Here's what some people had to say about the album....
Decibel Magazine Mythical Beast 'Scales' 9 out of 10
By the time Katrina turned Mythical Beast into displaced persons, singer Corinne Sweeney, guitarist Jeremiah Cowlin, and bassist Aaron Hawn had soaked up pretty much every musical trope New Orleans had to offer, along with a knack for making empty space half fourth member, half collectively owned ocean, and half fourth wall fronting starry proscenium. Too many halves? Normally, sure, but the psychedelic Delta stoner folk doom trio deserve at least twice as many. Now ensconced in Kansas City, they hug the misty void harder than ever on Scales, and emerge all the better for it. Wetter, too, but theirs is a natural lube, enhanced with just enough processing to turn sessions at Language of Stone nanomogul Greg Weeks's Hexham Head facility into big, open-air camp meetings where Jesus floats up out of the ground upside down and everybody has sex. Not that Sweeney's witchy, just monstrously able, and spongy enough to have assimilated, Borg-like, souls ranging from Jarboe's to Ethel Waters's by way of Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn's. Spookier still, toward the end of "Live to Live'"s last minute, she sounds simultaneously like both Tim and Jeff Buckley just long enough to haunt for real. Whether importing astral sludge from the Eagle Nebula as .. to Waste,'"s finale or slipping a sly Joy Division tribute into the concise epic's middle, Cowlin and Hawn consistently pledge allegance to nuance, generating soul and texture enough to bring Howlin' Wolf back from the dead and loving every minute. -Rod Smith
Edgesanfrancisco.com, Mythical Beast 'Scales'
Mythical Beast’s Scales is not the album to obsess over whilst pondering a lost job, dwindling savings or broken relationship. Corrine Sweeney’s lyrics could make Robert Smith suicidal. And Scales’ deep, dank, heavy mood rarely lifts to manageable heights. The result is a dragging set of tracks that might just make you turn to Zoloft if the commercials haven’t already done the job.
But as background mood music turned low, the album might just work. The style merges Mazzy Star’s sultry delerium with Joan Osbourne’s ripping vocals, set to a Led Zeppelin-on-Quaaludes backdrop. As a lifeline to inner depression (forget the peace), Sweeney’s bold chords, Cowlin’s ebbing guitar and Hawn’s bass (and the occassional synth) are bound to pull this foggy, surreal, creative, sexy, dauntless work into cult college album top-ten lists faster than you can say, "commencement ceremony." -Christopher de la Torre
The Fader Freeload: Mythical Beast, "Cycle/Circle"
We're not going to say we don't hear some similarities to Black Mountain's downward spiral of heavy Black Sabbath influenced psych in Mythical Beast's, "Cycle/Circle," but any song that has us googling cheap fog machines can't be disappointing. Make no mistake though, this is not party jam music, once we get the fog machine we actually plan on going to our mom's basement, turning on the fog and sitting on a couch blasting this at unreasonable volumes until we can't see or hear anymore. Alternately, we might just listen to it on headphones while perusing the many goods on the Language of Stone website.
Raven Sings the Blues, Mythical Beast 'Scales'
Following a couple of great splits on Not Not Fun, Mythical Beast finally have a full length under their belts. As the fates would have it they've landed on Philly's finest; Language of Stone, for their first album Scales. The band recorded it with Greg Weeks at his LOS headquarters/studio in Philadelphia and to be honest these are some of the strongest Mythical Beast tracks I've heard yet. Still steeped in the darkest recesses of psych's heart, the tracks smolder with scorched earth and the black taste of doom. While atop the slow churn of guitars and the death march of drums, Corrine's vocal wail heralds in end times with the passionate force of a call to arms. But there is light at the edges of Mythical Beast's universe and though the themes are dark there's a sad hope that looms present behind the clouds of destruction. Again I'm earnestly awaiting the issue of so many of Language of Stone's releases on vinyl and this is no exception; music of this caliber deserves nothing less. The band has pulled itself to the forefront of modern psychedelia, and this album will more than likely serve as a jumping off point for great things to come.
Impose Magazine Listen: Mythical Beast, 'Scales'
Get doomy with a song by Mythical Beast, a trio of Kansas City heavyweights.
Here's a track from Mythical Beast's upcoming debut album, Scales. All its tracks where recorded on vintage gear- a 1970s 2-inch MCI 24 track tape machine, and mixed on a 1980s DDA console, which, if you ask me, if a little anachronistic of them. 1980s? Please. This track is a slow burner straight outta 1971 or 72, that fateful cross section of time when both Sabbath and Zepelin released "Volume IV" albums.
