Well
it sucks outside... But inside it's awesome! We've got the fuzzed out
doom blues of Wo-Fat's The Black Code. Thunderbolts "No Quarter" and a
big ol' glass of Elijah Craig 12 year old bourbon.
Some times you get home from a shitty day of work...the snowy commute was fraught with people that don't know how to drive....your walkway almost kills you with it's coating of slippery death and you just want a big damn whiskey. I prefer my whiskey American and old. While some people would not consider mere double digits old, I'll take it. I mean, come on, I may be discerning but I'm not a snob. Elijah Craig, small batch, 12 year bourbon is a beautiful example of why I prefer American whiskey to any other. At 47% alcohol (94 proof), it's got a bit more potency than others but not even close enough to make it rough on you if you're a whiskey drinker. The color is a wonderful mix of caramel brown and deep red that hints at it's complexity. The nose is very strong with vanilla and smoke. There is also a clue at the little bit of burn you're going to be experiencing in that nose if you inhale deeply. The first taste that you'll encounter is one of oak, it's a little like vanilla with a sharp twist at the end. At the swallow you'll get a bit of tobacco, some sweet molasses and some alcohol sting, that will burn slightly, but mostly it will leave you with a nice warm glow in your gut. This is a no-ice-required-do-not-mix-to-hell-with-any-other-plans you made for the night kind of whiskey. You may as well crank some some tunes, crack a book and just enjoy the fact that you're not getting off the couch for the rest of the night.
The book I cracked is the first volume of the Daniel Way run of Thunderbolts, entitled "No Quarter". I'm fairly new to the Thunderbolts as an entitty. I loved the collection of Warren Ellis issues about villians doing away with superhumans that failed to register with the government as part of a plea bargain of sorts, but this is an all together different animal. I'll lay out the team before I go any further. Deadpool, smart ass psycho assassin with a healing factor, The Punisher, you know the Punsher; Red Hulk; Air Force General Ross with Hulk powers (aso he's red); Elektra, female ultra assassin; Agent Venom; and Flash Thompson with a controlled version of the ailen symbiote he's using to be a super solder. Sounds intense right? Well yeah it is. Instead of fighting the good guys, this team is running a sort of super powered black ops team for the US government. This trade is slightly confusing for someone breaking back into comics because of the amount of individual characters that are being assembled, the interaction between them all as they get used to one another and their first mission all being crammed into 6 issues. The other side of that coin is that you can't be bored in these six issues. It's not the most intelectually stimulating story you'll ever read but if you like army drama and super heroes than this is perfect. Steve Dillon is in charge of the pencils and I think he does a bang-up job. Dillon doesn't do frills and a book like this would be completely up it's own ass if it was drawn in an overly photorealistic or artsy and stylized way. Dillon's style looks like he slowly turns a real life photo into a cartoon. Not in a caricature way but in an honest way, if that makes any sense. He nails the fact that he's drawing a comic book about completely unrealistic things that he still wants you to believe can happen or at the very least take seriously. I've heard other people say he was the wrong man for this book but if you believe what I just said about his art then you'll agree that there was no oher man for the job. Thunderbolts, no matter what their incarnation, is an interesting read due to the fact that the point of view of a team of killers will always be different than the one you're used to.
For the icing on the cake, how about some bonified, fuzzed out doom blues? I know the perfect thing. How about Wo-Fat's "The Black Code" on beatiful transparent orange vinyl? I thought you'd agree. They've got a new record coming out this year so I'll try and educate the uneducated so you can get on board. Some stoner bands that have a loose association with the blues and some alt-blues bands that play with enough distortion to fit in with stoner rock bands. While those 2 descriptons may not seem very different, if you listen to Bongzilla (the first description) and Left Lane Cruiser (the second description) you will see that they are in fact very different. Wo-Fat could play with either of those bands. The riffs are fuzzy but not sludgey, the vocals are gruff but not growled and while there is plenty of slide and rippin' solos, there is also a good amount of downtuned chug. This is Sabbath worship in probably the most American way possible, the beginning of the the title track even has hints of Black Sabbaths seminal tune "Iron Man" in the intro. Perhaps that's why I paired them with a US military comic and a bourbon. Who knows? There is definitely an American swagger and swing to this record though. The bluesiness of the record gives it more of a hipshake than Sabbath. The changes in speed are a stoner rock standard but the solo's are not only incredibly precise but they also have some interesting noisy, atonal bits that make them quite unique. The songs have a "jammy" nature to them but they don't meander as such. There are plenty of lengthy solo's and a lot of different parts, but everything still sounds planned. Wo-Fat simply makes room for everything rather than trying to put 10lbs of shit in a 5lbs bag or putting 10lbs of shit in a bag that they stretched from 5lbs to 20lbs. In a way this is exacty what rock n' roll was supposed to be. It's the blues cranked up and brought into the light. If nothing else it goes really well with bourbon and super heroes.
