Marcos Garcia, the founder / vocalist / guitarist / multi-instrumentalist of Here Lies Man says his band is “…very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs.” That principle is indeed the driving force the HLM’s new album – No Ground to Walk Upon.
The album opens with the fuzzy, funky “Clad in Silver,” which has Garcia singing spiritual lyrics over a groove that might induce a trance in you (so be careful if you’re operating heavy machinery while listening, especially to the last third of it). “Swinging from the Trees” has wicked hand percussion throughout it, taking lead even from the strong bass riffs and 1970’s action movie guitars.
“Long Legs (Look Away)” immediately makes you feel like a bad ass in one of those above-mentioned action movies. The groove is inescapable and will have you feeling invincible. The drum work on “Washing Bones” is just as good, with a harder rock feel than previous tracks.
The Santana influences on “Get Ahold of Yourself” cannot be denied. Listen to those congas and “no need to rush” guitar licks if you don’t believe me. “Iron Rattles” rattles and rolls with a spooky feel to it that curls up next to you in the dark. The album ends with “Man Falls Down,” the title of which reflects a common theme in HLM’s work – nature will always win. Man can strut around all he likes, but in the end, nature will have the final say. Man falls down, gets up, continues on, but nature always waits to reclaim us.
Every song on this album ends by drifting into instrumental experiments, and the last one sends us away wondering what’s to come next from Here Lies Man, and for us all. There is no ground to walk upon when we are floating in a dream or away from our corporeal bodies through meditation or, yes, death. Nature is nothing to fear, as are death, truth, and disillusionment. This album reminds us of that.
Keep your mind open.
[Walk over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
“An evolutionary step forward for their sound.” – Metal Hammer
“A woozy wall of Afrobeat inspired fuzzbox riff worship and pounding circular rhythmic power, Here Lies Man connect the stoner rock underground straight to downtown Lagos.” – The Quietus
“Here Lies Man are still really, really good at making riffy, rhythmic psychedelic rock that sounds like the ’60s/’70s but still feels fresh today. Fans of anything from Nuggets to Ty Segall and King Gizzard should take note.” — Brooklyn Vegan
“This is a band ahead of their time.” — The Obelisk
Los Angeles quartet Here Lies Man share the lead single from their forthcoming 7-song mini-album No Ground To Walk Upon today. Hear and share “Clad in Silver” via YouTube and Bandcamp.
Dinked, the UK collective of independent retailers, are offering an exclusive special edition of the release that comes with a signed picture of the band, a patch, and a tote bag, on purple vinyl with orange swirl. For more information see Dinked HERE.
Here Lies Man took the music world by storm in 2017 with their self-titled debut positing the intriguing hypothesis: What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat?
Since that time, Here Lies Man has expanded and expounded upon their sound and ideas of heavy riff rock and psych within the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave. The L.A. based band comprised of Antibalas members have toured relentlessly over the past 2 years, while also releasing a second album, You Will Know Nothing and an EP, Animal Noises, both in 2018.
No Ground to Walk Upon is due worldwide in August 2019. It continues with an ongoing concept of HLM playing the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, with each song being a scene. The lead single “Clad in Silver” is the soundtrack snippet of a journey to the imaginary place called home, which can never be arrived at. With every step, the character imagines getting closer, but it is a hallucination that fades in and out of perception.
Rough Trade named Here Lies Man in their prestigious Top 10 Albums of 2017. BBC 6 & Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year’s best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises. 2018’s You Will Know Nothing furthered the band’s reputation for genre-smashing rhythmic experimentation, topping many year-end lists as well as earning features from countless metal and indie rock outlets, plus cover stories in weekly papers. No Ground to Walk Upon is the next step in the band’s rapid ascent to what is bound to be influential upon riff based rock.
“We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs,” explains founder and vocalist/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia (who also plays guitar in Antibalas) of the band’s sound. “Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are taking that same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi it was the blues, for us it comes directly from Africa.”
No Ground To Walk Upon also includes an interesting conceptual mathematics to the entire proceedings, a theme begun on the prior album. “There are interludes between each song that are 2/3 to 3/4 of the tempo of the previous song,” Garcia says. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.”
Garcia and cofounder/drummer Geoff Mann (former Antibalas drummer and son of jazz musician Herbie Mann) recorded the mini-album much like they did their previous releases, at their own L.A. studio on a Tascam 388 8-track tape machine. Additional layers were recorded with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod and other contributors in various other locations, all while the band continued its rigorous touring schedule.
Here Lies Man has already spent much of the past three years on tour, with dates supporting Antibalas, Earthless and Fu Manchu, as well as headlining treks through the EU & UK. The remaining months of 2019 and 2020 will see the band once again performing at numerous International festivals (including Austin’s Levitation Fest in November.)
No Ground to Walk Upon will be available on LP, CD and download on August 16th, 2019 via RidingEasy Records.
Keep your mind open.
[I’ll feel like I’m clad in silver if you subscribe today.]