While these Mythical Beasts are probably channeling something no-less mysterious then their forefathers of heavy, their witchcraft's certainly a lot closer to the rootsy sources of their doomy rock: Kansas City-based by way of Austin by way of New Orleans by way of Olympia.
Acoustic Music, Mythical Beast Scales
What first hits you right between the eyes in this group is the presence of Corinne Sweeney, who has a helluva voice, powerful and wild. Then the rough and ragged guitar of Jeremiah Orndorff Cowlin stomps into the room and sets up a thick sludgey dungeon of fog and demons while Aaron Lee Hawn carries the rhythm section on bass (and synth, when it appears). Like labelmates Heavy Hands (reviewed here), Mythical Beast is a power trio carrying a few sonic affinities to stoner rock but with unorthodox compositions starting out in standard refrains refusing to resolve in the expected ways, more a sophisticated operatic exercise during a Druidic rite of passage.None of this is polished beyond a certain threshold—which is quite attractive to those of us who relish the everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink days of the old Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Troubador, and etc.—but it's definitely experimental, willing to take risks, and, by that, charts territory basically uncovered by much of anyone. There's a Nico-ish element (River Blindness, Chaos Spinner), though the late chanteuse would never wail like Sweeney, and faint traces of Gomorrha, perhaps Pere Ubu antedating itself, and God only knows what else. This unit doesn't lean heavily into influences but rather finds ways to build new platforms. Thus, while you get the fuzz drone of the drugstate sound, don't expect the standard change-ups or resolves. Mythical Beast pulls their extensions well beyond middle-eights and variations, even to Hawkwindish buzzes and layered repetitions (Eyes Into Space). It's not a surprise that such a combo would land on the Language of Stone label, a venue that has already well overthrown older prog-psych ventures like Reckless Records (Black Sun Ensemble, Bevis Frond, etc.). In a strange way, what the trio is doing here, deconstructing and re-establishing territory, even has sympathies in the work of ensembles like Thinking Plague. I suspect, too, speaking of unusual moves, that the cool Tanz Der Lemminge photo beneath the disc plate is no accident and a tip of the hat to that estimable group. I haven't a clue how to categorize Scales. I like it a lot, but I'm warning ya: whatever you think it might be, it ain't that.
MYTHICAL BEAST WILL ... give you ecstatic death dreams. We don't play music... we cut our hearts apart with sharp wires of NOIZE and then bring them back together with the universal voice. Listen to mythical beast for one hour and you won't lie for nine days... New Orleans storm to Austin porch to Kansas City crossroads of America's great middle west - then into some no home, no home, no home. . . don't worry you got no home either. Meet your master. You disaster.
SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES SCALES
NEW RECORD "SCALES" released October 2008 - recorded in ten days with blood/sweat/ tears/bits of bone... you can find it at dragcity.com, amazon.com, goddamn target.com - but go to your local record store and buy it there!!! THE RECORD STORE IS HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY... let yr record store die and your DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD INSIDE!!! LET YOURSELF BE HEALED!............................................................................................................
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DISCOGRAPHY:.......................................................................................................
FREE BEASTS (cassette c78 compilation) "CHAOS SPINNER" (NOT NOT FUN) 2006 (long gone).....................................................................................................................
SPIRE GROUND a bored fortress compilation (3" cd) "UNTITLED" (NOT NOT FUN) 2007 (long gone)............................................................................................................
SPLIT W/ OH HOME (3" cd) "BLOOD FEVER" (DNT) 2007 (way gone).............................
SPLIT W/ POCAHAUNTED (12" LP) (NOT NOT FUN) 2007 (sold out)................................
SPLIT W/ CLOUDLAND CANYON (12" LP) (NOT NOT FUN) 2008 (still a few left at notnotfun.com).......................................................................................................
"SCALES" full length DEBUT (CD) (LANGUAGE OF STONE) 2008....................................
"SCALES" LIMITED VINYL RELEASE (LP) (NOT NOT FUN) 2009.......................................
We're looking for cover song suggestions, have any?
Talking so far about Grizzly Bear and Broken Social Scene.
Hope you can come May 14th Czar Bar
cheers, Jules
i ordered ur lp while out of state, to my excitement it was waiting for me upon my arrival home only to place it upon my wheel of steel to learn that it had died while i was away.... =( gotta love soulseek though!
Online Now!
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