Saturday To Take A Stand And Deliver Ants

September 5th, 2015 at 1:33pm
Kip Wingerschmidt

I’m feeling kind of banjo-fied lately. Personally, I have no real clue what to really do with the twangy, pluck-cussive instrument whenever I lay my man-hands on one…..but I know I like it.

But where/how does ye olde banjoe fit into our beloved scene of heavy? A recent conversation with my esteemed colleague Dr. Turkish Von Turkleton led me to this 2010 post on No Clean Singing; apparently, ol’ Turkish had previously fallen into a banjo-wormhole on the information superhighway (it happens), and was looking for more of the instrument’s usage in metal musique.

I cited this song by the mighty Revocation (who are incidentally melting faces on tour now), but the banjo only appears briefly at the beginning.

Another example that jumped to mind was “Intro” from Rwake’s stellar 2007 progressive doom opus Voices of Omens (read Axl’s album review from way back when MetalSucks was still wearing diapers and we were all pooping out blog-by-numbers reviews that were stinkier than Maximus), but I could swear that’s a mandolin, not a banjo as some have claimed. (UPDATE: CONFIRMED BY A MEMBER OF RWAKE — MANDOLIN)

Enter Saint Louis’ prodigal sons of progressive death metal/mathcore Quaere Verum, who just released a killer new EP creatively titled, ahem, EP. I caught these guys live when my band played with them in STL last Fall and was immediately impressed — so it should have been no shock that EP would blow my puny little mind from the very first note. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear a banjo leading the way on a song, let alone a super-duper ripping banjo that is now my new quality standard for how the instrument can fit into heavy music.

Dig on the whole EP EP (banjo track is the third one):

<a href="http://toseekthetruth.bandcamp.com/album/ep-2">EP by Quaere Verum</a>

So what are your favorite banjo tunes, in metal or otherwise? I’ve included the ones from the NCS post below, as well as a few more. If you’re feeling antsy, please add your fingerplucking/delivery/standup picks in the comments section…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhnAZFR1po