Monofonus Press

The Works

“In the clubs with the Roller. Austin metal band blends sludge, doom, volume.”

To give an exact name to the sound made by the Austin band the Roller requires ears versed in the subtleties and complexities of heavy metal.Guitarist Theron Rheton, backed up by drummer Jeremy Jenkins, at Red 7 late last year. Hear the band at myspace.com/gloomaxe.In other words, it’s really slow and really loud.And it is certainly metal. Massively distorted guitar, plodding bass and drums and a singer who sounds like all 20 feet of his small intestine are being slowly removed from his body with a fork.

But beyond that, well, that’s where the hair-splitting comes in between “doom” and “sludge.” “Sludge metal” has a tendency to moved from ultra-slow tempos (think tarpit) to fast tempos (think galloping war horse covered in armor) at the drop of a pick. Prototypical sludge metal includes the genuinely scary New Orleans band Eyehategod and the less scary West Coast punk lifers the Melvins.”Doom metal” is usually all slow, all the time — think of a 45 rpm single of one of the slower Black Sabbath songs played at 33. The Roller certainly started out as a doom band. Seeing them in June 2006 at the late, lamented East Side venue the Tillery was an exercise in endurance.

“We’re a little bit of both doom and sludge,” says Roller bassist Ed Davis.Sigh. That doesn’t help, dude.

Yet, it’s kind of true. The band also includes singer Mike Morowitz, drummer Jeremy Jenkins and guitarist Theron Rheton. Davis and Jenkins are fairly new to the “real band” scene, but Rheton used to be in a Nebraska band called Axes to the Sky. “They were an epic thrash metal band,” Davis says, which explains how Roller songs got a little bit faster after Rheton joined about six months ago. Now they really do sound like a bit of both.This recombinant urge even extends to the band’s name, which embodies a whole host of metal references. “There’s a Man is the Bastard song called ‘The Roller,’ Davis said, referring to an influential punk/metal band from the 1990s.

“The first Goblin album is called ‘Roller,’ ” he adds; they were an Italian progressive rock outfit. “The drummer and I were also skaters.”Perfect.

Read the article on Austin360.com