Archive Review: The Sermon's Volume (2004)

Inspired by the relative success of bands like the Strokes, the Hives and the White Stripes, everybody and their brother wants to be in a garage band these days. San Francisco’s the Sermon comes by its credentials honestly, the band boasting former members of the Fells, the Mount McKinleys, and the Dukes of Hamburg among its ranks. Veteran rockers genuflecting before the twin altars of the late ‘60s Detroit sound and the British invasion bands, the Sermon kicks out brimstone-scented jams with Volume, the band’s erstwhile debut. A rattletrap collection of songs that roar like a Harley’s red-hot tailpipe and buzz at the frequency of a nuclear meltdown, Volume offers up R&B-drenched, feedback-ridden tales of death and degradation with a Bo Diddley heartbeat and the reckless soul of the Yardbirds.

With appropriately murky production and fuzzy, effects-laden guitars, songs like the semi-psychedelic “Surprise” or the powerful “Tender Sin” – which hums like an electrical storm across a trailer park – lay waste to all but the heartiest of garage rock competitors. “Time Has Come” sounds like the result of some time transference experiment gone awry, echoed vocals chanted over a reverberating guitar riff while some crazed timekeeper pounds away at a drum set deep in the mix. The nightmarish “No Beast So Fierce” sounds like a mutant Muddy Waters, distorted blues guitars layered beneath a sordid lyrical tale while a manic mouth harp punctuates the words with tortured wails. “Exterminator” hits like vintage Velvet Underground, or maybe like Lou Reed cramming a copy of Metal Machine Music down Lester Bangs’ throat while the soulful “Get Over, Again” resurrects the long-dead spirit of the MC5 for one more dance through the graveyard.    

Forget about all those major label-manufactured-and-marketed “garage rock” bands that they’re trying to sell you on MTV and in music magazines. As the new gods of garage punk, the Sermon takes its rightful place among rock ‘n’ roll royalty like the Riverboat Gamblers, the Dirt Bombs, the Detroit Cobras, and the New Bomb Turks. If you like your rock hard, loud, and sweaty, then look no further than the Sermon’s Volume. Tell ‘em that the Reverend sent you… (Alternative Tentacles, released 2004)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine