, Life…the Best Game in Town (Metascore = 85)

If you’re a fan of sludge metal, Harvey Milk does it really well.  What is “sludge metal”?  Well, the music is typically loud, the instruments are heavily distorted, and the tempos can vary from very fast to very slow.  The music has elements of doom metal (see Sunn O))) and hardcore punk (think Black Flag).  “Sludge” is almost exactly as you would think it would sound.

I should talk about the first song, “Death Goes to the Winner”.  The lyrics are interesting…the title to the album comes from this song.  The loudness varies from quiet to loud to quiet.  The coolest part to me is the end where Creston Spiers steals from the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” when he says “Woke up got out of bed dragged a comb across my head” and then you hear the piano chimes.  Great reference!

The album isn’t lacking for interesting moments.  You can hear influences other than bands like the Melvins.  There is an element of jam similar to Led Zeppelin or modern bands like Mastodon (a sludge/progressive metal group) that permeates through the album.  You also hear elements of Black Sabbath in Harvey Milk’s music, as well as (oddly) the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Some of favorite songs from the album are “Death Goes to the Winner”, “After All I’ve Done for You, This Is How You Repay Me?”, and “Motown”.  With a nice little touch at the end of “Good Bye Blues”, the band includes the closing credit music to the Loony Tune cartoons that used to come on.

I liked this album a little more than I expected.  Is it better than some of the other albums I’ve heard?  Not to me personally, but there are some cool moments on this album.  I don’t really feel let down by the record, and I do find the contrasts in tempos to be cool.  I think I just need to be in a mood for this record.