Shovelhead has long been northern New Jersey's best-kept musical secret. Monster Magnet, The Atomic Bitchwax, Solace....Hell, these are all Jersey groups that are well-known for their superb - if sometimes uneven - chops in the stoner/doom underground. Sadly, even among the cognoscenti Shovelhead's name too often leads only to blank stares. Which only goes to prove what we all know, which is that the world sucks and we're all doomed, because in a just world Shovelhead would be reclining on couches of gold, passing the hookah around while being fanned by scantily-clad maidens promising exotic delights by the light of the waning moon.
After all, it's no more than they deserve. Guitar hero/vocalist Jim LaPointe, drummer Mike Scott, and bassist Sha Zaidi have been producing superb blues-based "stoner" metal in the underground for years to far too little recognition. This outfit is the very soul of unpretentiousness: they seem only to live to play, and play their asses off. They're in the tradition of past titans such as Hendrix, Randy Holden, and Blue Cheer, but they're not retro at all. Rather, they're part of a living continuum stretching back decades. Bonus: 'Spitting Oil' is their best effort yet. They've wisely chosen to focus on their strengths: musicianship and jamming. They're a power trio that makes a huge classic noise, hard muscled and with a minimum of bull, ripping off the roof live at the Brighton month after month. They're the kind of guys that as kids would have been locked up in the house jamming on a fine summer's day while their good Jersey friends played hoops outside. They're Cream without the pop and circumstance.
'Lost in the Desert' starts things off as a single-sized bite of what Shovelhead is all about: furious riffing, soaring vocals, and a concise guitar solo. 'The Burning' is more typical in length, boiling with barely restrained power with a main riff like an early Blue Oyster Cult outtake and hints of the under-appreciated 90s power trio from Georgia, Plaster. Nice bass, too. 'The Mission' steamrolls the hell out of the listener: it's simply beautiful, beautiful musical wattage, with an amazing guitar solo drowning in a sea of distortion and feedback. At 10+ minutes 'The Calling' is the album's longest tune, replete with careening leads and a drum solo, dammit, a drum solo! How the musically correct must be seething! '10 Years' sounds like a superior outtake from 'Led Zep II' without in any way being a ripoff, and the aural pleasures just keep coming. It should be noted that all 3 musicians are crucial to the band's presentation, not least of which is Sha Zaidi's bass, which often subtly leads the way from one section of a song to another.
The band members are master of the organic flow, a skill that can only come with much practice and much time together. Few musicians can strip the sound down to it's building blocks, then use their native ability and long experience to reassemble it in structures of beguiling complexity. After all, there's nothing to hide behind! But Shovelhead glories in it. Recommended.
Kevin Mchugh - Stonerrock.com