Friday Heaviness: New Music from Omotai & New Video from Peloton

In recent weeks the kindly folks in {Omotai} and {Peloton} (okay, “folk,” in the form of bassist Melissa (Lonchambon) Ryan, who plays in both bands) sent me some of their latest music, and seeing as I freaking love Omotai and am heartily impressed by Peloton — and both bands are playing in the next day or two — I figured it’d be a good time to mention ’em here.

First up, Omotai‘s got a brand-new track, “Lurching Away,” up on their Bandcamp page, from the forthcoming release Terrestrial Grief, which is slated to be released in July by the good people over at The Treaty Oak Collective. It’s a thundering, gloomy slab of math-y, quasi-doom metal that takes the band’s previous (and excellent) EP, Peace Through Fear, and grafts it to an Unsane-like squall of noise and sense of desperation, and yeah, it’s pretty damn great.

I’m a little surprised, actually, because the band had sent an in-the-works track back in early 2011 from what they said would be their next release, and it sounded, if anything, cleaner & shinier than Peace. To the contrary, this track sounds even noisier than their previous stuff; I’m good with it either way, mind you, but when I first put “Lurching Away” on, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting to hear.

Check it out right here:

Omotai is playing tomorrow night, Sat., June 2nd, up at Walter’s (1120 Naylor), along with Dragged Into Sunlight, Cough, & {Sleeping Ancient}.

Then there’s Peloton, whose self-titled debut EP I enjoyed quite a bit last year. They’ve got a new one, too, February’s Twist Off Your Head!, but I haven’t listened to the whole dang thing yet; what I have heard has been awesomely heavy and in-your-face, a sludgy morass of stagger-stomping, punk-fueled metal that brings to mind Federation X, Queens of the Stone Age, and Barkmarket, to throw out three. So far, at least, it takes the promise of Peloton and builds on it damn near perfectly.

Turns out they’ve got a video for “Of Hoses and Horses” now, too, cobbled together from footage of the band traveling and playing and loading gear and hanging out and all that other everyday stuff, and it works ridiculously well, fitting perfectly with the barely-restrained chaos of the band’s sound. Vocalist Denniz Polk made the video, too, which makes me all the better, to me.

I should note, btw, that I’m psyched to see/hear how well Polk’s vocals fit with guitarist Halson Luna, drummer Zach Keener, and Ryan’s bass — back when they released their EP, the band was a vocal-less trio, so I was a teensy bit concerned about what adding a singer to the mix would do to it. Seems I shouldn’t have worried. Here’s the video:

Peloton is playing tonight, Fri., June 1st, again up at Walter’s, along with Black Tusk, fellow awesome H-towners {Ghost Town Electric} & {Defending the Kingdom}. Grrrrawwr. You know what to do.